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The Mystery of The Grand Canyon Newlyweds · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are going on tour in eighteen, and
0:04
Speaker 1: we are super excited because there are a couple of
0:06
Speaker 1: new cities in addition to a couple of old favorites.
0:09
Speaker 1: And where are we headed, my friend, are you ready
0:12
Speaker 1: for this? Chuck? Not only do I know where we're headed,
0:15
Speaker 1: I know the exact dates that will be there. That's good.
0:18
Speaker 1: On April four, two thousand and eighteen, we are going
0:20
Speaker 1: to be in Boston at the beloved Wilbur Theater. We're
0:23
Speaker 1: excited about that. That's right, yep, And you can get
0:26
Speaker 1: tickets there at the Wilbur dot com website. The next night,
0:29
Speaker 1: we're going to be in Washington, d C. At the
0:31
Speaker 1: Lincoln Theater. Chuck, that's April five, that is right. And
0:34
Speaker 1: previously we erroneously said March, but it is April. Yeah,
0:39
Speaker 1: it is April, and go to ticket fly dot com
0:40
Speaker 1: to look up that show. Uh. Then, Chuck, in May,
0:44
Speaker 1: at the end of May, May twenty two and May
0:46
Speaker 1: twenty three, we're gonna be in St. Louis and in Cleveland. Yes,
0:50
Speaker 1: very excited about those. Those are the new cities you mentioned,
0:54
Speaker 1: that's right. And then in June, and what is it
0:56
Speaker 1: in June June will be in Englewood, Colorado at the
1:00
Speaker 1: Gothic Theater. That's right, And we may be adding a
1:03
Speaker 1: show the day before. We do not know yet, but
1:04
Speaker 1: stay tuned for more details. Maybe adding a show in
1:07
Speaker 1: neither Denver or Boulder, so stay tuned for that. Yep.
1:10
Speaker 1: So if you're in Denver, go to a x S
1:12
Speaker 1: dot com for tickets, If you're in Cleveland, go to
1:15
Speaker 1: playhouse square dot org for tickets, and then if you're
1:17
Speaker 1: in St. Louis you can find it on ticket Master.
1:20
Speaker 1: So come see us live. You're gonna love it, right, Chuck,
1:23
Speaker 1: that's right. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House
1:28
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:37
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
1:40
Speaker 1: there is Jerry Jerome Rowland. And so since the three
1:45
Speaker 1: of us are together and um, we've got our life
1:49
Speaker 1: jackets on, it's stuff you should know that might have
1:54
Speaker 1: been in the clumsiest Yeah, not bad. It was pretty bad, Chuck.
1:59
Speaker 1: Come on, let's admit it. How you doing. I'm good,
2:02
Speaker 1: I'm I'm thrilled about this one. Man. I love like mysteries,
2:06
Speaker 1: especially like real life mysteries and true crime, although this
2:09
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily crime. Um and to run across one that's
2:14
Speaker 1: like genuinely interesting because you know, there's a lot of
2:18
Speaker 1: them out there that's like, wow, this is this is
2:20
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, or this is a mystery, but it's
2:23
Speaker 1: actually not that interesting. It's kind of like documentaries. There
2:27
Speaker 1: are a ton of documentaries out there, but the top
2:31
Speaker 1: the best ones maybe represent the top one five. Boy,
2:36
Speaker 1: I don't know. Same with horror movies too. Yeah, but
2:40
Speaker 1: I think it's the same thing for unsolved mysteries. Some
2:42
Speaker 1: are definitely more interesting than others. So I guess what
2:44
Speaker 1: I'm saying is, thank you for introducing me to this
2:47
Speaker 1: unsolved mystery because I hadn't heard of it before, and
2:49
Speaker 1: it's a good one. I think that was even more
2:51
Speaker 1: clumsy than the first thing. Oh, I thought that was
2:54
Speaker 1: pro Uh so I wanted to shout out somebody real
2:59
Speaker 1: quick as you can see my new piece of metal
3:03
Speaker 1: in my skull. Yeah it looks good. Thank you. Gaming.
3:06
Speaker 1: So Part two of Chuck Implant Saga number three, Part
3:12
Speaker 1: two of three. That makes sense. Yeah, third implant, second stage,
3:19
Speaker 1: Now it doesn't make sense. This is the third implant
3:23
Speaker 1: that I've I'm getting and I just completed phase two
3:27
Speaker 1: as of yesterday, as you know. And so now I
3:29
Speaker 1: actually have the implant in my skull, uh, and it
3:34
Speaker 1: is going to fuse with my skull for the next
3:35
Speaker 1: few months. But I wanted to shout out Dr Going
3:38
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta and casey Uh, one of Dr Going's
3:43
Speaker 1: uh surgical team members, because here's how this goes down.
3:48
Speaker 1: I'm laying there in a dental chair with like one
3:50
Speaker 1: of those surgical hairnets. So I didn't know there was
3:54
Speaker 1: such a thing. You know, the thing you wear over
3:57
Speaker 1: your head. Is it your cap, I guess, but it's
4:01
Speaker 1: not plastic. It's gauzy. Okay, so a gauzy shower cap
4:06
Speaker 1: that wouldn't work in the shower. Right. So I'm laying there,
4:09
Speaker 1: I'm getting um heart monitors put on my ankles. The
4:13
Speaker 1: complimented my many socks. By the way, quick quick shout
4:16
Speaker 1: out to them, shout out in a shout out, that's rare. Uh.
4:20
Speaker 1: They're putting on my heart monitors and all that stuff.
4:22
Speaker 1: They're like, your blood pressure is a little high, and
4:24
Speaker 1: I said, don't talk to me about that, and uh.
4:28
Speaker 1: Then the doctor comes in and weirdly doctor going always
4:32
Speaker 1: says that I'm an attorney, and I don't know if
4:34
Speaker 1: he's joking every time, because he's he's an odd sense
4:38
Speaker 1: of humor, or if he really thinks I'm an attorney.
4:41
Speaker 1: And he said something to one of his assistants turns
4:43
Speaker 1: out to be Casey, about me being an attorney for somebody,
4:46
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, I'm not a lawyer,
4:49
Speaker 1: and he's like, what does you do? And I said, well,
4:50
Speaker 1: I'm a podcast host, which you can actually say now
4:53
Speaker 1: without some big, long, dumb explanation like we used to
4:56
Speaker 1: have to do or making something up like saying I'm
4:59
Speaker 1: a radio sist or whatever. Uh, And he went, oh
5:02
Speaker 1: what what what podcasts and staid stuff you should know,
5:05
Speaker 1: And this Casey lady starts to like, shake, that's what
5:10
Speaker 1: you want the surgical assistance to start doing right before you.
5:13
Speaker 1: And dude, this is as I'm getting my I V
5:16
Speaker 1: put in, and uh that that knocks me out into
5:18
Speaker 1: that wonderful, blissful state of what do they call it
5:21
Speaker 1: twilight sleep? And Casey is sort of legit freaking out
5:27
Speaker 1: and obviously is a dedicated super fan type, and um,
5:33
Speaker 1: we sort of are having a bit of a conversation
5:35
Speaker 1: as I go under, and I'm like, I don't know
5:38
Speaker 1: how I feel about that, but anyway, she was great,
5:42
Speaker 1: how do you feel about it now? Well, I kind
5:44
Speaker 1: of came out of it, and then you don't remember
5:46
Speaker 1: anything for like four hours, Like I literally don't remember
5:50
Speaker 1: the ride home. I'll remember is getting in bed and
5:53
Speaker 1: then waking up like four hours later, right with which
5:58
Speaker 1: because it was in my house. But I woke up
6:02
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, that was kind of fun
6:04
Speaker 1: that she was in there. And I was like, but
6:05
Speaker 1: wait a minute, do I have all these weird pictures
6:08
Speaker 1: now of me asleep in a chair. So I'm glad
6:12
Speaker 1: you led it to this. We have a an official
6:15
Speaker 1: stuff you should know facebook page, and if everyone wants
6:17
Speaker 1: to see Chuck knocked out, you can just go to
6:20
Speaker 1: that Facebook page because we posted him. So thanks to
6:23
Speaker 1: Casey for supplying us with the pictures. I'm sure they
6:25
Speaker 1: didn't do that, but anyway, thanks to Casey for all
6:28
Speaker 1: her care and support. She literally said, will you mentioned
6:33
Speaker 1: me on the show? Oh? And you said yes? Huh,
6:35
Speaker 1: Well I was doped up. Oh who knows what I
6:38
Speaker 1: said yes to. You always have to keep up with
6:40
Speaker 1: promises you make while you're doped up. Well, And the
6:43
Speaker 1: joke too with Emily and I is that I that
6:47
Speaker 1: stuff is like truth serum, you know, like when you
6:50
Speaker 1: come out of it like anything, Emily will ask me,
6:53
Speaker 1: I will tell her. And we were joking about that beforehand,
6:56
Speaker 1: and then on the way home, apparently I think over
6:59
Speaker 1: in the car and said, here's my truth orm, you
7:03
Speaker 1: are the love of my life. That is sweet. She said.
7:07
Speaker 1: It was very sweet, and I have no memory of it,
7:09
Speaker 1: so nice, so you know it's legit it anyway, that
7:14
Speaker 1: is quite a story, Chuck. You can't wait to hear
7:16
Speaker 1: the third chapter. Thanks for indulging that. Yeah, it should be.
7:18
Speaker 1: I have another real tooth or a real fake tooth
7:21
Speaker 1: in about three months. Cool, so we'll all be waiting
7:26
Speaker 1: until then. So, Chuck, that was a very sweet story,
7:29
Speaker 1: especially the Emily part. And this story that we're about
7:33
Speaker 1: to tell um as kind of sweet in a lot
7:36
Speaker 1: of ways to depending on how you look at it.
7:38
Speaker 1: We're depending on who you listen to, I think is
7:40
Speaker 1: more to the point. So let's start then, since we're
7:44
Speaker 1: gonna be telling kind of the sweet story, the sweet
7:47
Speaker 1: version of this when these two people met Bessie and
7:51
Speaker 1: Glenn Hyde. It was in seven February of n and
7:56
Speaker 1: they were on a boat, which would prove prescient for
7:58
Speaker 1: them for them to meet on a boat, But they
8:00
Speaker 1: were on a like a kind of a small cruise
8:02
Speaker 1: ship that was traveling down the California coast from San
8:05
Speaker 1: Francisco to Los Angeles on a trip. And they met
8:08
Speaker 1: on this boat and they apparently hit it off immediately,
8:12
Speaker 1: and they spent the next year together. Um and then
8:15
Speaker 1: on April of they tied the knot in Idaho, which
8:21
Speaker 1: is kind of surprising because if you had taken Bessie
8:25
Speaker 1: Hayley I think was her maiden name, and Glenn Hyde
8:29
Speaker 1: and you put them side by side, which you can
8:31
Speaker 1: do because there are photographs of them together, they're not
8:34
Speaker 1: exactly like the couple that you'd point to on in
8:36
Speaker 1: different corners on other sides of the room and say
8:39
Speaker 1: those two, those two are meant for each other. But
8:42
Speaker 1: it turns out they seem to have been Oh why
8:44
Speaker 1: what what do you think? They were not well matched? Well,
8:48
Speaker 1: I they were just different people. Like they look. They
8:51
Speaker 1: don't visually look correct together necessarily, which doesn't really matter,
8:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean anything. But they were different people. You
8:58
Speaker 1: know like he was. He was a bean farmer from Idaho.
9:03
Speaker 1: She was a West Virginia girl who made her way
9:06
Speaker 1: out west to San Francisco to study poetry at the
9:10
Speaker 1: California Institute of Fine Arts, I believe, which is now
9:15
Speaker 1: the the San Francisco Art Institute. Um, they just had
9:20
Speaker 1: different paths, but when they came together, I think what
9:22
Speaker 1: they what they shared in common, was a sense of
9:26
Speaker 1: a love of adventure and trying new things. Yeah. Here's uh.
9:31
Speaker 1: She was married previously for a very short time, for
9:34
Speaker 1: just a couple of months, and it was It's really
9:38
Speaker 1: hard because obviously they weren't like as well documented as
9:41
Speaker 1: many people, and not many people back then were well
9:43
Speaker 1: documented at all. But I saw two months marriage and
9:47
Speaker 1: that she she got divorced the day before she got remarried.
9:53
Speaker 1: What I saw was that her divorce was finalized the
9:56
Speaker 1: day before. Yeah, so then they got married the day after,
10:00
Speaker 1: like the first day they could. Once her divorce is final,
10:02
Speaker 1: they got married, I think, is what it was. Well,
10:04
Speaker 1: that's pretty sweet to see, That's what I'm saying. It's
10:06
Speaker 1: a pretty sweet story. Really. Well, let's go back even further.
10:09
Speaker 1: I can talk a little bit about their earlier lives
10:11
Speaker 1: because uh Mr Glenn Hyde was pretty interesting. He was
10:15
Speaker 1: born December and he had a younger sister named Jean
10:22
Speaker 1: Or is that genie? I think Jean gene Hyde j
10:26
Speaker 1: e a n any that always throws me for a
10:28
Speaker 1: loop um every time the old Jeane trick. Uh. So
10:34
Speaker 1: that was his sister. And the reason she's important is
10:37
Speaker 1: because they seem like they were just a and an
10:41
Speaker 1: adventurous outdoorsy family as a whole. Because he and his
10:45
Speaker 1: sister would eventually take a trip together on a boat,
10:49
Speaker 1: he met a dude named Harry. Uh gl glicky glucky
10:56
Speaker 1: glucky and Gean those are the two names that throw
10:58
Speaker 1: you off. Well that's very weird spelling of galecky. But
11:02
Speaker 1: this was he was an experience a boatman, and he
11:06
Speaker 1: knew a lot about this boat called a sweep scal
11:10
Speaker 1: scow and these things. You should just look up sweep scale.
11:14
Speaker 1: It's it's been called a coffin on the water. It's
11:17
Speaker 1: very boxy and does not look like the kind of boat,
11:22
Speaker 1: especially in today's from today's point of view that you
11:25
Speaker 1: would want to go down um and shoot the rapids
11:28
Speaker 1: in No, definitely not looks like it should be slowly
11:31
Speaker 1: pulled by a donkey walking along the bank. That's absolutely
11:34
Speaker 1: what it looks like. And the and one of the
11:36
Speaker 1: things besides it's ungainly shape. It's a flat bottomed wooden
11:40
Speaker 1: boat that's kind of curved up slightly at the front,
11:42
Speaker 1: and it is just it's his boxing is like a
11:45
Speaker 1: early eighties Volvo, you know. But the other the other
11:49
Speaker 1: thing about it that would make you not want to
11:51
Speaker 1: take it on whitewater rapids is that is the way
11:55
Speaker 1: it's steered. It's steered by basically twenty ft long oars
12:00
Speaker 1: that don't go out the sides of the boat. They
12:03
Speaker 1: go out the bow in the stern the front and
12:05
Speaker 1: the rear of the boat. Those are the sweeps, right,
12:08
Speaker 1: and they're very heavy and they move pretty fast, and
12:11
Speaker 1: you have to stand in the middle of the boat
12:14
Speaker 1: in between the sweeps and hang on to one or
12:16
Speaker 1: the other, both depending on whether you're steering at yourself
12:20
Speaker 1: or if you and a friend are steering it too
12:24
Speaker 1: um and you basically just kind of navigate and steer
12:29
Speaker 1: down rapids or a river or whatever in the scow
12:33
Speaker 1: holding these sweeps just kind of these paddles that are
12:36
Speaker 1: going front and back Um, and it looks extraordinary, Like
12:39
Speaker 1: it's just the worst idea you could think of when
12:42
Speaker 1: you think of shooting whitewater rapids in a boat, like
12:46
Speaker 1: not that. Yeah, I mean, I'm there was some steering involved,
12:51
Speaker 1: but it also looks to me like the boat probably
12:54
Speaker 1: kind of goes where the river takes it in many cases. Sure,
12:57
Speaker 1: you know, so Glenn is an interest guy. When he
13:00
Speaker 1: was twenty one, he he started doing these big long
13:04
Speaker 1: canoe trips with friends. Um. And I'm not talking like
13:07
Speaker 1: let me go out for a couple of days. I
13:08
Speaker 1: mean he had a big plan with the sister and
13:11
Speaker 1: the scot to go from the Salmon River in Idaho
13:14
Speaker 1: all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. They did that,
13:16
Speaker 1: and they did that finally, which um, is pretty amazing.
13:20
Speaker 1: So especially at that time, to go on these long
13:23
Speaker 1: journeys with these crazy boxy boats, Uh, it was. It
13:30
Speaker 1: was brave. And at the time people would literally die
13:34
Speaker 1: trying to do things like the Grand Canyon River. Yeah. Man,
13:38
Speaker 1: at the time, Um, the Grand Canyon. So around the
13:42
Speaker 1: late nineteen twenties, the Grand Canyon was just like basically
13:46
Speaker 1: a widow maker, Like it was extraordinarily treacherous to go
13:50
Speaker 1: down the Grand Canyon. It still is today, but today
13:53
Speaker 1: you have the advantages of UM helmets, of really good
13:58
Speaker 1: life jackets of UM, the fact that the rapids and
14:02
Speaker 1: the obstructions, and and this the river as a whole,
14:05
Speaker 1: the Colorado River that goes through the Grand Canyon is
14:07
Speaker 1: extensively mapped. The people who are on the river know
14:10
Speaker 1: exactly what's coming and what to do. At the time,
14:13
Speaker 1: at the late nineteen twenties, people there were people who
14:17
Speaker 1: knew the river, but it wasn't it wasn't anything like
14:20
Speaker 1: it is now. There weren't commercial commercial trips um, and
14:23
Speaker 1: it just wasn't nearly as extensively mapped as it is today.
14:27
Speaker 1: So it was extremely treacherous and a lot of people
14:30
Speaker 1: were still dying. I mean it it only been successfully
14:33
Speaker 1: navigated for the first time, like less than sixty years
14:36
Speaker 1: before um Bessie and Glenn decided to do it themselves. Yeah.
14:41
Speaker 1: I think here in only forty five people had managed
14:45
Speaker 1: to fully traverse the entire length of this of this
14:49
Speaker 1: river by boat. And they're all dudes them and like
14:53
Speaker 1: you said, none of them were lead on a guide.
14:55
Speaker 1: It was all just these adventurous UM death way oriented
15:01
Speaker 1: fellas Yeah, and and and not even necessarily just like
15:04
Speaker 1: a sense of adventure that was part of it. But
15:07
Speaker 1: this is also akin to polar explorations or Everest explorations
15:13
Speaker 1: they were, or Charles Lindbergh. This was going down the
15:16
Speaker 1: Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Was the same thing
15:20
Speaker 1: as Charles Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic, the same thing
15:23
Speaker 1: as um Mallory trying to crest Everest. Like it was
15:27
Speaker 1: the same type of expedition slash adventure like the Smithsonian
15:32
Speaker 1: would back at that kind of thing. Yeah, those early
15:35
Speaker 1: days of adventuring like that. I mean what people do
15:38
Speaker 1: now is amazing, for sure, but just the equipment and
15:41
Speaker 1: how little was known back then, Like it was just
15:43
Speaker 1: insane what people were doing back then. Imagine going down
15:46
Speaker 1: a river with with class five whitewater rapids. That's it's uncharted.
15:51
Speaker 1: There's no one has ever made a map of that
15:54
Speaker 1: river before, and you have no idea what's coming up. Yeah,
15:56
Speaker 1: you gotta be. You gotta have some serious construction in
16:00
Speaker 1: her construction. And it seems like Glenn Hyde definitely had that.
16:05
Speaker 1: But he also had experience too. In addition to the
16:08
Speaker 1: um the Salmon River run that he did with the
16:11
Speaker 1: sister Jean. Years previous to that, he had also done
16:14
Speaker 1: the I think either the Peace River or the Pierce River.
16:18
Speaker 1: It's a it's a river in Canada, and he and
16:20
Speaker 1: a friend of his name, just Nembucre spent six months
16:24
Speaker 1: just kind of like running this river and camping and
16:28
Speaker 1: um fishing and hunting. So he had he had experience
16:32
Speaker 1: in addition to um a desire for adventure too. Yeah.
16:37
Speaker 1: So Bessie, for her part, like you said, um was
16:40
Speaker 1: I mean, she ended up going on this trip, so
16:42
Speaker 1: she clearly had a little bit of a sense of adventure.
16:46
Speaker 1: But um, I get the feeling it wasn't her idea
16:49
Speaker 1: to begin with, you know, because she was a poet
16:53
Speaker 1: and she was um an artist. She was born on
16:56
Speaker 1: December twenty, nineteen o five, was a theater girl all
17:00
Speaker 1: She acted the part of Juliette in the stage production
17:03
Speaker 1: in high school of Romeo and juliet Um and like
17:06
Speaker 1: you said, went to cal Arts by herself, just moved
17:10
Speaker 1: to California alone from West Virginia, which was yeah, I
17:14
Speaker 1: mean that was pretty Uh, that's pretty adventurous. I mean
17:19
Speaker 1: it's adventurous today, but I mean back then, especially And
17:23
Speaker 1: it's funny that everybody mentions that she played Juliet in
17:26
Speaker 1: a high school play, because it really gets across how
17:29
Speaker 1: young she was when she was doing this, because she
17:33
Speaker 1: had she hadn't had enough life to really mention too
17:36
Speaker 1: many other things. You know, she hadn't done enough yet.
17:40
Speaker 1: Who knows what she would have done. She was a
17:42
Speaker 1: pretty interesting person, it seems like. Well, yeah, and you should.
17:45
Speaker 1: If you're in front of your computer or in a
17:47
Speaker 1: place where you can look on your phone, just just
17:49
Speaker 1: look up images of Bessie and Glenn Hyde and there
17:53
Speaker 1: you know, quite a few very famous black and white
17:55
Speaker 1: photos of them, and uh, they're just cool looking like
17:59
Speaker 1: Bessie looks contemporary to me. Um, and a lot of
18:03
Speaker 1: times you look at these pictures and they look like
18:05
Speaker 1: of the time. She looks a little bit like my uh,
18:08
Speaker 1: like one of Emily's friends from college. And she always
18:11
Speaker 1: wore at least in these photos, she always wore. Um,
18:14
Speaker 1: they like cool bomber jacket, and she just looks like
18:18
Speaker 1: a cool lady and cool dude. I'll just admire them
18:22
Speaker 1: as a couple. Yeah, I know, they do look cool,
18:24
Speaker 1: especially in their outfits. I know exactly what you mean.
18:28
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, No, they look like they're ready for
18:30
Speaker 1: adventure style. All right, well should we take a break. Yes,
18:34
Speaker 1: let's because there are adventures about to start. Okay, Chuck,
19:05
Speaker 1: as I promised and then laughed about, their adventure is
19:08
Speaker 1: about to start. Yeah, and Um, I'm glad you dug
19:11
Speaker 1: up that thing. Uh Well, first of all, a lot
19:13
Speaker 1: of this is from um Hyde River Tragedy from Arizona
19:17
Speaker 1: State University's website devils um. And then an article from
19:21
Speaker 1: The l A Times from two thousand one by Um
19:25
Speaker 1: called what Really Happened to Bessie and Glenn by Anne Jetting.
19:30
Speaker 1: And then really the big shout out we need to
19:32
Speaker 1: give is to Brad Demmock. Um. Those articles based a
19:36
Speaker 1: lot on his research. He's this dude who was a
19:39
Speaker 1: river guide through the Grand Cane for years, who was
19:42
Speaker 1: also I don't know if he's a self taught or
19:44
Speaker 1: formally trained historian, but he did exhaustive research for a
19:48
Speaker 1: couple of decades I believe actually recreated the river run
19:52
Speaker 1: Bessie and Glenn did. He did with his wife, Um
19:55
Speaker 1: and his the most knowledgeable person who is ever lived
20:01
Speaker 1: on the about this case for sure. But Um, you
20:04
Speaker 1: ended up digging up a thing. And what leads me
20:06
Speaker 1: to this is I was about to say that they
20:10
Speaker 1: the idea behind their trip to begin with was a
20:12
Speaker 1: woman's never done this, and what we're gonna do is
20:14
Speaker 1: do this trip and afterward we will be famous, like uh,
20:19
Speaker 1: Charles Lindbergh, or like um, Hillary Mallory, Hillary, Yes, I
20:26
Speaker 1: think I said Mallory. I was thinking family ties, um.
20:31
Speaker 1: And the idea is that they could, you know, make
20:33
Speaker 1: money off this, go on the lecture circuit, write books
20:36
Speaker 1: and everyone. You see that printed everywhere. But um, you
20:39
Speaker 1: ended up digging up. That's a little bit under dispute
20:41
Speaker 1: because you found a letter actually from Bessie pre trip,
20:46
Speaker 1: where she didn't really mention anything about that, which seems
20:49
Speaker 1: a little weird. Yeah. And so this is Brad Dimmock again,
20:52
Speaker 1: this historian who knows more than anybody about this this mystery,
20:55
Speaker 1: and he dug this letter up. But I have to
20:58
Speaker 1: give myself a shout out for digging Brad Dimmock noted up,
21:02
Speaker 1: which was in a two thousand three issue of Boatman's Quarterly.
21:07
Speaker 1: It's an academic and literary journal dedicated to boating like
21:12
Speaker 1: on rivers Well and the Funny thing is you You
21:14
Speaker 1: weren't even looking for it. You were just on the
21:16
Speaker 1: john in your house. What a coincidence, right, I happen
21:20
Speaker 1: to have that issue of Boatman's Quarterly in my bathroom.
21:23
Speaker 1: So this letter from Bessie Um, it was written to
21:27
Speaker 1: her aunt and uncle Ruth and Millard Haley, and apparently
21:31
Speaker 1: hours before she departed. They departed from Green River, Utah,
21:36
Speaker 1: and Um. One of the things that did was clear
21:39
Speaker 1: up the size of the boat, because everyone always said
21:41
Speaker 1: it was five ft wide, but apparently it's five and
21:44
Speaker 1: a half feet wide, Yeah, which would have made it
21:46
Speaker 1: more stable but harder to maneuver. Um. But she never
21:50
Speaker 1: says anything in there about hey, we're doing this so
21:53
Speaker 1: we can like use the store advantage and become famous
21:57
Speaker 1: and make money. She didn't mention it, and almost like
21:59
Speaker 1: the way that she describes the trip. She says she's
22:02
Speaker 1: very excited about it, but the way that she describes
22:05
Speaker 1: it is like it does it has nothing to do
22:08
Speaker 1: with that as far as this letter is concerned. And
22:10
Speaker 1: she's writing this three hours before and so we're saying
22:13
Speaker 1: all this, You guys who aren't familiar with the mystery
22:15
Speaker 1: are probably like, why are you even mentioning this part
22:18
Speaker 1: of this legend that grew after the mystery happened, or
22:21
Speaker 1: after this this likely tragedy happened. Um. Part of it
22:26
Speaker 1: was that the there was this idea that Um, Bessie
22:30
Speaker 1: and Glenn undertook this to basically make their fame and fortune,
22:35
Speaker 1: and that paints a different picture of their character than
22:39
Speaker 1: what they actually were, which was real deal, legit adventure
22:44
Speaker 1: seekers who um were capable, at least in the form
22:48
Speaker 1: of Glenn and Willing, who weren't doing it for fame
22:52
Speaker 1: or fortune. They were doing it because this is a
22:53
Speaker 1: neat thing to try to do together on their honeymoon.
22:56
Speaker 1: That's that's the reality of it, not you know, kind
23:00
Speaker 1: to this gold diggie thing that that kind of grew
23:03
Speaker 1: up as part of the legend over the years. Yeah,
23:05
Speaker 1: and this one thing even says, uh, it was sure
23:08
Speaker 1: to bring book deals, lecture circuits, and possibly even a
23:10
Speaker 1: vaudeville play. Yeah. And that's I mean still to this day,
23:14
Speaker 1: Like if you see sources or read um write ups
23:17
Speaker 1: about this mystery, that's almost across the board and how
23:19
Speaker 1: people characterize it. And part of the reason why they
23:22
Speaker 1: do is because Brad Dimmock in his two thousand one book,
23:25
Speaker 1: UM characterized it the exact same way, but in that
23:28
Speaker 1: in that Boatman's Quarterly or Bowman's Review. UM he he
23:33
Speaker 1: this was published in two thousand three. So he must
23:35
Speaker 1: have just wanted to just die because he found this
23:38
Speaker 1: thing after his book was out. Yes, and he said
23:41
Speaker 1: that it confirmed like a nagging suspicion in his head.
23:44
Speaker 1: And he he didn't just make it up, or he
23:46
Speaker 1: didn't just take a campfire legend and published that. The
23:49
Speaker 1: problem was is there is a there's a source that
23:51
Speaker 1: he used. His main source was a guy named Otis
23:54
Speaker 1: Doc Marston, and he basically made this exhaustive history of
24:00
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon. And I believe the Grand Canyon or
24:02
Speaker 1: the Colorado River, but I think it was the Grand
24:04
Speaker 1: Canyon as a whole. And he dedicated a chapter to
24:07
Speaker 1: um the hides, and he interviewed people, but he was
24:11
Speaker 1: interviewing people like thirty years on. And in his collection
24:14
Speaker 1: of notes, there's a there's a note from an eye
24:17
Speaker 1: witness that says that they said that they were seeking
24:20
Speaker 1: fortune and fame and we're thinking about writing a book
24:23
Speaker 1: and taking it on a lecture circuit. And that's where
24:25
Speaker 1: that whole legend came from. So this isn't necessarily like
24:28
Speaker 1: a huge thing like the mystery doesn't turn on this.
24:31
Speaker 1: It's more like a lesson for historians and people who
24:34
Speaker 1: who use historians and sources that it can still be
24:37
Speaker 1: gotten wrong, like legends can still pervade into even official
24:42
Speaker 1: histories of things too. And you've got to take this
24:44
Speaker 1: stuff of a grain AsSalt. Yeah, and so shout out
24:46
Speaker 1: to Demock's book Sunk without a Sound colon. Always gotta
24:52
Speaker 1: have a colon. The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glenn
24:55
Speaker 1: and Bessie Hyde. Um. It's one thing we got to
24:58
Speaker 1: mention here about their trip up is that Glenn High
25:02
Speaker 1: didn't jet down to the um to the Grand Canyon
25:07
Speaker 1: River boat Shop and plunk down a thousand dollars on
25:11
Speaker 1: the best boat he could find. He because he had
25:15
Speaker 1: had met and was inspired by that Harry Galecky guy.
25:19
Speaker 1: He's I'm gonna build this thing, and he did for
25:22
Speaker 1: fifty bucks and took him a couple of days. He
25:25
Speaker 1: built his own scowl named and clearly they had a
25:29
Speaker 1: bit of sense of humor because he called it the
25:31
Speaker 1: rain in the Face, which is very cute and kind
25:35
Speaker 1: of fun um and that is what they launched. Uh,
25:39
Speaker 1: that's what they launched. And they you know, they loaded
25:41
Speaker 1: it up with UM supplies of course, their journals, UM
25:46
Speaker 1: food they had. They even had a mattress in there
25:50
Speaker 1: so they could sleep, which I thought was adorable. Which
25:52
Speaker 1: actually I mean that gives you an idea of how
25:55
Speaker 1: big this boat long five and a half feet wide,
25:58
Speaker 1: and the California King mattress right in the middle of it,
26:01
Speaker 1: right just hanging over the sides. But in getting wet,
26:04
Speaker 1: that'd be so gross. Um. But the boat was open,
26:08
Speaker 1: Like the sides were only three ft high and it
26:10
Speaker 1: was an open boat. So they were living in this
26:13
Speaker 1: boat and basically basically in a floating tent going down
26:17
Speaker 1: the river in Uh. The one thing that Glenn did
26:20
Speaker 1: not bring, and this is where I get a little confounded.
26:23
Speaker 1: For an experienced UM river boatman, he he didn't bring
26:28
Speaker 1: life jackets, which is weird. He didn't bring life jackets
26:31
Speaker 1: precisely because he was an experienced river boatman. Yeah, I
26:35
Speaker 1: still thinks that's odd. So you get the impression when
26:38
Speaker 1: you hear that that like he just refused to take
26:42
Speaker 1: life jackets that he was just this kind of like
26:44
Speaker 1: laugh in the face of danger fool um and to
26:48
Speaker 1: an extent like that is foolish, but every extent sure.
26:52
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like it was just him like that's
26:55
Speaker 1: that was the culture of the river boatman in Idaho
26:58
Speaker 1: or the people that he knew and and boted with
27:02
Speaker 1: like that, you just didn't wear life jackets. It wasn't
27:05
Speaker 1: It just wasn't done. You didn't need them as if
27:08
Speaker 1: you had any kind of experience, you didn't even need
27:09
Speaker 1: to take him on an expedition through the Grand Canyon.
27:13
Speaker 1: And that's why he didn't bring them. Yeah, I'm not
27:15
Speaker 1: sure I buy that though, because at some point they
27:17
Speaker 1: met up with another very famous boatman named Emery Coleb
27:21
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, you guys should have these life jackets,
27:24
Speaker 1: um inexperienced boatman, and it's there's no shame in that,
27:28
Speaker 1: and Glenn said, no, no, thank you. Yeah. I think
27:32
Speaker 1: he just was not He was used to different rivers
27:35
Speaker 1: than this one. I think there was a different boating
27:38
Speaker 1: culture on the Colorado than there was a long say,
27:40
Speaker 1: like the Salmon Well. H Emory Colb, for his part,
27:44
Speaker 1: said later on, he said, you know, we we hung
27:46
Speaker 1: out for a little bit and um, my take at
27:50
Speaker 1: least is that Bessie was kind of ready to quit.
27:53
Speaker 1: I mean this is after they had made their way
27:56
Speaker 1: through Labyrinth, Stillwater and Cataract Canyon, and so they had
28:00
Speaker 1: been been at it for a little while by the
28:02
Speaker 1: time they met him at Bright Angel Creek, and um,
28:06
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, I don't think she was so into
28:07
Speaker 1: it at that point. Yes, So so let's just step
28:10
Speaker 1: back for a second. They launched on October and they
28:14
Speaker 1: made it. So they launched from Green River, Utah. Have
28:16
Speaker 1: have you looked at a map and seen what they
28:18
Speaker 1: did in a boat. It's insane how what they just
28:22
Speaker 1: even considering doing this. But the fact that they made
28:25
Speaker 1: it as far as they did is pretty pretty incredible.
28:28
Speaker 1: But they launched from Green River, Utah, on the Green River,
28:31
Speaker 1: followed it down to where it met the Colorado, made
28:34
Speaker 1: it all the way into the Grand Canyon, UM, and
28:37
Speaker 1: then stopped and met Emory called on twenty six days
28:41
Speaker 1: into their journey. Okay, And so when they get out
28:45
Speaker 1: the day they met Emory called, they were basically resupplying,
28:48
Speaker 1: restocking um with supplies. And there's there's different um, there's
28:55
Speaker 1: different descriptions of how best his attitude was toward the
29:00
Speaker 1: trip from that same day because in addition to um
29:04
Speaker 1: meeting Emery Cole, they met a bunch of people. They
29:06
Speaker 1: went and had dinner at the hotel, and I think
29:08
Speaker 1: they spent the night in the hotel and then set
29:11
Speaker 1: out again the next day. But the day that they
29:13
Speaker 1: disembarked from their boat, hiked up the trail um to
29:17
Speaker 1: like this Grand Canyon village where a lot of people
29:19
Speaker 1: in tourists were. They met a Denver Post Dispatch reporter
29:23
Speaker 1: and Bessie told them straight up, she said she's having
29:25
Speaker 1: the time of her life. Um that she's enjoying every
29:29
Speaker 1: thrilling minute of it. And then you know, the next day,
29:32
Speaker 1: Emory coleb says that he spoke to her and she
29:35
Speaker 1: wanted to quit, and Glenn was urging her on. Now
29:38
Speaker 1: comes another legend that's developed. And if you go on
29:42
Speaker 1: like some of these river guide tours down on the
29:44
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon and they talked to you about the hides,
29:47
Speaker 1: the way that it's usually painted is that Glenn was
29:50
Speaker 1: basically a wife beating brute who forced Bessie into this
29:55
Speaker 1: this adventure scheme again for fame or fortune, and even
29:59
Speaker 1: when she wanted to quit, he kept pressing her along
30:01
Speaker 1: against her will. Well, what that reporter didn't mention is
30:04
Speaker 1: that she was spelling help with her foot in the
30:07
Speaker 1: dirt as they were talking. He just failed to look down.
30:11
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's I mean, who knows. I mean, part
30:14
Speaker 1: of the fun of this mystery is that it was
30:16
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and um, everyone you know is kind
30:21
Speaker 1: of grasping at straws here trying to figure this thing out.
30:24
Speaker 1: It wasn't like super documented like today. There would be
30:27
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen thousand pictures before they even launched on Facebook,
30:32
Speaker 1: right exactly, all taken by them, even selfies. Although it
30:36
Speaker 1: is interesting to me like they were, Um, they had
30:38
Speaker 1: set out at an age when when like you had
30:41
Speaker 1: to be fairly well off to have a camera. But
30:43
Speaker 1: at the time, the Grand Canyon was just becoming a
30:46
Speaker 1: tourist attraction for the fairly well off, So there were
30:50
Speaker 1: people with cameras around there, and there are so like
30:52
Speaker 1: you said, there are pictures of him, which makes it
30:55
Speaker 1: the whole thing to me even more interesting. Like I
30:57
Speaker 1: if I hadn't seen pictures of them, I don't think
31:00
Speaker 1: I would find the mystery quite as interesting. But to
31:03
Speaker 1: see them, you know, with pictures taken by like the
31:06
Speaker 1: last person who saw them alive. It just adds like
31:09
Speaker 1: a certain interesting element to it. Maybe creepiness, I don't know,
31:13
Speaker 1: maybe humanity, I'm not sure, pathos how about all that stuff?
31:18
Speaker 1: All right, So that last person to see them alive
31:20
Speaker 1: was a man named Adolph Sutro, and he met them
31:24
Speaker 1: at the river as well. Like you said, there were
31:26
Speaker 1: a lot of people around, and he was an adventurous guy.
31:28
Speaker 1: And I think he saw this rain in the face
31:32
Speaker 1: boat and said, oh daddy, I gotta take a ride
31:36
Speaker 1: in that thing. That thing's crazy. It's a direct quote. Yeah,
31:40
Speaker 1: and they said, true man, jump on in. So he
31:42
Speaker 1: actually rode along for a day, which was the plan.
31:46
Speaker 1: He mean, he wasn't like, I'm gonna finish the trip
31:48
Speaker 1: with you. He said, ones, you just take me down
31:50
Speaker 1: for a day and then I'll hike out at Hermit Creek.
31:53
Speaker 1: And that's what they did. But he spent you know,
31:55
Speaker 1: a full a full day with them and then disembarked
31:58
Speaker 1: and basically that was it. He was the last person
32:00
Speaker 1: to ever see them. Yeah, and he took a photo
32:03
Speaker 1: of them, I guess before they disembarked. Um. And that's
32:07
Speaker 1: the last known photo of them. Uh, and he's the one.
32:11
Speaker 1: He's the eye witness that Doc Marston interviewed thirty years later,
32:15
Speaker 1: who supposedly said that they were talking about writing a book,
32:18
Speaker 1: which is not necessarily in dispute, right, but by that
32:22
Speaker 1: point they may have been like, man, we should totally
32:24
Speaker 1: write a book about this. Yeah, exactly. They would have
32:26
Speaker 1: met a lot of people who would have said, you,
32:28
Speaker 1: you know, you'll be the first woman who's ever run
32:30
Speaker 1: this river, and um, yeah, it doesn't there's nothing. There's
32:35
Speaker 1: nothing to say that they they set out to do that,
32:39
Speaker 1: but that you know. Of course they could have thought
32:41
Speaker 1: of it along the way, right. So the ultimate plan
32:45
Speaker 1: was to eventually finish up in Needles, California on December night. Um,
32:51
Speaker 1: of course they did not show, and immediately Glenn's dad, uh, Roland,
32:58
Speaker 1: which was I guess Glenn was a junior exl was
32:59
Speaker 1: his middle name. Um or maybe not, but that was
33:02
Speaker 1: his middle name. Roland gets worried and immediately goes to
33:07
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, thinking, you know, something's wrong here because I
33:11
Speaker 1: know my son and he would have been where he
33:14
Speaker 1: said he was going to be unless something was up. Yeah.
33:17
Speaker 1: He like just immediately was like he didn't sit around
33:21
Speaker 1: a way to see if maybe a couple of days.
33:22
Speaker 1: He immediately left for Las Vegas to to to basically
33:26
Speaker 1: set up a telegraph campaign to get help to try
33:29
Speaker 1: to find his boy and his daughter in law. R Yeah,
33:33
Speaker 1: I mean it must have been such a lonely proposition
33:36
Speaker 1: back then to try and wrangle and get the word out.
33:40
Speaker 1: It was just so limited with the press and everything.
33:42
Speaker 1: Like he did though, I mean he had there were
33:45
Speaker 1: multiple river parties, they were all looking very soon. He
33:48
Speaker 1: hired very smartly a native American tracker or more than
33:52
Speaker 1: one to search the rim. And somehow he had a
33:56
Speaker 1: connection with the government or or least earned one because
34:01
Speaker 1: Dwight Davis, the Secretary of War, he convinced him to
34:05
Speaker 1: get military planes looking out. From what I understand, he
34:08
Speaker 1: managed to get a message to Calvin Coolidge, the President,
34:12
Speaker 1: who then directed them the Secretary to to get planes out.
34:18
Speaker 1: And these planes that that joined the search that it
34:21
Speaker 1: actually worked. Um, they were the first airplanes to ever
34:25
Speaker 1: fly over the Grand Canyon, and they paid off because
34:29
Speaker 1: they actually found the boat from the air. That's how
34:31
Speaker 1: they found it. Yeah, December nineteenth, one of the planes
34:34
Speaker 1: saw the rain in the face and it was kind
34:37
Speaker 1: of snagged in the river, kind of right in the
34:39
Speaker 1: middle of the river, right at mile two thirty seven.
34:42
Speaker 1: And they reported back and said, hey, this thing is
34:45
Speaker 1: not in pieces. Um, it actually looks pretty undisturbed. And
34:50
Speaker 1: immediately Rollin Hyde said, wow, that this is great news.
34:55
Speaker 1: You know, they maybe are alive somewhere. So he hits
34:58
Speaker 1: the road, um, searches out those Cole brothers that we
35:02
Speaker 1: already mentioned. He sets up for Peach Springs, Arizona with
35:06
Speaker 1: a plan for them to lead him down there and uh,
35:09
Speaker 1: salvage this boat at mile that was I guess this
35:15
Speaker 1: boat was just sitting there and they decided to use it. Yeah,
35:18
Speaker 1: so the Grand Canyon River people knew of a boat,
35:22
Speaker 1: and rather than take a boat a mile hike a
35:25
Speaker 1: vertical mile hiked down to the river, they just they
35:29
Speaker 1: went to a boat that they knew was there and
35:30
Speaker 1: fixed it. But it took like two days for them
35:33
Speaker 1: to fix it. And I don't think that the um
35:35
Speaker 1: that Mr Hyde Glenn's dad was actually on this expedition.
35:39
Speaker 1: I think he was either at the rim and the
35:42
Speaker 1: village or back in Las Vegas waiting to hear news
35:44
Speaker 1: about it. But they they they took two days to
35:48
Speaker 1: fix the boat, and I think like a full five
35:50
Speaker 1: days after the boat was first spotted. Um, they set
35:55
Speaker 1: out on December to go get it. Yeah, Christmas Eve.
35:59
Speaker 1: I mean, bless the hearts of these people that like
36:03
Speaker 1: leave their families on Christmas Eve to go try and
36:05
Speaker 1: find these strangers for this dude. I don't see anything
36:09
Speaker 1: about reward money. There may have been some involved, but
36:12
Speaker 1: you know, they went out on Christmas Eve. Finally, Christmas
36:16
Speaker 1: morning they come up on their boat and it sort
36:19
Speaker 1: of had a Merry Celeste vibe going on, and that
36:22
Speaker 1: it was just sitting there in a calm pool. Um,
36:25
Speaker 1: it was not damaged noticeably, except you know, it obviously
36:29
Speaker 1: took a little bit of a beating on the trip,
36:31
Speaker 1: but it was in fine shape. And all of their
36:33
Speaker 1: stuff was there, which is really super creepy. Yeah, I
36:37
Speaker 1: mean like their food, their their clothes, their um money,
36:43
Speaker 1: their gun, Bessie's diary which would be important later on. Um,
36:50
Speaker 1: like all this stuff. It was undisturbed, untouched, The boat
36:52
Speaker 1: was intact, and they were nowhere to be found. The
36:55
Speaker 1: search party looked all over for him, shouted for him.
36:58
Speaker 1: They were just not with the boat very creepy and uh,
37:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the good news is even though
37:05
Speaker 1: they didn't find them, is that Rolin still had hope
37:07
Speaker 1: because they were like, hey, they they clearly h had
37:13
Speaker 1: left had not left this boat intentionally, right, So they
37:19
Speaker 1: just cut the boat free after they salvaged everything they
37:22
Speaker 1: could from it. And it makes me wonder whatever became
37:25
Speaker 1: the boat, because this thing was about as sturdy as
37:28
Speaker 1: a boat could be. So I wonder if it floated
37:31
Speaker 1: all the way down to the Pacific and it's just
37:33
Speaker 1: out there somewhere or sunk somewhere in the Pacific. You
37:38
Speaker 1: never know. This is a Glenn Hide built boat, man,
37:42
Speaker 1: it's possible it's still out there floating around. Should we
37:47
Speaker 1: take a break, Yeah, let's all right, Well we'll take
37:50
Speaker 1: a break. We'll come back and talk about the uh,
37:52
Speaker 1: the further attempts to locate them and some of the
37:55
Speaker 1: ideas on what may have happened. Alright, so the boat
38:25
Speaker 1: has been found, they're not there, no trace of them. Um.
38:29
Speaker 1: Dad goes back home and is very sad and starts
38:33
Speaker 1: to kind of think of what to do next. Starts
38:35
Speaker 1: poring over Bessie's journal for clues. Uh, and of course
38:40
Speaker 1: kind of as soon as this thing happens, people start
38:45
Speaker 1: theorizing on what may have happened to them. Yeah, man,
38:47
Speaker 1: this search for these these people, especially once airplanes were involved,
38:51
Speaker 1: there was national news like the whole country was keeping
38:54
Speaker 1: up with this. UM. So a lot of people formed
38:58
Speaker 1: opinions about this pretty quickly, especially the river people around
39:02
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon to you know, those river people. A
39:05
Speaker 1: lot of people thought that there um, especially later on,
39:09
Speaker 1: UM that Glenn had forced um Bessie into this and
39:14
Speaker 1: so he took on this this caricature of a brute
39:17
Speaker 1: again wife beating husband who had either had probably just
39:24
Speaker 1: hit Bessie one time too many, and she killed them
39:27
Speaker 1: and then hiked out of the Grand Canyon and took
39:30
Speaker 1: a bus east to to start a new life. That
39:33
Speaker 1: was That was a predominant theory. I think it's still
39:37
Speaker 1: a predominant theory today. Yeah, I mean there are some
39:41
Speaker 1: weird things have happened over the years. There have been
39:44
Speaker 1: more than one woman have claimed to be Bessie Hyde,
39:47
Speaker 1: most notably this woman named Georgie White, who was a
39:52
Speaker 1: very experienced in her life. UM. After this, you know,
39:56
Speaker 1: this period of time, at least very experienced UM boats
39:59
Speaker 1: person and navigator of wild Rivers. I mean, she was
40:03
Speaker 1: on the Johnny Carson Show, she was in Time in
40:06
Speaker 1: Life magazine, and she really made a name for herself.
40:09
Speaker 1: And at one point she claimed, uh, she claimed to
40:12
Speaker 1: be Bessie Hyde and even had the marriage certificate in
40:17
Speaker 1: her belongings, which is, yeah, that was weird. It's very weird.
40:20
Speaker 1: And I've seen zero explanation of how she got that
40:23
Speaker 1: and why she got it. The closest thing to an
40:25
Speaker 1: explanation I've seen, and this was found after her death
40:28
Speaker 1: in among her belongings. Um, so it's not like she's
40:33
Speaker 1: like I got the wedding certificate. It was like just
40:36
Speaker 1: a mystery within a mystery why this particular lady had
40:39
Speaker 1: this wedding certificate. And they dug a little deeper and
40:42
Speaker 1: found that on her birth certificate she was born Bessie
40:45
Speaker 1: that was her real name. But uh, later on bred
40:49
Speaker 1: Dimmock compared the two and like that it was definitely
40:52
Speaker 1: not the same woman. They didn't look alike, Yeah, they looked.
40:56
Speaker 1: I looked as many pictures as I could side by side,
41:00
Speaker 1: and I thought, it's doesn't quite look like her, But
41:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't so unlike her that it was impossible to me.
41:06
Speaker 1: One of the things um Denmark put up was that, um,
41:09
Speaker 1: Georgie White was not precisely literate. She was an illiterate.
41:14
Speaker 1: She just was not the literate type. She wasn't a poet,
41:17
Speaker 1: and Bessie Hyde was, yeah, a poet and she know it.
41:20
Speaker 1: You know, I'm barely literate too. Uh. That historian you
41:27
Speaker 1: were talking about otis Marshton. Um. He thought that there
41:32
Speaker 1: was this uh at mile thirty two, a very violent rapid.
41:37
Speaker 1: He said, that's where I think they crashed. Um and
41:40
Speaker 1: very importantly, like I just figured, yeah, they probably crashed
41:44
Speaker 1: or you know, one of those sweeps because those things
41:46
Speaker 1: were crazy knocked them off and they drowned. But why
41:51
Speaker 1: in the world weren't their bodies found? And you dug
41:54
Speaker 1: into um Demo's book and apparently, Um, I mean, how
42:00
Speaker 1: many were there between eighteen eighty and nineteen thirty five? Uh?
42:04
Speaker 1: There they Some people have performed a study I think
42:07
Speaker 1: of ten. Ten. Well, no, this was in a study.
42:11
Speaker 1: These were real drownings, right, they surveyed real drownings for
42:15
Speaker 1: a study, I think, is what I meant. Okay, Uh,
42:17
Speaker 1: they did ten. There were ten life jacket lists drownings
42:22
Speaker 1: between eighteen eighty and nineteen thirty five, and only three
42:25
Speaker 1: of those bodies were recovered. And these things would go
42:29
Speaker 1: a long way. I think it was an average of
42:31
Speaker 1: like nineteen and a half miles from where they drowned
42:34
Speaker 1: four and a half days later. I think it says
42:38
Speaker 1: forty one and a half days later. Well, demox books
42:42
Speaker 1: is nineteen a half miles right, and forty one and
42:44
Speaker 1: a half days later, nineteen and a half miles down
42:47
Speaker 1: below the po and a half days later. That's in
42:50
Speaker 1: like six point Yeah, no, I know it's tiny, but
42:54
Speaker 1: the the His point is that statistically speaking, Glenn and Bessie,
42:59
Speaker 1: had they drowned owned at mile market to thirty two,
43:02
Speaker 1: which uh we'll talk about in a second, why that's
43:05
Speaker 1: probably the case UM. When they finally did surface again,
43:10
Speaker 1: it would have been below where the search party stopped looking,
43:15
Speaker 1: but above where later search parties started looking. So they
43:19
Speaker 1: would have come up at just the right geography, just
43:23
Speaker 1: the right distance from where they drowned to evade search,
43:27
Speaker 1: and then at just the right time that UM people
43:30
Speaker 1: would not have been looking for them right then. And
43:33
Speaker 1: he also points out that the the UM winter of
43:38
Speaker 1: nine there was historically low um River flow and so
43:43
Speaker 1: they may have surfaced, and if they had, the current
43:46
Speaker 1: would have been slow enough that they would have washed
43:48
Speaker 1: ashore in a very very remote place, and that they
43:51
Speaker 1: would have been um picked clean basically by the buzzards
43:55
Speaker 1: in the area. And then once the river flowed again
43:58
Speaker 1: very heavily in the spring, their bones would have been scattered.
44:01
Speaker 1: There just wouldn't have been any trace of them whatsoever.
44:04
Speaker 1: Which I mean initially when I thought about that, I
44:09
Speaker 1: was like, no way they pop up. But after hearing
44:12
Speaker 1: that stuff, it's quite likely that that it was just
44:14
Speaker 1: a regular disappearance. They drowned and just were never found. Yeah.
44:19
Speaker 1: And and Dimock makes a really great case at the
44:21
Speaker 1: end of his book, and it does a really good
44:24
Speaker 1: like he like, he's very it's just the humanity of
44:28
Speaker 1: the case has clearly gotten to him because he and
44:30
Speaker 1: his wife did the same thing um and a scow
44:34
Speaker 1: like they rebuilt, they recreated the scow. So he really
44:36
Speaker 1: got into these people's heads or they got into his there.
44:40
Speaker 1: And the reason why Mile thirty two is what um
44:45
Speaker 1: bred Dimmock and then earlier Doc Marson think is the
44:48
Speaker 1: place where they died is if you look along the
44:51
Speaker 1: Colorado River. Wherever there are rapids, it's because the canyon
44:55
Speaker 1: is emptying like a side river into the Colorado River,
44:59
Speaker 1: right it right, so it pushes the Colorado River up
45:03
Speaker 1: against the canyon wall on one side, and then that's
45:06
Speaker 1: your rapid. That's what you want to shoot, because this
45:10
Speaker 1: this canyon has been feeding into the Colorado for so
45:13
Speaker 1: many hundreds of thousands or millions of years that it's
45:17
Speaker 1: worn down right there, so it's it's relatively deep and
45:20
Speaker 1: boulder free. But there are two spots that that have
45:24
Speaker 1: rapids on the Colorado River where this isn't the case.
45:27
Speaker 1: Where the water from an incoming canyon pushes the river
45:32
Speaker 1: up against some very treacherous rocks. And one of them
45:35
Speaker 1: is Bedrock rapids, which is one place where Glen and
45:41
Speaker 1: Bessie wrecked, the one place they did wreck and had
45:45
Speaker 1: to repair their boat for two days. And then the
45:47
Speaker 1: other places mild to thirty two rapids which are called
45:51
Speaker 1: um killer Fangs falls, uh, and that's mild to thirty two.
45:57
Speaker 1: And they think that they just simply didn't make it,
46:00
Speaker 1: whether they got thrown over the boat and drowned or
46:03
Speaker 1: one of them got thrown out and the other one
46:04
Speaker 1: jumped in after them that that their boat just didn't
46:09
Speaker 1: make it through there. But the boat did it, just
46:11
Speaker 1: didn't make it with them on it, Yes, which would
46:15
Speaker 1: to me indicate maybe those sweeps did knock them out.
46:18
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible those things had done it before. Both
46:21
Speaker 1: of them had been knocked out by sweeps during the
46:23
Speaker 1: during the trip already. Hats off to Mr Brad Demock.
46:26
Speaker 1: And if you were listening, sir, uh, what a great
46:29
Speaker 1: piece of investigative journalism. Uh. And like he said, when
46:32
Speaker 1: he and his wife made this trip in their own scale, Um,
46:36
Speaker 1: they had helmets and life jackets, and they knew the
46:39
Speaker 1: river and they had a motorized boat following them, so
46:41
Speaker 1: they had all the safety precautions. Um. And it was
46:44
Speaker 1: still a rough trip. Yeah, they he said, they were
46:48
Speaker 1: like bruised and bloody from those sweeps themselves too. So
46:52
Speaker 1: some of the other weird things that have happened over
46:54
Speaker 1: the years. There was Demock interviewed, uh in one these
46:59
Speaker 1: people on a commer trip. Um. They were sitting around
47:02
Speaker 1: by the campfire as you do after a long day
47:04
Speaker 1: of boating, and one of the women said that she
47:07
Speaker 1: was Bessie Hyde and one of the other people said,
47:10
Speaker 1: what did you do with Glenn kind of ha ha,
47:12
Speaker 1: and she said, I killed him, apparently without looking up. Um,
47:17
Speaker 1: she stabbed him and hiked out to Arizona. Then did
47:21
Speaker 1: catch that bus back east, which is a little creepy. Uh.
47:24
Speaker 1: And then at one point also there was a bullet
47:26
Speaker 1: pierced skull found in a garage of a river guy
47:31
Speaker 1: that had passed away. That's Emory Colb Yeah, and Glenn Hyde.
47:35
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like a big jump to just say, hey,
47:38
Speaker 1: was that Glenn Hyde all of a sudden, But people did, right,
47:42
Speaker 1: they did, and I think they still do. But I
47:44
Speaker 1: think in two thousand so Emory Cole died in and um,
47:50
Speaker 1: when they were going through his belongings his family, they
47:52
Speaker 1: found in a boat that he had stored in his
47:55
Speaker 1: garage a man's skeleton with like clothing on and everything
47:59
Speaker 1: still and the skull had a bullet hole in it.
48:01
Speaker 1: So of the first thing everyone said was Glenn Hyde.
48:05
Speaker 1: It's like that mystery is one of the big legends
48:07
Speaker 1: of the Grand Canyon, right, So, um, they figured out
48:12
Speaker 1: it wasn't Glenn Hyde pretty quickly. I think he was
48:14
Speaker 1: a different statue or whatever. But they didn't know who
48:17
Speaker 1: it was, and they think now that it was a
48:21
Speaker 1: victim of suicide from N three who was found in
48:25
Speaker 1: by a botanist back then, and for some reason Emery
48:28
Speaker 1: Cole got his hands on the guy skeleton and kept
48:31
Speaker 1: him in a boat in his garage for all those years.
48:34
Speaker 1: So that's normal, right. I don't know why you would
48:37
Speaker 1: do that. It says a lot about the dude. Maybe
48:39
Speaker 1: he just felt sorry for him because nobody claimed him.
48:42
Speaker 1: Maybe he was a ghoul. I don't know, but it wasn't.
48:45
Speaker 1: It wasn't um glenn Hyde for sure. So that's it.
48:49
Speaker 1: It's it's not like the case of settled that's the
48:51
Speaker 1: great thing. It's it's like, that's just bread Demock's opinion.
48:55
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that happened. But again he knows
48:58
Speaker 1: more than anybody, and he's probably right if you ask me. Yeah,
49:01
Speaker 1: this one will never be settled. No, because maybe they
49:05
Speaker 1: might find some bones somewhere one day, who knows. I
49:08
Speaker 1: don't know, Chuck, but that would be the only thing,
49:12
Speaker 1: So that would be something. Or if they found the
49:14
Speaker 1: scow floating around in the Pacific would be cool. Uh,
49:19
Speaker 1: are you got anything else? Nothing else? Well, If you
49:22
Speaker 1: want to know more about the disappearance of Glenn and
49:25
Speaker 1: Bessie Hide, go read Sunk without a Sound The Tragic
49:31
Speaker 1: Case of Glenn and Bessie Hyde by Brad Demmock. Right.
49:35
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. And since I said that it's time
49:37
Speaker 1: for a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this eulogy for
49:43
Speaker 1: a teacher. This is from Caissa. Hey, guys, today I
49:46
Speaker 1: found out that a teacher who was a big influence
49:48
Speaker 1: on me, uh in my life long love of learning
49:52
Speaker 1: has passed away over the weekend. It just breaks my heart.
49:54
Speaker 1: She's the reason I listened to you, guys, because without
49:57
Speaker 1: her influence, I highly doubt it would have loved school
49:59
Speaker 1: as much and would not enjoy the process of learning
50:02
Speaker 1: as much, which is why I keep coming back to
50:04
Speaker 1: you guys. Jane Mobley was her name. She was my
50:06
Speaker 1: teacher uh third and fourth grade, and then amazingly we
50:10
Speaker 1: both changed schools and she ended up being my teacher
50:13
Speaker 1: in the fifth grade. She taught English and history and
50:16
Speaker 1: did things like give us creative writing promos by having
50:19
Speaker 1: us all bring in a crazy shoe and write a
50:21
Speaker 1: story about another students shoe. Weird things like that that
50:25
Speaker 1: are why I love writing to this day. And not
50:27
Speaker 1: only was she amazing teacher, but also very kind hearted.
50:30
Speaker 1: I grew up quite poor and my mom was a
50:31
Speaker 1: single mom, raising my sister and me on her own.
50:34
Speaker 1: When my backpack broke in the fifth grade, my mom
50:37
Speaker 1: did not have any way to buy me a new
50:39
Speaker 1: and um Miss Mobile knew my mom's situation, and one
50:42
Speaker 1: day before recess asked me to stay behind for a
50:44
Speaker 1: bit when the other kids left. She told me she
50:46
Speaker 1: was going to pay for a backpack for me with
50:48
Speaker 1: her own money, and not just any old backpack. She
50:51
Speaker 1: bought me the very popular at the time l L
50:53
Speaker 1: Bean with my own initials and everything. My mom was
50:57
Speaker 1: very grateful for kindness, as was I. Miss Mobile passed
51:01
Speaker 1: away January one will be greatly missed by all her
51:04
Speaker 1: students and family. She was very much loved. That is
51:08
Speaker 1: from Carissa, and it just seemed like something we should
51:11
Speaker 1: we should highlight because teachers are have a lot of
51:15
Speaker 1: impact on kids and and throughout the years, I'm sure
51:18
Speaker 1: Miss Mobile touched very very many students like that, so
51:21
Speaker 1: that's just wonderful. That'd be cool to hear from other
51:23
Speaker 1: people with a Miss Mobile story too. You know for sure. Well,
51:27
Speaker 1: if you have a miss mobile story, we want to
51:29
Speaker 1: hear it. Actually, you can tweet to us at Josh
51:32
Speaker 1: M Clark or at s Y s K podcast. You
51:34
Speaker 1: can join us on who is That from Chuck Carrissa,
51:37
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Curissa. You can join us on Facebook
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51:43
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email the Stuff
51:45
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51:48
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51:50
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51:57
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