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What is he hiding under there! · Crime and Horror

0:00
Speaker 1: This story has one of the most bizarre and tragic
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Speaker 1: endings to any story I've ever told. But before we
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Speaker 1: get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange,
0:07
Speaker 1: dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come
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Speaker 1: of our weekly uploads. All right, let's get into today's story.
0:37
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, Daniel Beckwitt was a twenty seven year
0:41
Speaker 1: old genius hacker and prolific Bitcoin day trader. He was
0:45
Speaker 1: living in his modest childhood home in Bethesda, Maryland, with
0:47
Speaker 1: a multi million dollar fortune to his name, and he
0:50
Speaker 1: was hiding something major in his basement that when it
0:53
Speaker 1: was discovered by authorities, he would be convicted of one
0:56
Speaker 1: of the rarest criminal charges in the American legal justice system.
1:00
Speaker 1: To understand the story, we have to go back to
1:02
Speaker 1: the beginning. Daniel was born in nineteen ninety one to
1:04
Speaker 1: his eccentric and brilliant parents, Linda and David. He would
1:08
Speaker 1: be their only child. David was a PhD and an
1:10
Speaker 1: accomplished opera singer that had trained under a famous French composer,
1:14
Speaker 1: and he had also performed at the White House. Linda
1:17
Speaker 1: was a Columbia Law school trained lawyer who at one
1:19
Speaker 1: time had been a government attorney, but she gave it
1:22
Speaker 1: up because she described it as a scummy profession, and
1:25
Speaker 1: she became a vocalist like her husband. When Daniel was
1:27
Speaker 1: just a toddler, he learned how to read, so it
1:29
Speaker 1: was clear he had unusually high intellect, which Linda guarded fiercely.
1:34
Speaker 1: She decided that public schools were not capable of teaching
1:36
Speaker 1: her son, and so she decided she would homeschool him.
1:39
Speaker 1: By the time Daniel was just five years old, he
1:42
Speaker 1: was consuming entire novels, and shortly after that he was
1:45
Speaker 1: able to break down and reprogram his PlayStation. But despite
1:48
Speaker 1: his incredible intelligence, Daniel had a really lonely childhood. He
1:53
Speaker 1: was rarely allowed to go outside and play with other kids,
1:55
Speaker 1: and on the rare chance that he was, his parents
1:58
Speaker 1: always hovered around him the entire tame time, and few
2:01
Speaker 1: playmates or adults for that matter, ever came inside. Of
2:04
Speaker 1: Daniel's house because Daniel's parents were big time hoarders. You
2:08
Speaker 1: couldn't take two steps into that house before knocking into
2:11
Speaker 1: a big stack of papers, or books or old food containers.
2:14
Speaker 1: In two thousand, when Daniel was nine years old, his
2:16
Speaker 1: father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which left Linda, his mother,
2:20
Speaker 1: to take care of both of them. And in that time,
2:22
Speaker 1: Linda became obsessed with protecting their property, and so anytime
2:26
Speaker 1: anyone walked in front of their house, just near their property,
2:29
Speaker 1: she would run outside and yell at them until they
2:32
Speaker 1: ran away. But despite their eccentricities, it was clear to
2:34
Speaker 1: anybody that knew the Beckwitt family that Linda and David
2:38
Speaker 1: just adore Daniel. They just could not give him any space.
2:41
Speaker 1: One neighbor recalled seeing the three Bequitts out trigger treating
2:44
Speaker 1: one year, all wearing these same matching hamster outfits, and
2:47
Speaker 1: this was well into Daniel's teenage years. Daniel loved his parents,
2:51
Speaker 1: but it was in those later teenage years that he
2:54
Speaker 1: started to realize just how smothering they really were, and
2:56
Speaker 1: so he began looking for other places to connect with
2:59
Speaker 1: new people, and he found a new community on an
3:01
Speaker 1: online forum called four chan. There, Daniel got to reinvent himself.
3:05
Speaker 1: He adopted this kind of tough guy, genius persona where
3:09
Speaker 1: he bragged about finishing most of high school by the
3:11
Speaker 1: time he was fifteen and that nowadays he just blows
3:14
Speaker 1: stuff up in his backyard to test his chemistry. Nohow.
3:17
Speaker 1: But over the years of posting on this channel, Daniel
3:20
Speaker 1: would occasionally let his guard down and he would talk
3:22
Speaker 1: about something that was really close to him that pervaded
3:25
Speaker 1: his thoughts at all times and would ultimately be his downfall,
3:28
Speaker 1: and that was his extreme fear of death. Daniel's isolation
3:32
Speaker 1: looked like it might come to an end in twenty
3:35
Speaker 1: ten when he enrolled at the University of Illinois to
3:37
Speaker 1: study computer science and electrical engineering. His parents dropped him
3:40
Speaker 1: off at the Amtrak train station with all of his
3:42
Speaker 1: stuff for college. They said their goodbyes. Daniel hopped on
3:45
Speaker 1: the train and he waved to them as they disappeared,
3:48
Speaker 1: and he likened that experience to being set free. It
3:51
Speaker 1: was the first time he was going to be without
3:53
Speaker 1: his parents for any amount of time, but unfortunately, after
3:56
Speaker 1: only being at school for a couple of months, he
3:58
Speaker 1: had to go right back home again, because his mother
4:00
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer and she had hit it from Daniel.
4:03
Speaker 1: In fact, she had hit it from everyone and not
4:04
Speaker 1: even seen a doctor. And so when Daniel got home,
4:07
Speaker 1: she was in really bad shape, and she passed away
4:09
Speaker 1: two weeks later, including Daniel. Only three people showed up
4:12
Speaker 1: for her funeral, and so Daniel, with his mismatch clothes
4:15
Speaker 1: and his pants that were too short, he gave his
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Speaker 1: mother's eulogy, and in it he just looked dazed and
4:20
Speaker 1: he actually said I feel lost. And then shortly after
4:23
Speaker 1: Daniel went back to school, his father began declining rapidly
4:27
Speaker 1: from Parkinson's disease, and so Daniel had to put him
4:29
Speaker 1: into assisted living, and so living by himself at his
4:32
Speaker 1: apartment in college, Daniel was overcome with grief, and now
4:36
Speaker 1: more than ever, he was just terrified of death because
4:39
Speaker 1: now he had seen it up close with his mother,
4:41
Speaker 1: and he was watching his father wither away. And so
4:44
Speaker 1: he went back on four Chan and he began talking
4:46
Speaker 1: about taking a more defensive position against his own death.
4:50
Speaker 1: What that translated to is Daniel began researching what the
4:53
Speaker 1: most common killers were for people his age, and he
4:56
Speaker 1: discovered that car accidents were a big killer, and so
4:58
Speaker 1: he reinforced all all the doors of his car with
5:01
Speaker 1: kevlar plates, and anytime he drove it, he wore a
5:04
Speaker 1: kevlar vest, which he believed protected him from blunt force
5:07
Speaker 1: trauma in the event of a crash. Knowing that cancer
5:10
Speaker 1: was a big killer, he went out and removed every
5:12
Speaker 1: mole on his body as a preventive measure. But what
5:15
Speaker 1: Daniel viewed as the biggest threat to his life was
5:18
Speaker 1: not something that statisticians would tell you. Is something people
5:21
Speaker 1: his age or people in his country should be worried about,
5:24
Speaker 1: and that was a nuclear attack on the United States.
5:27
Speaker 1: Daniel believed it was imminent. Daniel believed the only way
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Speaker 1: he could protect himself was to build a proper fallout shelter,
5:33
Speaker 1: and because his mother had left him a multimillion dollar
5:36
Speaker 1: trust fund, he had the means to construct one, and
5:39
Speaker 1: so he left college and went back to his home.
5:41
Speaker 1: He went down into the basement and he picked a
5:43
Speaker 1: spot right in the middle of the ground, and he
5:45
Speaker 1: began digging. Over the next two years, Daniel spent part
5:48
Speaker 1: of his time living at college being a really good student,
5:51
Speaker 1: and the other half of his time was spent living
5:52
Speaker 1: at his family home, hiring different contractors to come in
5:56
Speaker 1: and dig out this massive labyrinth of tunnels underneath his property.
5:59
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and twelve, his schoolwork and his
6:01
Speaker 1: tunnel work had to come to a complete stop because
6:04
Speaker 1: he got in trouble with the law. Professors at Daniel's
6:06
Speaker 1: school began reporting that somebody was sneaking into their office,
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Speaker 1: hacking into their computer and then sending these really inappropriate
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Speaker 1: and embarrassing emails to everybody in their contact lists, which
6:16
Speaker 1: was primarily former and current students and faculty, and then
6:19
Speaker 1: whoever it was that was hacking their computer was then
6:22
Speaker 1: super gluing their door shut. After several months of investigating,
6:25
Speaker 1: the police finally got a suspect when students on campus said, yeah,
6:29
Speaker 1: Daniel Beckwitt is actually a prolific hacker, and he just
6:32
Speaker 1: spoke at a hacker conference, so he seems like someone
6:35
Speaker 1: who would be capable of doing this, And so a
6:37
Speaker 1: detective went to Daniel's apartment to pay him a casual visit,
6:40
Speaker 1: but Daniel wasn't there or didn't come to the door,
6:43
Speaker 1: and the detective looked down and saw a package that
6:45
Speaker 1: was sitting there that was addressed to s. Loomis Dettweiler.
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Speaker 1: The detective believed this could be an alias for Daniel Beckwitt,
6:52
Speaker 1: and so he went back and they ran that name,
6:54
Speaker 1: and sure enough it was connected to an online persona
6:57
Speaker 1: that had recently been bragging about breaking into their professor's
7:00
Speaker 1: offices and hacking into their emails. So the police used
7:02
Speaker 1: this information to attain a search warrant. They went back
7:05
Speaker 1: to Daniel's apartment. He wasn't there. They used the key
7:08
Speaker 1: they'd been given for the unit. They went inside, and
7:10
Speaker 1: their hit with just this ridiculous mess of an apartment.
7:13
Speaker 1: It looked exactly like Daniel's home growing up, with stacks
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Speaker 1: of papers and books and wires and computer equipment and
7:19
Speaker 1: trash and old food containers, and there was just this
7:22
Speaker 1: dirty mattress sitting right in the middle of the apartment
7:24
Speaker 1: with no sheets on it. And in the back, on
7:26
Speaker 1: top of a mini fridge was Daniel's laptop. It was
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Speaker 1: open and it was unsecured, so they logged into it,
7:31
Speaker 1: cloned his hard drive, and left, and using the information
7:34
Speaker 1: that was contained on this hard drive, detectives were able
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Speaker 1: to without a doubt connect Daniel to the vandalism and
7:39
Speaker 1: hacking that had been taking place at his college. Daniel
7:42
Speaker 1: was arrested and charged with a number of serious felonies,
7:45
Speaker 1: but shortly before his trial, Daniel struck a plea deal
7:48
Speaker 1: and then immediately took to Reddit to tell the world
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Speaker 1: that he fully expected the state governor to pardon him
7:54
Speaker 1: because he had made a number of significant contributions to
7:56
Speaker 1: his campaign, but that pardon never came. However, Daniel's sentence
8:00
Speaker 1: was remarkably light. He was ordered to pay twenty three
8:03
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in restitution to the college, and then was
8:05
Speaker 1: given two years of probation. Daniel was expelled from a school,
8:08
Speaker 1: and so he moved back into his childhood home, where
8:11
Speaker 1: he lived alone full time. Once home, Daniel focused his
8:14
Speaker 1: efforts on this bunker he was building in his basement,
8:16
Speaker 1: which by now was a fairly large series of tunnels
8:19
Speaker 1: that zigged and zagged in different directions well beyond his
8:22
Speaker 1: property lines. Once Daniel hired a couple good contractors to
8:25
Speaker 1: continue to expand this bunker, he turned his attention to
8:28
Speaker 1: a new activity, bitcoin trading, and in relative short order
8:31
Speaker 1: Daniel became extremely good at this and made millions of
8:34
Speaker 1: dollars by twenty fifteen, Daniel was off probation. His bunker
8:38
Speaker 1: was almost completely built out, although he did have plans
8:40
Speaker 1: at some point to hire more people than continue to
8:43
Speaker 1: expand it. And in terms of bitcoin day trading, he
8:45
Speaker 1: wasn't doing it as much because he had made so
8:47
Speaker 1: much money. Now he just spent his time sitting inside
8:50
Speaker 1: of his bunker live streaming on this new website called
8:53
Speaker 1: Blab about his investment prowess. And every time Daniel livestreamed,
8:57
Speaker 1: he was cautious to never reveal his identity, and he
9:00
Speaker 1: used the username three Alarm Lampscooter, and he wore a
9:03
Speaker 1: large fire protection hood over his face, and he used
9:06
Speaker 1: a voice changer. Within his small but avid following on Blab,
9:10
Speaker 1: there was one nineteen year old named Oskia Kaffra who
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Speaker 1: completely idolized Daniel, even though he only knew him as
9:17
Speaker 1: three Alarm. Oscio was from a middle class home and
9:19
Speaker 1: he was the son of immigrants from Trinidad. He also
9:22
Speaker 1: lived only fifteen minutes away from Daniel, but he didn't
9:25
Speaker 1: know that because Daniel never gave up where he lived
9:27
Speaker 1: because he was so obsessed with protecting himself against a
9:30
Speaker 1: potential nuclear attack. He just told people he lived in
9:33
Speaker 1: some underground bunker in the middle of Virginia somewhere. Oskia
9:36
Speaker 1: longed to be successful and rich, which is part of
9:39
Speaker 1: the reason he idolized Daniel so much. When he was
9:41
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, he received a one hundred thousand dollars
9:44
Speaker 1: settlement for a lead poisoning case, and he for a
9:47
Speaker 1: second got to live the life of someone rich and famous,
9:50
Speaker 1: and he blew it immediately on expensive dinners and rented
9:53
Speaker 1: Mercedes and BMW cars, and once the money was all gone,
9:57
Speaker 1: he was certain he could get it all back. In
9:59
Speaker 1: his big is, he was going to build an app
10:02
Speaker 1: called equity Shark, which is basically crowdfunding that allowed people
10:05
Speaker 1: to invest small amounts of money into new, promising startups.
10:08
Speaker 1: And he believed this app was going to be the
10:11
Speaker 1: way he made not millions, but billions of dollars. But
10:14
Speaker 1: he didn't have any real money to fund this app,
10:17
Speaker 1: and so he and his business partner applied for a
10:19
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars grant for young entrepreneurs that have
10:22
Speaker 1: dropped out of college, something Oscia had just done, and
10:25
Speaker 1: they were certain they were going to get this grant.
10:28
Speaker 1: But despite Oskia's confidence, he was far from a sure
10:31
Speaker 1: bet for this money, because Oskia still had many of
10:33
Speaker 1: the blind spots of someone still learning how to become
10:36
Speaker 1: an adult, and one of his biggest blind spots was
10:38
Speaker 1: how quick he was to trust people. And so it
10:40
Speaker 1: was shortly after Oskia and his business partner had applied
10:43
Speaker 1: for this one hundred thousand dollars grant that Oskia came
10:46
Speaker 1: across Daniel on Blab and he was so taken with him.
10:49
Speaker 1: Then he's got all this money and he's so successful,
10:51
Speaker 1: And that's when Daniel told his followers that he was
10:53
Speaker 1: open to new investments, and so Oskia, who wanted to
10:56
Speaker 1: get closer to Daniel, and figured he could use some
10:58
Speaker 1: additional money because even when they got this one hundred
11:01
Speaker 1: thousand dollars grant, they would need more money to build
11:04
Speaker 1: the business. He decided he would ask Daniel if he
11:07
Speaker 1: and his business partner could pitch him on equity Shark,
11:09
Speaker 1: and Daniel agreed, and so in June of twenty sixteen,
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Speaker 1: Oskia and his business partner went to this hookah bar
11:15
Speaker 1: that was about twenty minutes away from Oskia's home, and
11:18
Speaker 1: there they sat waiting for a three alarm lampscooter to
11:21
Speaker 1: walk through the door, and they didn't know what he
11:23
Speaker 1: was going to look like because whenever they saw him
11:25
Speaker 1: on his live streams, he had that big fire protection
11:27
Speaker 1: hood on. But as soon as Daniel walked through the door,
11:30
Speaker 1: they immediately knew it was him because he had this
11:32
Speaker 1: comically bulky shirt on where it was obvious he had
11:36
Speaker 1: a bulletproof vest on. And so this guy with the
11:38
Speaker 1: bulletproof vest walks over, introduces himself as three Alarm aka Daniel,
11:43
Speaker 1: and so by now Oskia and his business partner are
11:45
Speaker 1: very accustomed to three alarms eccentricities like his bulletproof vest
11:49
Speaker 1: they just kind of overlook it and begin pitching him
11:51
Speaker 1: on Equity Shark, and they tell him that the success
11:54
Speaker 1: of the company, they believe is hinged on this one
11:57
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars grant that they explained they are certain
12:00
Speaker 1: to get. They meet all the parameters, they are exactly
12:02
Speaker 1: what they're looking for, and at the end of the conversation,
12:05
Speaker 1: Daniel was convinced that not only were they going to
12:07
Speaker 1: get this one hundred thousand dollars grant, but that Equity
12:10
Speaker 1: Sharks seemed like a great investment, and so after a
12:12
Speaker 1: number of follow on meetings, Daniel ultimately committed five thousand
12:15
Speaker 1: dollars to Equity Shark, and he told Oskia that they
12:18
Speaker 1: would have to pay him back with the funds from
12:20
Speaker 1: the one hundred thousand dollars grant, or that for some
12:23
Speaker 1: reason that didn't come through, Oskia and his business partner
12:27
Speaker 1: would have to find it another way to pay back Daniel.
12:29
Speaker 1: Oskia and his business partner were totally thrilled. They felt
12:32
Speaker 1: like that one hundred thousand dollars grant is a done deal,
12:35
Speaker 1: so there's no risk to this investment by Daniel. And
12:38
Speaker 1: shortly after they secured the five thousand dollars, the manager
12:42
Speaker 1: of the one hundred thousand dollars grant program called Oskia
12:45
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you guys have made it to the
12:47
Speaker 1: second round of applicants. We need you to fly out
12:49
Speaker 1: to San Francisco and pitch your company to us. And
12:52
Speaker 1: so they're totally excited. They tell Daniel that everything's progressing
12:55
Speaker 1: exactly as they planned, and then they fly out to
12:57
Speaker 1: the West coast, but they booked their flight to lax
13:01
Speaker 1: not to the airport in San Francisco, so they land
13:04
Speaker 1: four hundred miles south of where they needed to be,
13:07
Speaker 1: and so they're cussing themselves for being so stupid about this,
13:09
Speaker 1: and they realize they can't even rent a car. They're
13:12
Speaker 1: not old enough to rent a car, but they were
13:14
Speaker 1: old enough to rent a U haul. So they rent
13:16
Speaker 1: this huge U haul and they start bombing up the
13:19
Speaker 1: codst towards San Francisco to make this meeting in time,
13:22
Speaker 1: but they plugged the wrong address into their GPS and
13:25
Speaker 1: did not go to the right building. They went in
13:26
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, and so by the time they finally
13:29
Speaker 1: got all the way back to the meeting place in
13:31
Speaker 1: San Francisco, it was too late, and the manager that
13:34
Speaker 1: was waiting for them was clearly upset about it and
13:36
Speaker 1: said just go home. We'll be in touch by phone
13:39
Speaker 1: back home. Oscio was totally embarrassed when he told Daniel
13:41
Speaker 1: about their botched trip, and he was convinced that they
13:44
Speaker 1: were not going to get the grant now because of
13:46
Speaker 1: how badly they had screwed up the meeting, and so
13:49
Speaker 1: Oskio began asking Daniel if he would give them more money,
13:52
Speaker 1: because maybe if they use that additional money to bolster
13:55
Speaker 1: the app and make it more appealing. They will have
13:57
Speaker 1: a better chance at getting that one hundred thousand dollars
13:59
Speaker 1: grand Daniel eventually said he would commit more money, but
14:02
Speaker 1: Oskia picked up that he was really hesitant and just
14:05
Speaker 1: seemed not to be very interested in Equity Shark anymore,
14:08
Speaker 1: and so Oskia, hoping to stay in Daniel's good graces
14:11
Speaker 1: and wanting to make sure he was confident in this investment,
14:14
Speaker 1: he said, Hey, let me do something for you. I
14:16
Speaker 1: heard on one of the channels online that you're looking
14:18
Speaker 1: to expand some of the tunnels inside of your bunker.
14:20
Speaker 1: Let me do that for you. Daniel, who was looking
14:23
Speaker 1: to expand his bunker, was eager to hire Oskia, but
14:26
Speaker 1: he told him that if you're going to work for me,
14:28
Speaker 1: there's going to be heavy restrictions on how this goes
14:31
Speaker 1: because it's the very secret location. I don't want this
14:33
Speaker 1: to leak out. You know where my bunker is, because,
14:35
Speaker 1: as you know, there's going to be a nuclear attack
14:38
Speaker 1: on the United States any day, and my bunker is
14:40
Speaker 1: one of the only places that's going to be safe.
14:42
Speaker 1: Oskia said that was totally fine. He would do whatever
14:44
Speaker 1: Daniel needed. So on January twenty eighth, twenty seventeen, and
14:48
Speaker 1: just after two am, Oskia sat outside his house waiting
14:51
Speaker 1: for some car to come pick him up. And at
14:53
Speaker 1: some point Daniel showed up in a mini van and
14:55
Speaker 1: he walked up to Oskia. He led him into the
14:57
Speaker 1: van and then he put goggles that were blacked out
14:59
Speaker 1: on hi head, and then Daniel drove around in loops
15:02
Speaker 1: up on the highway and background neighborhoods, giving the impression
15:05
Speaker 1: to Oskia that they were actually going somewhere far outside
15:08
Speaker 1: of Maryland, but really they were only going fifteen minutes
15:11
Speaker 1: away to Daniel's actual house. And when they got to
15:13
Speaker 1: Daniel's house, Daniel made Oskia keep the goggles on. Daniel
15:17
Speaker 1: got out and he led Oskia by a string into
15:20
Speaker 1: the house, and once they got inside, Daniel had to
15:22
Speaker 1: carefully walk him around all the junk that was piled
15:25
Speaker 1: up all over the house. They made their way all
15:27
Speaker 1: the way to the back. They went down the stairs
15:28
Speaker 1: into the basement where Daniel had intentionally created this unbelievable
15:32
Speaker 1: maze all over the basement floor with chicken wire and
15:35
Speaker 1: stacks of bikes and books and more chunk. There was
15:38
Speaker 1: designed so anybody who was working inside of the tunnels
15:41
Speaker 1: that even once they came out of the exit wouldn't
15:43
Speaker 1: even know how to get out of the basement. And finally,
15:46
Speaker 1: after bringing Oskia all the way through this maze, he
15:48
Speaker 1: stopped him right in front of this hole in the
15:50
Speaker 1: ground that was the entrance into the underground tunnels. And
15:53
Speaker 1: at that point he told Oskia to remove his goggles.
15:55
Speaker 1: Daniel told him to hop down and take a look.
15:57
Speaker 1: So Oscio hopped down and he's looking around and he's
16:00
Speaker 1: seen these massive tunnel systems pushing out in all directions,
16:03
Speaker 1: and all of it is extremely well lit, and he
16:06
Speaker 1: couldn't believe what he was looking at. And he's looking
16:07
Speaker 1: at Daniel like how far does this go? And Daniel said,
16:10
Speaker 1: it's huge. It was at this point that Daniel handed
16:13
Speaker 1: down to Oscia a pickaxe, a shovel, and a hard hat.
16:15
Speaker 1: Then he explained to him that anytime you're in the tunnels,
16:18
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to cover over this hole because I
16:21
Speaker 1: can't even have you in the basement. It's too much
16:22
Speaker 1: of a security threat for me. And in fact, I'd
16:25
Speaker 1: prefer it if you worked multiple days in a row
16:27
Speaker 1: because anytime you leave, we're gonna have to do the
16:29
Speaker 1: whole blindfold thing. And so you should anticipate living in
16:33
Speaker 1: the tunnels four days at a stretch. But don't worry.
16:35
Speaker 1: There's a mattress down there, there's Wi Fi. Everything's well
16:38
Speaker 1: lit up, and there's a five gallon bucket if you
16:40
Speaker 1: need to go to the bathroom. And so Oskia, who
16:42
Speaker 1: trusted Daniel, didn't love this setup, but in a weird way,
16:46
Speaker 1: he was just kind of excited to be a part
16:48
Speaker 1: of this guy's life, this guy who he believed was
16:50
Speaker 1: just this really amazing person. And so over the following
16:53
Speaker 1: winter and spring, Oscio would make the blindfold commute all
16:56
Speaker 1: the way to Daniel's house fifteen minutes away, and then
16:59
Speaker 1: he would spend multiple days down in the tunnel, chiseling
17:02
Speaker 1: away into these different tunnels that Daniel wanted expanded. But
17:05
Speaker 1: as well as it was going working for Daniel, Oskio
17:08
Speaker 1: was dealt some bad news at the end of the spring,
17:10
Speaker 1: when it turned out Equity Shark was turned down for
17:12
Speaker 1: that one hundred thousand dollars grant. Oskio was surprised. He
17:15
Speaker 1: was crushed, and he now knew he would have to
17:18
Speaker 1: pay back that five thousand dollars that Daniel had invested
17:21
Speaker 1: an equity shark because he wasn't getting it from one
17:23
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars anymore, and so he asked Daniel if
17:26
Speaker 1: he could increase his hours in the tunnel to try
17:28
Speaker 1: to pay back that debt. Daniel agreed, and so on
17:31
Speaker 1: September tenth, Oskio was back at Daniel's house and he
17:34
Speaker 1: was down inside the tunnels in one of the lowest
17:35
Speaker 1: sections that required squeezing through a very narrow section that
17:39
Speaker 1: Oskia had actually texted his friends about and said that
17:42
Speaker 1: section made him really claustrophobic, but he had to do it.
17:45
Speaker 1: He needed to pay back the debt. And so later
17:47
Speaker 1: that day at four pm, when Oskio was down in
17:50
Speaker 1: that lower section, the power in the tunnel suddenly went
17:53
Speaker 1: completely out, pitch black, and so Daniel, who was upstairs,
17:56
Speaker 1: recognized it happened, and so he navigated where the junk
17:59
Speaker 1: upstairs came down downstairs, navigated the maze all the way
18:02
Speaker 1: to the circuit breaker in the basement, and he flipped
18:04
Speaker 1: the switch and the power went on, but Daniel heard
18:07
Speaker 1: a loud buzzing sound coming from upstairs in the kitchen
18:10
Speaker 1: and so worried that could be an electrical fire. He
18:12
Speaker 1: turned back off the circuit breaker, putting Askia back in
18:15
Speaker 1: total darkness down deep inside of this tunnel. And Daniel
18:18
Speaker 1: went back through this really epic maze in the basement,
18:21
Speaker 1: went up the stairs into the kitchen to investigate the
18:23
Speaker 1: buzzing sound, and as soon as he left the basement,
18:26
Speaker 1: he could smell smoke. And he turned around and looked
18:29
Speaker 1: down into the basement and he could clearly see smoke
18:32
Speaker 1: was filling the basement, and so Daniel ran downstairs and
18:35
Speaker 1: he yelled out for Oskia, and some were way down
18:38
Speaker 1: in the tunnels. He heard oske yell out, hey, dude,
18:40
Speaker 1: what's going on? And Daniel's like, come on, you gotta
18:43
Speaker 1: get out of there. But he was totally overcome with smoke,
18:46
Speaker 1: and Daniel had to run back upstairs, ran outside, he
18:49
Speaker 1: caught his breath, and then he charged back into the
18:51
Speaker 1: house down into the basement. But as soon as he
18:54
Speaker 1: got to the bottom of the stairs, he didn't see Oskia,
18:56
Speaker 1: but he saw flames leaping out of the entrance into
18:59
Speaker 1: the tounnels, and he knew Oscio was down there, and
19:02
Speaker 1: he's screaming for Oskia to get out, get out, but
19:04
Speaker 1: he didn't hear from him. And at some point Daniel
19:07
Speaker 1: just had to turn around and leave because he was
19:08
Speaker 1: totally overcome with the heat and the smoke. A neighbor
19:11
Speaker 1: saw Daniel come running out. They saw the smoke coming
19:13
Speaker 1: out of his house, and so they called nine one one,
19:15
Speaker 1: and so while Daniel paced outside screaming for Oscia, Oskia
19:19
Speaker 1: is down in total darkness. There's smoke filling up the tunnels,
19:23
Speaker 1: and he began making his way across that very tight section.
19:26
Speaker 1: But once he got out of there, he had no
19:28
Speaker 1: idea where to go because this tunnel system was huge,
19:31
Speaker 1: and all the power was out. So it's pitch black
19:33
Speaker 1: and there's smoke inside of the tunnel, and so he
19:36
Speaker 1: desperately starts crawling all over the tunnel. He's sitting dead ends,
19:39
Speaker 1: and finally, miraculously he makes it to the exit of
19:42
Speaker 1: the tunnels. Everything around him is on fire. He leaps out,
19:46
Speaker 1: but now he's in a basement that's covered in smoke.
19:48
Speaker 1: And every time he had been led to that point
19:50
Speaker 1: in the basement, he had been blindfolded. He didn't know
19:53
Speaker 1: how to navigate the maze, and so he's looking out
19:55
Speaker 1: and it's all smoky, and all he can see is
19:58
Speaker 1: there's one window on the far side that he might
20:00
Speaker 1: be able to get to, and so he starts leaping
20:02
Speaker 1: over the chicken wire and the bikes and sneaks past
20:05
Speaker 1: a furnace and it's just flames and smoke all around him,
20:08
Speaker 1: and he gets to this little shimmer of light which
20:10
Speaker 1: is the window, except he realizes there had been metal
20:13
Speaker 1: bars placed in front of it. There's no way to
20:15
Speaker 1: get through it. But in his desperation, he grabbed a
20:17
Speaker 1: rolli chair and he put it in front. He climbed
20:19
Speaker 1: on top, and he managed to break the glass so
20:21
Speaker 1: that he couldn't get through the bars, and eventually, after
20:24
Speaker 1: a number of agonizing minutes, he fell backwards and was
20:27
Speaker 1: consumed by the flames. After the fire was finally put
20:30
Speaker 1: out and Oskia's body was finally found inside of the
20:33
Speaker 1: basement underneath that window, investigators didn't understand how Oskia couldn't
20:38
Speaker 1: have gotten out of the basement, and Daniel tried to
20:40
Speaker 1: lie about it and say, oh, well, he might have
20:42
Speaker 1: been asleep, you know, that's his bachelor pad down there.
20:44
Speaker 1: But eventually, as investigators were looking for the cause of
20:47
Speaker 1: the fire. They uncovered the entrance to this massive tunnel system,
20:51
Speaker 1: and that's when they realized Daniel had put Oskia effectively
20:55
Speaker 1: into a depth trap. When the fire started, Oskio was
20:58
Speaker 1: at the bottom of this tunnel system, and so he
21:00
Speaker 1: had to navigate all the way back up to the top,
21:02
Speaker 1: killing all this precious time as the fire grows. And
21:05
Speaker 1: then he finally got into the basement and there's flames everywhere,
21:08
Speaker 1: but he has no idea how to navigate the maze
21:11
Speaker 1: Daniel had made down there, and so he managed to
21:13
Speaker 1: get to the window because it was the only thing
21:15
Speaker 1: he could see, But of course Daniel had put bars
21:17
Speaker 1: in front of it, and so Oscia had nowhere else
21:20
Speaker 1: to go, and he just died. The investigators would point
21:22
Speaker 1: out that where he died, he was only two steps
21:25
Speaker 1: away from almost certain safety. He just didn't know it.
21:28
Speaker 1: After an eight month investigation, prosecutors charged Daniel with involuntary
21:32
Speaker 1: manslaughter as well as one of the rarest charges in
21:35
Speaker 1: the American justice system. It's called second degree depraved heart murder,
21:40
Speaker 1: where Daniel's disregard for human life was so extreme it
21:43
Speaker 1: amounted to Wilfuld killing and so he was sentenced to
21:46
Speaker 1: nine years in prison. So that's going to do it. Guys.
21:48
Speaker 1: If you found the secret in today's episode, let us
21:50
Speaker 1: know in the comments what it is and where you
21:52
Speaker 1: found it. So give us the timestamp and if the
21:55
Speaker 1: first to do that, we'll pin you at the top
21:56
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21:59
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