Latest / Crime and Horror / Top 3 IMPOSSIBLE places people were found Missing 411 (Part 16)

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Top 3 IMPOSSIBLE places people were found Missing 411 (Part 16) · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: Every now and again, as I'm researching the Missing four
0:03
Speaker 1: one one phenomenon, which, if you're not familiar, it's a
0:05
Speaker 1: book series by David Politis, who's a former police detective
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Speaker 1: who researches the thousands of strange disappearances in national parks
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Speaker 1: and forests across North America. As I'm researching these cases,
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Speaker 1: I'll find one that is truly disturbing, and today's top
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Speaker 1: story is just that. But before we get into today's stories,
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Speaker 1: if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious
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Speaker 1: delivered in story format, then you come to the right channel,
0:29
Speaker 1: because that's all we do, and we upload three, four,
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Speaker 1: even five times every week. So if that's of interest
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Speaker 1: to you, please befriend the light button, and when they
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Speaker 1: just venmo yourself one thousand dollars and give their phone back. Also,
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Speaker 1: so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.
0:49
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into today's stories. In nineteen ninety five.
1:04
Speaker 1: Thirty seven year old Jeanie Hesselschwarz was living with their fiance,
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Speaker 1: Mike Monaghan, in Arlington, Massachusetts, The couple had been together
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Speaker 1: for ten years, and their families said they really loved
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Speaker 1: each other and they were a great couple. In July
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Speaker 1: of that year, Jeanie and Mike left for a planned
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Speaker 1: trip to Yosemite National Park in California to go backpacking
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Speaker 1: and sightseeing. On July ninth, the couple arrived at Yosemite
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Speaker 1: and they entered via this road that was only open
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Speaker 1: during the summer, so as such, it was totally desolate
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Speaker 1: and they were the only ones in this road, and
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Speaker 1: they had about a two to two and a half
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Speaker 1: hour drive until they reached the spot they were going
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Speaker 1: to actually stop at, so they had the scenic drive
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Speaker 1: up the road, and about two hours into this drive,
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Speaker 1: there was this turnout on the side of the road
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Speaker 1: where a couple of other tourists were standing at sightseeing,
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Speaker 1: and Jenie and Mike decided they wanted to pull over
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Speaker 1: and get out and stretch their legs, So they pulled
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Speaker 1: over in the turnout, and when they got out, Mike
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Speaker 1: said he wanted to walk down the trail a little
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Speaker 1: way as to this area that apparently was good for
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Speaker 1: bird watching, and Jeanie didn't want to do that. She
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Speaker 1: wanted to walk in the other direction up to this overlook,
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Speaker 1: and so they decided that they would each get to
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Speaker 1: do their own activities. They'd be gone for fifteen minutes
2:09
Speaker 1: and then meet back at the car. So Mike heads
2:11
Speaker 1: down and does his bird watching, and then after fifteen minutes,
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Speaker 1: he walks back up to the car, expecting to see Genie,
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Speaker 1: but she's not there. And this is nineteen ninety five.
2:19
Speaker 1: Neither of them had a cell phone, and so he
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Speaker 1: can't just call her, and so he just stands by
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Speaker 1: the car and waits, and so he's looking around waiting
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Speaker 1: for her to re emerge out of the trail she
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Speaker 1: had left on. But after fifteen more minutes goes by
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Speaker 1: and he still hasn't seen her. He walks up to
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Speaker 1: some of the tourists that were there in the first place,
2:35
Speaker 1: and he asks them, Hey, have you seen this woman Jeanie,
2:38
Speaker 1: And he described what she looked like, and they said, no,
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Speaker 1: we haven't seen her, And so he goes back to
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Speaker 1: the car, and now he's getting pretty anxious and he's
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Speaker 1: looking around and he's just waiting for her to show up.
2:46
Speaker 1: And another fifteen minutes goes by, so now she's thirty
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Speaker 1: minutes late. And he starts walking up the trail to
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Speaker 1: see if he can find her, but he realizes the
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Speaker 1: trail immediately spiders off in different directions, and so she
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Speaker 1: could have gone in any one of these different pathways,
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Speaker 1: And at this point he decides, I have to get
3:01
Speaker 1: authorities involved. Time is of the essence, and so he
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Speaker 1: runs back to his car, and he sees a park
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Speaker 1: service employee emptying a trash can into a dumpster, and
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Speaker 1: so he runs over to them and he says, you know,
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Speaker 1: my fiance, Genie, she's gone. She's been gone for thirty minutes.
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Speaker 1: Can you please get in touch with authorities and get
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Speaker 1: people up here looking for her. Within forty five minutes
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Speaker 1: of speaking to this employee, park rangers had made their
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Speaker 1: way up to this area and they began talking to
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Speaker 1: Mike and figuring out where she might have gone, and
3:26
Speaker 1: they start walking down the trail to look for her,
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Speaker 1: but after an hour of not finding her, the park
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Speaker 1: rangers would call in additional assistance from the police. The
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Speaker 1: search for Jeanie would become the largest in Yosemite's history,
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Speaker 1: expanding to forty square miles, with helicopters overhead and dog
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Speaker 1: handlers on the ground and hundreds of volunteers combing this
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Speaker 1: whole area, but despite the relatively quick response time and
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Speaker 1: massive amount of manpower, they could not find Genie. After
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Speaker 1: two weeks of looking everywhere for her, the only thing
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Speaker 1: they were able to find were two bootprints that they
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Speaker 1: believed belonged to Janie. The first print was found in
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Speaker 1: the vicinity of where their car was parked, so where
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Speaker 1: she had actually disappeared from, and then the other one
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Speaker 1: was curiously located on a trail that was one of
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Speaker 1: the biggest trails in Yosemite. It was very well marked,
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Speaker 1: it was fairly wide. You're not going to mistake this
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Speaker 1: for anything other than a trail. And the bootprint was
4:18
Speaker 1: not walking along the trail, it was cutting across it,
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Speaker 1: as if she was going from woodline, crossing over the
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Speaker 1: trail into the other woodline. This second print didn't make
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Speaker 1: any sense to authorities because they're thinking, you know, if
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Speaker 1: you're lost out in the middle of the woods, then
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Speaker 1: you come across a clearly defined trail, a really obvious
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Speaker 1: obvious trail. You wouldn't walk across it and go back
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Speaker 1: into the woods. You would take the trail in either
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Speaker 1: direction until it hits civilization. Because all trails do that
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Speaker 1: for the most part, and so it seemed like this
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Speaker 1: print could not be hers, because that would indicate she
4:50
Speaker 1: has chosen not to follow this path. But the print
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Speaker 1: was hers. Over the course of these two weeks of searching,
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Speaker 1: several dog teams had been placed right where Mike's car
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Speaker 1: had been, right where Jeanie had left to go to
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Speaker 1: the trail where she disappeared, and the dogs could not
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Speaker 1: pick up a cent of Genie, and it led the
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Speaker 1: handlers to believe that Mike was actually lying and that
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Speaker 1: Genie had actually never been in Yosemite, and this was
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Speaker 1: all a big ploy because he had done something to her,
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Speaker 1: and he was going to act like she's lost in
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Speaker 1: the wilderness and he was going to get away with
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Speaker 1: whatever he did to her. And so ultimately the FBI
5:24
Speaker 1: got involved because now foul play is being suggested. And
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Speaker 1: the first thing the FBI did is they polygraphed Mike,
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Speaker 1: and he passed without question and he was totally vindicated
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Speaker 1: of any involvement. After that, the FBI dug into Mike's
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Speaker 1: background in Genie's background to see if there was any
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Speaker 1: indication of somebody that might want to do Genie harm
5:43
Speaker 1: and they couldn't find anything. She was just gone and
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Speaker 1: nobody knew what happened to her. On September third, so
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Speaker 1: two months after Genie went missing, two men were in
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Speaker 1: this really remote section of Yosemite to go fishing when
5:55
Speaker 1: they spotted a human body in a pool of water.
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Speaker 1: It would turn out to be Genie's. She was three
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Speaker 1: miles from where she was last seen by Mike at
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Speaker 1: that trailhead. She was only wearing socks and one boot,
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Speaker 1: and she had been sitting in this pool of water
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Speaker 1: for so long that they were unable to determine the
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Speaker 1: cause of death. Initially, it was speculated that she must
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Speaker 1: have fallen into the river that fed ultimately down to
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Speaker 1: where she was found. She must have fallen into that river,
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Speaker 1: you know, miles away close to where she went missing.
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Speaker 1: Maybe she fell and hit her head and was unconscious
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Speaker 1: and then she drowned, and then she wound up here.
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Speaker 1: But park officials said there's too many debris along this
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Speaker 1: waterway that her body would never have been able to
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Speaker 1: get down to this spot. But if she didn't drift
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Speaker 1: to that spot, it meant she had to have gotten
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Speaker 1: there on foot, and to get to this particular spot,
6:39
Speaker 1: according to the fishermen that were interviewed after they found her,
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Speaker 1: the only way to get there is to climb up
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Speaker 1: a cliff with climbing gear on, or scale down a cliff,
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Speaker 1: again with climbing gear on. The only people that go
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Speaker 1: fishing in this area are mountain climbers and rock climbers
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Speaker 1: that have the equipment to get there. From where Jeanie
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Speaker 1: went missing, she would have had to climb down two
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Speaker 1: thousand feet of cliff face to get to this spot,
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Speaker 1: and she did not have climbing gear. And so when
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Speaker 1: that seemed really unlikely, the next theory was, Okay, she
7:09
Speaker 1: must have been abducted and they brought her here. But
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Speaker 1: that means your assailant would have had to carry Genie
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Speaker 1: down this two thousand foot cliff, which also seems really unrealistic.
7:20
Speaker 1: The most widely accepted theory was put forth by a
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Speaker 1: tracker that was involved in this case. They went out
7:26
Speaker 1: and they surveyed the area where Genie would have been,
7:29
Speaker 1: and they noticed that the sound the wind made when
7:31
Speaker 1: it passed by this particular clump of aspen trees, when
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Speaker 1: the wind hit the leaves in the trees, it sounded
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Speaker 1: like a car driving by, and so they speculated that maybe,
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Speaker 1: you know, Jeanie, she's scared, you know, she's panicking. It's nighttime,
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Speaker 1: and she hears this sound and she thinks she's hearing
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Speaker 1: a road, and so she would have walked towards the
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Speaker 1: sound of you know, the car, which really was the leaves,
7:54
Speaker 1: and she would have disregarded, for example, the trail. She
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Speaker 1: would have walked over the trail because she's trying to
7:59
Speaker 1: get down to this road. She's kind of fixated on
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Speaker 1: this road, and at some point she could have potentially
8:04
Speaker 1: wound up at the side of that cliff that would
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Speaker 1: have led down to where she was found, and then
8:09
Speaker 1: she could have slipped and fallen over the edge and
8:11
Speaker 1: landed in one of the rivers that would have flowed
8:13
Speaker 1: down to where she was found. But park officials and
8:16
Speaker 1: authorities were a little bit skeptical of this theory because
8:19
Speaker 1: for her to have landed in a stretch of water
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Speaker 1: that did connect to where she was found, it was
8:24
Speaker 1: almost like she would have had to leap off the
8:26
Speaker 1: cliff to land in that stretch of water. It wouldn't
8:29
Speaker 1: have been just falling over the edge and then you're
8:31
Speaker 1: landing in this water. It would have been more of
8:33
Speaker 1: a jump to get to it. So the idea that
8:35
Speaker 1: you know, Genie is running and leaping off cliffs, that
8:38
Speaker 1: doesn't really add up either, But park officials and authorities
8:41
Speaker 1: they don't have a better theory. In fact, no one
8:43
Speaker 1: has a better theory, or just left with a lot
8:45
Speaker 1: of questions, like how did she wind up in this
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Speaker 1: inaccessible area, Why didn't the dogs pick up her scent,
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Speaker 1: Why didn't she take that trail down to safety, why
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Speaker 1: did she cross over it? Unfortunately, we'll probably never know
8:57
Speaker 1: the answer. On September nineteenth, twenty thirteen, sixty nine year
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Speaker 1: old retired middle school teacher Amy Linkert and her friend
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Speaker 1: sixty three year old Joe Blakesley, who was a physician,
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Speaker 1: headed off to the Craters on the Moon Park in Idaho.
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Speaker 1: This park is actually a dormant volcano. It's not extinct.
9:18
Speaker 1: It's going to be active again, probably in the next
9:20
Speaker 1: one thousand years, but for now, it's this beautiful park
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Speaker 1: that is known for these crazy lava fields that look otherworldly.
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Speaker 1: You know, barely any vegetation can grow on them, and
9:30
Speaker 1: there's just a strip of pavement they've kind of weaved
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Speaker 1: through these massive, jagged lava fields. And then you have
9:36
Speaker 1: all these big mounds that are the actual volcanoes. Another
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Speaker 1: feature of this park are all the lava tubes underground.
9:42
Speaker 1: All the molten lava when it jets around underneath the
9:45
Speaker 1: surface before shooting out, it carves these natural tunnels underground,
9:49
Speaker 1: these huge cabirds that are like these big caves you
9:52
Speaker 1: can explore. And there's eleven hundred miles of lava tubes,
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Speaker 1: tunnels and caves underneath this park. The two women told
9:59
Speaker 1: their families they would be back in Boise, Idaho by
10:01
Speaker 1: the twenty first, but when the twenty first came and
10:04
Speaker 1: they were not home, their families were suspicious. They tried
10:07
Speaker 1: calling them, they didn't pick up, and for the next
10:10
Speaker 1: thirty six hours, they just kept trying to call them
10:12
Speaker 1: and called around to see if anybody else knew where
10:14
Speaker 1: they were. And then finally, on the morning of the
10:17
Speaker 1: twenty third, when no one knew where they were, they
10:19
Speaker 1: reached out to the authorities. The formal search for these
10:21
Speaker 1: two women began on the twenty fourth, so five days
10:24
Speaker 1: after they had initially left for this trip, and the
10:27
Speaker 1: searchers quickly found their pickup truck parked in the parking
10:30
Speaker 1: lot of the craters on the Moon Park, and in
10:33
Speaker 1: their truck were their two dogs who were alive. They
10:36
Speaker 1: were okay, and in the front seat were their purses
10:38
Speaker 1: and their cell phones. But there was no sign of
10:40
Speaker 1: Amy or Joe. This was obviously a bad sign, and
10:43
Speaker 1: so the search was really kicked into high gear to
10:46
Speaker 1: see if they could find these women before it was
10:48
Speaker 1: too late. But unfortunately, within twenty four hours of finding
10:51
Speaker 1: the truck, they would find Amy's body, and her body
10:54
Speaker 1: was located way off of the main trail. She was
10:58
Speaker 1: in an area that the park souper intended described as
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Speaker 1: incredibly rugged and inaccessible. Now, at this park, there is
11:05
Speaker 1: a strip of cement that weaves through this really dangerous
11:08
Speaker 1: lava field, And if you were on this strip of cement,
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Speaker 1: you wouldn't be thinking about walking onto the lava field.
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Speaker 1: Not only would you need to navigate all these massive
11:17
Speaker 1: mounds of jagged, cooled lava, there's all these cracks in
11:21
Speaker 1: the ground that you could fall through and just plummet
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Speaker 1: to your death. So no one's about to start walking
11:26
Speaker 1: off the trail, especially not two older women that went
11:30
Speaker 1: here just to have a casual stroll through the park.
11:32
Speaker 1: They were not there for some grand adventure. They were
11:35
Speaker 1: not athletic distance hikers. It made no sense that Amy
11:39
Speaker 1: would be so far off the trail in an area
11:41
Speaker 1: that was so dangerous and so clearly off limits. When
11:44
Speaker 1: the families were notified that Amy had been found and
11:47
Speaker 1: they were still looking for Joe, the detail that the
11:49
Speaker 1: family keyed in on was the idea that these two
11:52
Speaker 1: women left their dogs in the truck. That was something
11:55
Speaker 1: so unbelievably uncharacteristic of either of them. They adored those
12:00
Speaker 1: two dogs. They would never ever abandon them like that.
12:03
Speaker 1: In fact, because of that detail, the families jumped to
12:06
Speaker 1: this has to be foul play, because they never would
12:09
Speaker 1: have done that. They wouldn't have abandoned these precious dogs.
12:12
Speaker 1: The search for Joe would continue. They basically shifted the
12:15
Speaker 1: entire effort to center over Amy where she was found,
12:18
Speaker 1: and work in circles out from there to see if
12:20
Speaker 1: they could find her. They had helicopters flying overhead, they
12:23
Speaker 1: had mining experts walking through all the lava tubes below,
12:26
Speaker 1: and they couldn't find her. Finally, on October twenty third,
12:29
Speaker 1: so twenty eight days after Amy was found, Joe's body
12:32
Speaker 1: was discovered as well, and she was lying one mile
12:36
Speaker 1: away from where Amy had been found, in a similarly
12:39
Speaker 1: inaccessible part of the park that would have required significant
12:43
Speaker 1: climbing over jagged, cooled lava fields and all these cracks
12:47
Speaker 1: in the ground she would have had to navigate to
12:49
Speaker 1: reach where she was. And even more strangely is the
12:52
Speaker 1: area where she was found had been searched extensively by air,
12:56
Speaker 1: with helicopter pilots flying overhead and by cadavers sniffing dogs
13:00
Speaker 1: that had been in that area, and they had not
13:02
Speaker 1: picked up percent. So either the helicopter pilots and the
13:05
Speaker 1: cadaver sniffing dogs were just wrong or missed something, or
13:09
Speaker 1: Joe had not been there the whole time. A cause
13:11
Speaker 1: of death has not been determined for either of the
13:13
Speaker 1: two women. However, what was released is neither of them
13:17
Speaker 1: appeared to have suffered an incapacitating injury, meaning they weren't
13:22
Speaker 1: struck down where they were, they were traveling and ultimately
13:25
Speaker 1: stopped where they were. It seems highly unlikely that these
13:29
Speaker 1: two women abandoned their two dogs and left their cell
13:31
Speaker 1: phones in the car and then wandered way off the
13:34
Speaker 1: trail and separated from each other, all without supplies. But
13:38
Speaker 1: even if they had done that. Even if they had
13:41
Speaker 1: separated and left the trail, where they ultimately reached seems
13:45
Speaker 1: like an area they would not have been able to
13:48
Speaker 1: get to without assistance, and since they were separated, they
13:51
Speaker 1: weren't able to help each other get where they were.
13:53
Speaker 1: So although authorities have ruled out foul play, this was
13:57
Speaker 1: deemed an accident, it does seem like if they were
14:00
Speaker 1: there's ever a place to commit an attack, it would
14:03
Speaker 1: be this particular park, because underneath the park is eleven
14:07
Speaker 1: hundred miles of lava tubes that connect to each other
14:10
Speaker 1: and weave all through the park. Then there's hundreds of caves,
14:13
Speaker 1: many of which have not been found or explored. That
14:16
Speaker 1: it would be pretty straightforward to attack someone and then
14:18
Speaker 1: go underground and not be found certainly makes you wonder
14:22
Speaker 1: who or what could be hiding underground in those lava tubes.
14:30
Speaker 1: On March seventh, nineteen seventy five, twenty one year old
14:32
Speaker 1: Mark Hanson, along with Tube, his friends from college, Fenfish
14:36
Speaker 1: and John Chidester, arrived at a parking lot on the
14:39
Speaker 1: eastern side of the Appalachian Trail. All three of the
14:41
Speaker 1: young men were in incredible physical shape and were excited
14:45
Speaker 1: to spend their spring break challenging themselves on some of
14:48
Speaker 1: the trail's most rigorous hikes. The day before they were
14:50
Speaker 1: supposed to go, they almost canceled the trip because there
14:53
Speaker 1: was this terrible weather system that was coming over the
14:55
Speaker 1: trail and they were thinking, you know, it's going to
14:58
Speaker 1: be dangerous. It's not such a good idea. And then
15:00
Speaker 1: they started talking some more and they were like, well,
15:02
Speaker 1: we're already going to you know, challenge ourselves. It would
15:05
Speaker 1: be even more challenging to hike these really difficult trails
15:08
Speaker 1: with the inclusion of bad weather. So this is another
15:12
Speaker 1: way to test our abilities. And so they kind of
15:15
Speaker 1: got pumped up at the idea of hiking the Appalation
15:17
Speaker 1: Trail in terrible weather. So the guys arrive in the
15:20
Speaker 1: parking lot and you know, the windshield wipers are furiously
15:22
Speaker 1: working to keep the pouring rain off. They hop out
15:25
Speaker 1: and they're getting soaked by the rain. They put on
15:27
Speaker 1: their ponchos, they grab their heavy packs, and they make
15:30
Speaker 1: their way over to the trail. Their plan was to
15:32
Speaker 1: move west along the trail until they hit the Tri
15:34
Speaker 1: Corner shelter, where they would spend their first night. The
15:37
Speaker 1: tri Corner Shelter is one of the many shelters along
15:40
Speaker 1: the Appalation Trail. They are open to the public. There's
15:43
Speaker 1: no heating or electricity, but it provides shelter from the storm.
15:46
Speaker 1: You can go in there and you know, get the
15:48
Speaker 1: sleeping bag and you'll be fine. But to get to
15:50
Speaker 1: the tri Corner Shelter, they would need to hike sixteen miles,
15:54
Speaker 1: almost completely uphill, walking right into the wind, and it's
15:57
Speaker 1: raining on them and it's supposed to snow later on.
16:00
Speaker 1: So it's just a treacherous, treacherous first day. But they
16:04
Speaker 1: take off. They start walking up this trail and after
16:06
Speaker 1: a couple of miles, John says, you know what, guys,
16:10
Speaker 1: this is awful. I think we should probably turn around.
16:12
Speaker 1: I think we've underestimated how bad this is going to be.
16:15
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the car and we'll do this
16:17
Speaker 1: another time. But Mark and Ben were like, oh, no,
16:20
Speaker 1: we are committed. We are doing this. We are not
16:22
Speaker 1: turning around. And John's like, you know what, suit yourself,
16:26
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. And he turned around
16:28
Speaker 1: and he left and he went back to the car
16:30
Speaker 1: and he would pick them up when they were done.
16:32
Speaker 1: After John turned around, Mark and Ben. You know, they
16:34
Speaker 1: felt good, they felt tough. They're gonna stick this hike out.
16:37
Speaker 1: And so they take off again, and Ben's in the lead,
16:39
Speaker 1: and Ben seems to be handling the poor weather and
16:42
Speaker 1: difficult hike and heavy pack a lot better than Mark is.
16:46
Speaker 1: In fact, over the next several hours, Mark would drift
16:50
Speaker 1: farther and farther back, and Ben would need to wait
16:52
Speaker 1: for him, and Mark would be hunched over, you know,
16:54
Speaker 1: really just struggling with this hike. And then at some
16:57
Speaker 1: point Mark yells to him and says, I got to
16:59
Speaker 1: take my pack off. I can't carry this much weight
17:02
Speaker 1: up this hill until we get to the shelter. I'm
17:04
Speaker 1: not gonna make it to the shelter. And Ben would
17:06
Speaker 1: say to him, you know, if we don't get to
17:08
Speaker 1: the shelter for some reason, you're gonna be stranded out
17:11
Speaker 1: here in the storm, without any warm clothes, without your
17:14
Speaker 1: sleeping bag, without your tent, without your food, without your water.
17:17
Speaker 1: It's way too dangerous. You have to keep your pack on.
17:20
Speaker 1: And so finally Mark is convinced and he's like, oh,
17:22
Speaker 1: all right, puts his pack back on and they continue moving.
17:25
Speaker 1: About an hour later, at seven pm, they had reached
17:28
Speaker 1: the section of the trail where they knew they were
17:31
Speaker 1: getting close or or close ish to the tri Corner shelter.
17:34
Speaker 1: They were certainly well beyond the halfway point, but it
17:37
Speaker 1: was dark out the temperature had dropped significantly at this point.
17:41
Speaker 1: Ben is basically Mark's cheerleader, kind of egging him on
17:44
Speaker 1: to keep moving, and Mark's kind of staggering along this trail,
17:47
Speaker 1: and Ben and Mark are just hoping that shelter just
17:51
Speaker 1: appears at some point here because they don't know how
17:53
Speaker 1: much farther they can go. Another hour and a half
17:55
Speaker 1: goes by, they still haven't made it to the shelter.
17:58
Speaker 1: Mark is groaning, he can barely move. It's pitch black.
18:02
Speaker 1: The rain has now completely shifted over to snow, and
18:05
Speaker 1: it is just dumping snow on them, and Ben is
18:08
Speaker 1: concerned that somehow did we take a wrong turn, even
18:11
Speaker 1: though they were on a really well marked trail and
18:13
Speaker 1: he knew they hadn't. He figured they must be so
18:16
Speaker 1: close at this point, and it was around this time
18:18
Speaker 1: that Mark yells out to Ben, I'm done. I can't
18:21
Speaker 1: go any farther, and he sits down right in the
18:23
Speaker 1: middle of the trail. He's sitting down with his pack,
18:26
Speaker 1: and he's just laying there and Ben is like, come on,
18:29
Speaker 1: we're so close. You can't sit down now, and Mark's like,
18:32
Speaker 1: I'm not moving. I can't do anymore. I'm gonna sleep
18:35
Speaker 1: right here. Ben knows this is a bad idea. I mean,
18:38
Speaker 1: they did have warm clothes and sleeping bags, and they
18:41
Speaker 1: probably would be just fine sleeping out in the middle
18:43
Speaker 1: of the trail, but it just seemed so unnecessarily risky
18:47
Speaker 1: when there's probably a shelter maybe a couple hundred meters away,
18:51
Speaker 1: and he would turn out to be right. And so
18:53
Speaker 1: he decides he's gonna walk ahead on the trail and
18:56
Speaker 1: he's gonna see if the shelter's there. But he only
18:58
Speaker 1: went about one hundred meters. He was with then maybe
19:00
Speaker 1: one hundred meters of the actual shelter, but he never
19:03
Speaker 1: saw it. And so after going ahead and feeling like, man,
19:06
Speaker 1: I don't want to drag Mark any farther, you know,
19:08
Speaker 1: if there's no shelter ahead, for all we know, we
19:10
Speaker 1: took a wrong turn. And so he turns back around
19:13
Speaker 1: and he goes back near Mark, not next to him,
19:16
Speaker 1: but close enough to him that he can see him,
19:18
Speaker 1: and he sits down on the trail too. He gets
19:20
Speaker 1: his sleeping bag out, he crawls inside, and he falls asleep.
19:23
Speaker 1: That night, Ben would have this vivid, horrible nightmare where
19:27
Speaker 1: he heard Mark screaming for help, yelling for Ben to
19:31
Speaker 1: come save him as he's being dragged off the trail
19:34
Speaker 1: into the forest, and it scared him so much that
19:36
Speaker 1: Ben woke up and he looks down the trail to
19:38
Speaker 1: where Mark is and he can see Mark's backpack is
19:41
Speaker 1: sitting right on the trail, and so he thinks, oh,
19:44
Speaker 1: Mark's still there. And he's so tired he's not about
19:46
Speaker 1: to get up and go check. He's like that was
19:48
Speaker 1: just a dream, and he goes back to sleep. The
19:50
Speaker 1: next morning, when the sun comes up, Ben gets up
19:53
Speaker 1: again and the first thing he does is he looks
19:54
Speaker 1: over at Mark and he sees the pack, but he
19:57
Speaker 1: realizes that Mark is not there, just the backpack, and
20:01
Speaker 1: so Ben jumps up and he yells for Mark. He
20:03
Speaker 1: justess to get a response. He's looking around, thinking he's
20:05
Speaker 1: got to be around here, but he's not. It snowed
20:08
Speaker 1: that night, so any tracks Mark would have left to
20:10
Speaker 1: show where he went to were now covered up, and
20:12
Speaker 1: that's when it dawns on Ben that that dream he
20:15
Speaker 1: had the night before that might have been real, and
20:18
Speaker 1: he has the sinking feeling that something horrible has happened
20:21
Speaker 1: to Mark and that he didn't save him, and so
20:23
Speaker 1: he thinks, I got to get authorities. He grabs his bag.
20:26
Speaker 1: He leaves Mark's there because he's thinking maybe he'll come
20:29
Speaker 1: back and he'll grab it. And Ben turns and runs
20:31
Speaker 1: down the trail in the direction he hopes is towards
20:34
Speaker 1: this Tri Corner shelter, and he can't believe it when
20:37
Speaker 1: literally two hundred meters away he finds the Tri Corner shelter.
20:40
Speaker 1: They were that close, and inside are other hikers. He
20:43
Speaker 1: was able to get one of them to run down
20:46
Speaker 1: and get park services to know that they have a
20:48
Speaker 1: missing hiker on the trail. Searchers were dispatched to the
20:51
Speaker 1: area where Mark and Ben had been sleeping on the trail.
20:53
Speaker 1: The first thing they did is they went to his bag,
20:55
Speaker 1: and inside were all the things he would need to
20:58
Speaker 1: survive out in the wild. Ten a warm clothes, a
21:01
Speaker 1: sleeping bag, his food, is water, everything. It was all
21:03
Speaker 1: left there. Over the next few days, hundreds of searchers
21:06
Speaker 1: combed the area they had helicopters overhead, and they made
21:09
Speaker 1: no significant discovery. However, one park ranger discovered this huge
21:14
Speaker 1: cave that was not that far away from where they
21:17
Speaker 1: had been sleeping. And inside of this cave, this ranger
21:20
Speaker 1: said a large mammal had been staying recently, it was
21:23
Speaker 1: not there now, and there was all these animal bones
21:26
Speaker 1: inside the cave, so it was obviously a predator of
21:28
Speaker 1: some kind. And so there was speculation that between this
21:31
Speaker 1: cave that probably held a bear or something like that
21:35
Speaker 1: and Ben's dream that probably was reality of Mark being
21:39
Speaker 1: pulled off the trails screaming for help, that maybe Mark
21:44
Speaker 1: was attacked by some animal that dragged him away. On
21:46
Speaker 1: the ninth day of the search, Mark's body was found.
21:49
Speaker 1: It was located three miles down the hill from where
21:52
Speaker 1: he and Ben had been sleeping up on that trail.
21:55
Speaker 1: Mark was positioned up against a tree, his jacket was open,
21:58
Speaker 1: his gloves were off, and his boots were off and
22:00
Speaker 1: they were placed right next to him, and autopsy concluded
22:02
Speaker 1: he must have died within twenty four to thirty six
22:05
Speaker 1: hours of leaving that trail. So there's lots of questions
22:08
Speaker 1: with this one, namely, why did Mark in the middle
22:11
Speaker 1: of the night, get up, not tell Ben where he
22:13
Speaker 1: was going, and then leave the trail and walk three
22:16
Speaker 1: miles away. The trail they were on was very well
22:19
Speaker 1: worn that even at night in a snowstorm, it would
22:22
Speaker 1: be very obvious if you were on the trail or
22:25
Speaker 1: if you were off the trail. If you look at
22:26
Speaker 1: this picture, this is a section of the trail they
22:29
Speaker 1: were on. This is not the literal place they were at,
22:31
Speaker 1: but this is a good representation. As you can clearly see,
22:34
Speaker 1: there is a trail that runs down the middle, and
22:37
Speaker 1: then there is the forest to the side of that
22:39
Speaker 1: trail that if you were to leave the trail you'd
22:41
Speaker 1: be bumping into trees left and right. It would be
22:43
Speaker 1: very obvious you were off the trail. So Mark had
22:46
Speaker 1: to have known he was leaving the trail. But even
22:49
Speaker 1: if Mark had a great reason for wanting to leave
22:52
Speaker 1: the trail just hours earlier, he couldn't even stand That's
22:55
Speaker 1: why they were even laying on the trail to begin with,
22:58
Speaker 1: because he couldn't go any far. So the idea that
23:01
Speaker 1: he can just jump up in the middle of the
23:02
Speaker 1: night and navigate this really difficult terrain for three miles
23:06
Speaker 1: in total darkness in the snow. That doesn't make sense either.
23:10
Speaker 1: And then you have Ben's dream where he hears Mark
23:12
Speaker 1: screaming for help, and he's yelling for Ben to come
23:15
Speaker 1: save him as he's getting dragged off the trail. There's
23:17
Speaker 1: a good chance what Ben was hearing and seeing in
23:20
Speaker 1: his dream was actually playing out just several feet away
23:24
Speaker 1: from him down the trail. So David Poliitis and the
23:26
Speaker 1: other people involved in the search, they all believe the
23:30
Speaker 1: key to understanding what happened to Mark is what caused
23:34
Speaker 1: him to scream for help and potentially what pulled him
23:37
Speaker 1: off the trail and dragged him three miles away. So
23:40
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it. Guys. If you found the secret
23:42
Speaker 1: in today's episode, let us know in the comments what
23:45
Speaker 1: it is and where you found it. So give us
23:46
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