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Stranger Danger · 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: Have you ever wondered what happens to a commercial airliner
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  Speaker 1: when it's retired from service? Well, for those curious enough
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  Speaker 1: to ask, you'll find that there are a wide variety
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  Speaker 1: of jobs these planes can be pressed into after they're
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  Speaker 1: done ferrying passengers, and not all of these jobs are legal.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, one infamous airliner eight four four AA ended
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  Speaker 1: up causing an international incident. Maury Joseph is a Florida
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  Speaker 1: based CEO of an airline leasing company, and in February
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  Speaker 1: of two thousand and two, he came into possession of
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  Speaker 1: a Boeing seven twenty seven tail number as I said,
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  Speaker 1: eight four four AA, recently retired from American Airlines. He
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  Speaker 1: was approached by a South African entrepreneur, Keith Irwin, who
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  Speaker 1: had been hired by a joint partnership of airline interests
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  Speaker 1: in Africa, looking to make money transporting fuel by air
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  Speaker 1: to diamond mines in Angola. A civil war had broken
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  Speaker 1: out in the country and transporting fuel by car had
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  Speaker 1: become too dangerous. Both Morey and Irwin had thixed skins
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  Speaker 1: and were used to conducting business in third world nations
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  Speaker 1: with these kind of problems. They also weren't afraid of
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  Speaker 1: working with industries that some people might find distasteful, such
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  Speaker 1: as the diamond trade. Maury sold Irwin the seven forty
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  Speaker 1: seven for one million dollars, but accepted a down payment
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  Speaker 1: of just one hundre undred and twenty five thousand, with
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  Speaker 1: further installments to follow once the fuel shipments got to underway.
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  Speaker 1: Maury even sent a business associate with Irwin to Angola
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  Speaker 1: to make sure that things went smoothly. But from the
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  Speaker 1: get go things were anything but smooth. Irwin and his
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  Speaker 1: flight crew were subjected to harsh conditions in Angola. They
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  Speaker 1: slept in terrible housing with no running water or electricity.
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  Speaker 1: They also felt unsafe. Practically everyone in the city carried
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  Speaker 1: in AK forty seven. They were stuck in limbo as
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  Speaker 1: they waited for their clients at one of the mines
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  Speaker 1: to process their passports and get them licenses to operate
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  Speaker 1: the seven forty seven in Angola airspace. At one point
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  Speaker 1: they feared that they would never get their passports back
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  Speaker 1: and would be stuck in the country forever. Eventually, though,
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  Speaker 1: their passports were returned, but some of Irwin's crew had
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  Speaker 1: already had enough and they returned to the States. Even worse,
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  Speaker 1: the client at the diamond mine wasn't paying up for
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  Speaker 1: expenses a crewed. Thus far, Erwin had to accept his
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  Speaker 1: losses and negotiate a new deal with a new client.
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  Speaker 1: Erwin and what remained of the crew started flying missions
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  Speaker 1: delivering fuel to diamond mines in Angola. It was dangerous work.
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  Speaker 1: They had to maintain as high in altitude as possible
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  Speaker 1: until the very last second before landing to avoid being
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  Speaker 1: hit by gunfire from the war, and there were no
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  Speaker 1: paved landing strips at these mines. They were making extremely
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  Speaker 1: bumpy landings at dirt airfields. Before long, most of Irwin's
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  Speaker 1: crew had given up and gone home, including Maury Joseph's representative.
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  Speaker 1: The operative had failed to make a return on Moury's investment,
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  Speaker 1: and he wanted his plane back. Eight four to four
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  Speaker 1: double A would sit in a hangar in Angola for months,
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  Speaker 1: slowly deteriorating and accumulating storage fees, and so eventually Maury,
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  Speaker 1: our Airline CEO, traveled with an associate of his, ben Paedia,
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  Speaker 1: to Angola, whose job it was to prepare the air
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  Speaker 1: aircraft for the flight to South Africa, where it would
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  Speaker 1: be finally sold off. Maury flew ahead to finalize the deal,
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  Speaker 1: but on May twenty sixth of two thousand and three,
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  Speaker 1: he received a disturbing phone call. The aircraft and ben
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  Speaker 1: Paedia had disappeared. It was last seen making erratic movements
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  Speaker 1: on the runway in Angola before making an unauthorized takeoff
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  Speaker 1: over the Atlantic, and Maury wasn't just mad, he was
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  Speaker 1: also scared. Losing track of a plane that size and
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  Speaker 1: that valuable had serious consequences. This was even more true
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  Speaker 1: in the years immediately following the September eleventh, two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and one attacks. He had to contact the FBI and
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  Speaker 1: the Homeland Security, who in turn contacted every single US
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  Speaker 1: embassy in Africa to let them note to be on
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  Speaker 1: the lookout for the missing plane. Everyone was afraid that
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  Speaker 1: the plane had been co opted by terrorists. Fortunately, an
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  Speaker 1: attack never came, but that left one of the biggest
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  Speaker 1: mysteries in aviation history happened to the plane. Most people
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  Speaker 1: close to Ben Padilla believe that he wouldn't have stolen it.
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  Speaker 1: He was a simple airline engineer. It seems more likely
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  Speaker 1: that criminals from Angola might have attacked the plane with
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  Speaker 1: him on board and taken it into a remote area
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  Speaker 1: for disassembly. It's also possible that whoever hijacked the plane
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  Speaker 1: never made it to their destination and crashed into the ocean.
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  Speaker 1: This is one curious tale that will remain that way.
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  Speaker 1: No trace of eight four four double A has ever
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  Speaker 1: been found. It's the largest missing aircraft in world history.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever you think of Maury Irwin Ben and the plane
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  Speaker 1: cargo business, it seems like surely there has to be
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  Speaker 1: an easier way to make a living. As anyone from
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  Speaker 1: a small town will tell you not to. Everyone is
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  Speaker 1: so welcoming to outsiders. People are wary of strangers. Newcomers
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  Speaker 1: can feel isolated, unwanted, or even outright disliked, and such
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  Speaker 1: was the case for Teodor Glava, a Romanian immigrant who
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  Speaker 1: moved to the small town of Lafayette, Colorado, in nineteen fourteen.
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  Speaker 1: Born in Lesnik in eighteen seventy seven. Glava led a
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  Speaker 1: brutal life working in marble minds belonging to the Austro
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  Speaker 1: Hungarian Empire. This work was dangerous, physically demanding, and of
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  Speaker 1: course it paid very little, so he came to America
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  Speaker 1: with nothing, hoping to find better work mining coal there.
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  Speaker 1: Glava eventually planned to send for his wife and daughter,
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  Speaker 1: whom he had left behind in Romania. When he arrived
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  Speaker 1: in Colorado, Glava was emaciated from years of backbreaking work
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  Speaker 1: and his difficult voyage, and the fact that he was
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  Speaker 1: so tall didn't really help. His skin was pale after
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  Speaker 1: years of working in the marble quarries and months in
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  Speaker 1: a cramp ship's cabin. Today we would consider him a
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  Speaker 1: sickly looking man. To the townspeople of Lafayette in nineteen fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: though he looked straight out of every vampire legend they
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  Speaker 1: had come to fear Tiotoglava's story came to a tragic
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  Speaker 1: end only four years after his arrival. The Spanish flu
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  Speaker 1: pandemic wiped out hundreds of people in the nearby town
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  Speaker 1: of Boulder, and the disease reached Lafayette shortly after. Glava
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  Speaker 1: and many other coal miners stood almost no chance. Remember
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  Speaker 1: this was before the age of vaccination. The cold and
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  Speaker 1: unsafe working conditions meant that their immune systems were already weak,
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  Speaker 1: and tragically, he passed away in December of nineteen eighteen
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  Speaker 1: before he ever got a chance to send for his
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  Speaker 1: family back home. And this is where the story of
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  Speaker 1: tiotoor Glava comes to an end and the legend of
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  Speaker 1: the Lafayette Vampire is born. You see, because Glava had
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  Speaker 1: been ignored and isolated for so long, no one really
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  Speaker 1: knew much about him. The absence of his family and
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  Speaker 1: the poverty he died in meant but there was no
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  Speaker 1: money for a proper burial, and as a result, he
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  Speaker 1: was buried in the paupers section of the Lafayette Cemetery
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  Speaker 1: with a headstone hastily carved using the pointed end of
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  Speaker 1: a trowel and cheap cement. Glavaz headstone also inaccurately listed
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  Speaker 1: his birthplace as Transylvania, the birthplace, as we know, of
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  Speaker 1: literature's most famous vampire, Dracula, with influenza killing dozens of
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  Speaker 1: others in Lafayette, Though, people in town became desperate for
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  Speaker 1: someone to blame when they spotted Glava's strangely scrawled headstone
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  Speaker 1: and that terrifying word Transylvania. They recalled the pale, lanky
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  Speaker 1: stranger who had wandered into their midst so recently, and
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  Speaker 1: hatched a plan to rid themselves of this pandemic. They
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  Speaker 1: would need to dig up and kill the vampire. That winter,
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  Speaker 1: residents bundled up against the Colorado snow and made their
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  Speaker 1: way to the cemetery. Once there, they found his grave,
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  Speaker 1: and they started to dig. What they found in glavas Coffin,
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  Speaker 1: confirmed all of the worst fears. He looked nothing short
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  Speaker 1: of monstrous. His hair and fingernails had continued to grow,
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  Speaker 1: which they took for proof of his undead nature. Glava's
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  Speaker 1: gums had pulled back away from his teeth, making them
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  Speaker 1: appear longer and more pointed. Moreover, his body looked almost
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  Speaker 1: completely unchanged from the day he had died. In short,
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  Speaker 1: he looked exactly like the vampire legends they had heard
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  Speaker 1: all their lives. Now, as any mortician will tell you,
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  Speaker 1: these changes to Glava's body were not supernatural at all.
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  Speaker 1: Skin and gums shrink after a person dies and begins
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  Speaker 1: to decompose, making hair, nails, and teeth appear longer, especially
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  Speaker 1: without the modern embalming processes we have today. And then
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  Speaker 1: there was Glava's unchanged appearance. Without any money to pay
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  Speaker 1: for a proper burial, he had been placed in the
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  Speaker 1: cheapest coffin available and buried in a shallow grave by
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  Speaker 1: a caretaker, possibly the same guy who had carved his
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  Speaker 1: headstone out of cement. The winter weather had kept Glava's
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  Speaker 1: body well preserved, which explains why he looked almost the
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  Speaker 1: same as the day he died. Of course, to the
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  Speaker 1: people of Lafayette, they had no way of knowing this,
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  Speaker 1: and they hadn't trudged to the cemetery in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of the freezy night in search of rational explanations. Once
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  Speaker 1: they had dug up Glava's body, one of the locals
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  Speaker 1: plunged a wooden steak right through the supposed vampire's heart,
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  Speaker 1: and then, satisfied that they had rid themselves of the
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  Speaker 1: source of their bad luck, they went home. One can
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  Speaker 1: only imagine their surprise when a flourishing sapling appeared directly
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  Speaker 1: over Glava's grave that spring. The wooden steak intended to
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  Speaker 1: kill the vampire had taken root and grown into something beautiful. Nowadays,
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  Speaker 1: Glava has become a legend in Lafayette and around the
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  Speaker 1: United States. His grave, with the same poorly carved headstone,
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  Speaker 1: is covered in roses, trinkets, money, and souvenirs from his
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  Speaker 1: home country of Romania, and the tree is over a
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  Speaker 1: century old now and still growing. Passer buyers probably think
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  Speaker 1: that they're seeing the final resting place of a beloved
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  Speaker 1: local resident, but have no idea that they're actually looking
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  Speaker 1: at the legendary vampire of Lafayette. I hope you've enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
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  Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
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  Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
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  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.