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The Conservationist · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: The ocean is full of secrets. It covers the majority
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  Speaker 1: of the planet, and only through immense technical effort can
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  Speaker 1: we even begin to glimpse what lies in the depths.
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  Speaker 1: Before deep sea submarines, we could only judge what lay
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  Speaker 1: below by what made it to the surface, which has
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  Speaker 1: led to some pretty curious tales. On November thirtieth of
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six, two boys were walking along a beach
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  Speaker 1: on Anastasia Island, off the coast of Florida. They spotted
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  Speaker 1: something that they couldn't quite make sense of. It was
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  Speaker 1: a large mass about twenty one feet long, seven feet wide,
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  Speaker 1: and just over four feet tall. They didn't know what
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  Speaker 1: to make of it. It seemed to rise out of
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  Speaker 1: the sand unmoving, so the boys ran to the nearby
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  Speaker 1: town of Saint Augustine and told a local physician that
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  Speaker 1: they'd found a dead whale washed up on the beach.
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  Speaker 1: The physician was doctor DeWitt Webb, the president of the
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  Speaker 1: local scientific society. Excited by the boy's story, he immediately
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  Speaker 1: went to see this thing for himself, and when he arrived,
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  Speaker 1: he too was puzzled by its appearance. This was some
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  Speaker 1: kind of animal, but it didn't look much like a whale.
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  Speaker 1: It was largely featureless, partially decayed, with several stump like limbs,
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  Speaker 1: and its skin was a faded pink gray with a
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  Speaker 1: tough rubbery texture. Needless to say, this was a creature
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  Speaker 1: unlike any kind he had ever seen before, and soon
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  Speaker 1: enough crowds of locals were flocking to the beach to
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  Speaker 1: get a glimpse of the thing. Local papers described it
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  Speaker 1: as a and i quote pear shaped blob of grayish goo.
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  Speaker 1: With effort, doctor Webb and the others dug it up
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  Speaker 1: and had it hauled out of the sand. The immense
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  Speaker 1: size of the thing owed everyone who saw it. It
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  Speaker 1: weighed an estimated seven tons. Webb took samples and sent
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  Speaker 1: them to his colleagues, writing that he thought he'd found
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  Speaker 1: an undiscovered species here. One of the men that he
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  Speaker 1: sent them to was Professor Addison Verel at Yale University,
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  Speaker 1: one of the foremost naturalists of his day. Verel said
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  Speaker 1: that this must be the carcass of a giant octopus.
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  Speaker 1: He proposed that the species should be called Octopus giganteus,
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  Speaker 1: and of course, the press latched onto the story eagerly.
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  Speaker 1: Stories of giant tentacles sea monsters are as old as
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  Speaker 1: human history. Twenty six years earlier, Jules vern had famously
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  Speaker 1: described a giant squid in twenty thousand leagues under the
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  Speaker 1: sea before my eyes. Vern wrote was a horrible monster,
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  Speaker 1: worthy to figure in the legends of the Marvelous Locals
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  Speaker 1: dubbed it the Saint Augustine Monster. Doctor de Witt recruited
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  Speaker 1: a lot local photographer to capture the image of the
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  Speaker 1: creature and its strange shape. Vero meanwhile, began to doubt
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  Speaker 1: his original conclusions. It might actually be a whale, after all,
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  Speaker 1: he wrote to a colleague in eighteen ninety seven. The
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  Speaker 1: following January, a storm washed the Saint Augustine Monster out
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  Speaker 1: to sea, only to deposit it on another beach two
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  Speaker 1: miles to the south. Concerned that the creature would be
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  Speaker 1: lost forever, doctor de Witt assembled a team of horses
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  Speaker 1: and men to carry the monster several miles inland. It
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  Speaker 1: was ultimately set up by a hotel, and there it
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  Speaker 1: became a tourist attraction. The mystique of the Saint Augustine
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  Speaker 1: Monster drew tourists from all over Florida. They came to
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  Speaker 1: speculate on its origin what deep sea behemoth had been
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  Speaker 1: deposited on their shores. But like many tourist attractions, its
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  Speaker 1: novelty faded over the years, and after a while it disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: We have no record of what happened to the original carcass.
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  Speaker 1: Even the photographs of the creature have been lost. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen fifty seven the creature would resurface. Doctor
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  Speaker 1: Forrest Wood, a museum curator and cryptozoologist, managed to find
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  Speaker 1: an old newspaper article about the creature, and he eventually
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  Speaker 1: managed to find the samples of the creature that were
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  Speaker 1: held at the Smithsonian Institute. He examined all of it
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  Speaker 1: and concluded in nineteen seventy one that it was indeed
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  Speaker 1: some kind of octopus. However, rather than provide the final
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  Speaker 1: word on the subject, doctor Wood's paper provoked another wave
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  Speaker 1: of public interest which concluded with another analysis in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety five. In this case, the research team fully disagreed
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  Speaker 1: with Wood. The Saint Augustine monster was made up of
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  Speaker 1: pure collagen, which meant that it was matter from a
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  Speaker 1: warm blooded creature, not an octopus. And in two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and four a DNA test determined what this mysterious creature
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  Speaker 1: actually was, a collection of whale blubber. It aimed. After
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  Speaker 1: all this time, and all this mystery, the initial assessments
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  Speaker 1: of the boys on the beach had been correct. What
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  Speaker 1: they had found was a whale, or part of a whale.
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  Speaker 1: In their eagerness for the fantastical, the naturalists had let
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  Speaker 1: their imaginations run wild. It's curious, really, of all the
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  Speaker 1: mysteries the sea has yet to give us, this one,
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  Speaker 1: it seems, was an open and shutcase. On a spring
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  Speaker 1: day in twenty fifteen, police in Mosman, a sleepy town
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  Speaker 1: in northwestern Australia, received a report of a major accident
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  Speaker 1: along a remote coastal road. When first responders arrived on
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  Speaker 1: the scene, they found the truck of local conservationist Dennis
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  Speaker 1: Lee Lafferty wrapped around a large gum tree. Sadly, Lafferty
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  Speaker 1: had not survived the crash. He had lived in nearby
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  Speaker 1: Danetree and was well known in the area for his
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  Speaker 1: encyclopedic knowledge of local flora and fauna, and for his
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  Speaker 1: full throated advocacy for the local ecosystem. He made a
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  Speaker 1: living leading boat tours down the Daintree River, which wound
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  Speaker 1: through one of the most diverse rainforests in the world.
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  Speaker 1: He was well respected and would be sorely missed. Weeks later,
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  Speaker 1: and halfway across the world, the Tampa Bay Times published
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  Speaker 1: an article outlining the life and death of one Raymond
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  Speaker 1: Grady stan Cell, a Florida angler who had become something
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  Speaker 1: of a local legend himself. Stanzell had been the son
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  Speaker 1: of a fisherman and had grown up on Florida's West coast,
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  Speaker 1: where he'd showed an early affinity for the family business,
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  Speaker 1: learning by the age of six how to catch bait
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  Speaker 1: for his father to use. This affinity for fishing continued
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  Speaker 1: into adulthood, but while he was passionate about his line
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  Speaker 1: of work, making a living as an angler required long
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  Speaker 1: days and backbreaking labor, and despite his almost preternatural skill,
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  Speaker 1: he still yearned for a better life. It's unclear exactly
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  Speaker 1: how he began to smuggle marijuana, but we do know
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  Speaker 1: that by nineteen seventy one he was running it from Jamaica,
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  Speaker 1: where he would buy loads of it from inland farm
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  Speaker 1: The crops were packed into large burlap sacks, which he
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  Speaker 1: would transport back across the Caribbean into US waters, hiding
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  Speaker 1: the massive loads under piles of fish that he would
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  Speaker 1: catch on the way back. Now, from his lifetime on
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  Speaker 1: the west coast of Florida, he was familiar with all
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  Speaker 1: of the quiet coves where a smuggler could unload his
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  Speaker 1: product onto the beach out of the site of law enforcement.
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  Speaker 1: The product would then be loaded onto waiting semi trucks
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  Speaker 1: and then distributed to cities all over the country. Stanzell
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  Speaker 1: only worked with people that he'd grown up with and
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  Speaker 1: trusted inerrantly, and so was able to work with impunity
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  Speaker 1: for many years. By nineteen seventy four, he'd made contacts
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  Speaker 1: in other countries too, his crowning achievement being his connection
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  Speaker 1: in Columbia, who supplied him with some of the best
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  Speaker 1: marijuana in the world at the time. At its peak,
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  Speaker 1: he was one of the most productive marijuana smugglers in America,
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  Speaker 1: but it couldn't last forever. Authorities began to take notice,
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  Speaker 1: and in June of nineteen seventy four, he was arrested
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  Speaker 1: holding twenty five thousand dollars in cash checks from a
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  Speaker 1: Swiss bank and a blank Nicaraguan tourist visa which allowed
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  Speaker 1: him to come and go at will. There was more
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  Speaker 1: than enough proof to put him away. His bail was
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  Speaker 1: set at five hundred thousand dollars, which was paid with
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  Speaker 1: a cashier's check. On the day he was to return
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  Speaker 1: to court to face trial, his lawyer informed the authorities
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  Speaker 1: Raymond Grady stan Cell Junior had drowned while scuba diving
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  Speaker 1: in Honduras. Authorities could not believe it. Over the course
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  Speaker 1: of the following years, there would be the occasional sighting.
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  Speaker 1: He was seen on a beach in Jamaica in Key West,
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  Speaker 1: and at one point a report from authorities in Honduras
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  Speaker 1: informed American officials that they had him in custody, but
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  Speaker 1: when they showed up to collect him, they were shown
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  Speaker 1: an empty cell. Raymond Grady's stan Cell Junior was a ghost.
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  Speaker 1: He left behind a family, close friends, everything he owned.
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  Speaker 1: He was never seen in Florida again, which brings us
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  Speaker 1: back to Australia. You see. Weeks after the car crash
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  Speaker 1: that led to the death of Dennis Lee Lafferty, the
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  Speaker 1: Dantree Police received a message linking to an article from
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  Speaker 1: the Tampa Bay Times which outed the beloved conservationist as
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  Speaker 1: none other than Raymond Grady's Stanceill Junior. His longtime partner
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  Speaker 1: Janet Wood, decided that it was time to finally come clean.
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  Speaker 1: She had been in Key West when she met him
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  Speaker 1: at the storied chart Room Bar, a watering hole famous
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  Speaker 1: for its eclectic clientele politicians rubbing elbows with fishermen, musicians
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  Speaker 1: and the occasional smuggler, and they began a relationship. Anne
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  Speaker 1: would confirm the newspaper's story after Stancell skip Bale in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. The two had sailed to Venezuela, flown
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  Speaker 1: from there to Peru and then Tahiti, and finally ended
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  Speaker 1: up on the remote northwestern coast of Queensland, where they
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  Speaker 1: had reinvented themselves entirely and started a family. He billed
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  Speaker 1: himself as a marine biologist and began the Daintree River
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  Speaker 1: Crew Center, which he would run for the rest of
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  Speaker 1: his life. In Florida, he has long since moved on
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  Speaker 1: into legend, but curiously in Daintree, his company still operates,
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  Speaker 1: with his daughter at the helm, leading his legacy of
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  Speaker 1: conservation onward into the future. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.