Latest / Crime and Horror / PLACES You Can't Go Edition Vol. 2

Transcript

PLACES You Can't Go Edition Vol. 2 · Crime and Horror

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today, we have a special bonus video for you guys.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's a collection of five fan favorite episodes that are
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: all about places you can't go and people who went
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: there anyways. They have all been totally remastered, so even
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: if you have seen or heard any of these stories before,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: this will be like a brand new viewing experience. But
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: before we get into those five stories, if you're a
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: then you come to the right place, because that's all
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: we do, and we upload once a week. So if
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: that's of interest to you, please secretly paint over the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: like buttons. iPhone camera was see through paint so their
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: face ID never works. Also, please subscribe to our channel
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's stories.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Sebnica is a gorgeous town right in the heart of Slovenia,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: situated right along the Sava River, which is one of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the longest rivers in Europe. The section of the Sava
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: that flows past Sevnica was a popular destination for kayakers
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and canoeists up until two thousand and eight, when a
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: hydro electric dam was built across it, creating a sort
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of dead end for anyone trying to go through that
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: section of the river. They would have to stop at
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the dam, get out, walk around, and then pick up
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the river on the other side, or that would mark
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the end of their trip that day. In two thousand
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and eight, while this dam was still under construction, the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: mayor of Sevnica, who was in favor of the construction
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of this dam, he understood that this was kind of
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a bummer for the people in town. While the dam
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: itself was going to provide more electricity for the town,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it did kind of end an era, and so he
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: decided he would organize a final trip down the Sava
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: River past the dam while they could still go right
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: past it. And he was calling this trip the final
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and so he went all around town asking people if
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: they wanted to come, and he finally recruited twenty seven
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: other people to come with him on this final trip.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And so a few weeks later, on July third, after
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: all preparations were made, the mayor and the rest of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: his crew, they made their way upstream to this loading
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: area where four canoes have been set out for them
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and the staff people that had actually provided these canoes.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: They offered the group life jackets, and virtually everyone in
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the group turned it down. It's unclear why they turned
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: down the life jackets, but one could guess that, you know,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the river itself was incredibly calm, and they were not
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: expecting to be on the water for very long, and
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: so they just decided they didn't need one. And so,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: after all twenty eight people got into their canoes, seven
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: people per canoe, they pushed off the shore and they
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: began their slow trip down the river. And the mayor
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: had actually hired a photographer to come along with them
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to document their journey. So as soon as they take off,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the photographer is looking around taking pictures and filming. Weather
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: was beautiful and the water was calm, and everything was
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: just going really, really well. But fifteen or twenty minutes
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: into their journey, they turned this corner and they got
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a clear view of the dam, which was about a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: thousand feet away from them at the time. Now, the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: dam was not done yet, but it was pretty close
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to being done, and so the actual structure of the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: dam it was built, and so even from one thousand
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: feet away, it was very obvious to tell that up
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: ahead there's these big cement archways where the water flows
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: down over the dam, and the whole group pretty much
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: immediately saw they had a problem. The plan, according to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the mayor, had been they would get to this dam,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: but on the left side of the dam there was
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: going to be a strip of waterway that had not
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: been blocked off yet, because when this dam was complete,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: it would completely obstruct the river side to side. But
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: because it wasn't actually done yet, the construction crew had
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: told the mayor that, yep, the left side, there's going
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: to be an area where you can basically just casually
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: go right past. You won't go down the dam. It's
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: totally safe. But here this group is on the water
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: looking at the dam, and even from one thousand feet away,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it was obvious there was no sideway to get around
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the dam. You clearly had to go through the dam
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: or you had to get out and go around the dam. Now,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the river was moving very very slowly, there wasn't a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: strong current, and so there wasn't some urgent decision that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: needed to be made about what they were going to do.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: The group intuitively knew that the right choice here is
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: to go to the side get out your canoes and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: either go around or just end the trip right there.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: But the mayor and a few of the other people
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: in the other canoes got the idea that, hey, why
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: don't we just go over the dam. I know we're
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: not supposed to, and the construction crew explicitly said, don't
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: go over the dam. It's extremely dangerous. But from the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: looks of it, it didn't look that bad, and truthfully,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: it did not look too bad. This was not some
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: enormous dam with some huge drop off. It was actually
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a pretty small dam where the water kind of went
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: down this fairly small embankment. It was maybe ten or
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: fifteen feet long, and at the bottom of this embankment
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: was some semi rough water. But overall, it just looked
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: like it might be kind of fun to go down
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the dam, like you'd be going down a slide with
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: your canoe, And so the mayor was really keen on
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: doing this. He made it seem like it was going
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: to be fun, it was going to be an adventure.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So before long, three of the four canoes were fully
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: on board with the idea of just going over the dam.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: The fourth canoe that was not prepared to go over
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the dam had the photographer in it, and they said,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we're not comfortable with this, but we'll pull
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: up next to the dam and we'll just film you
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: guys going over the dam. It'll be really cool. And so,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: after making their plans about who was going to do what,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the four canoes continued down the river, and when they
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: got about maybe one or two hundred feet away from
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the entrance to this dam, the fourth canoe with the photographer,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: pulled off on the left side of the river. They
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: got out and the photographer lifted up his camera and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: he began filming the other three canoes as they made
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: their approach into the dam. Now, the video from this
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: photographer that was released to the public, it shows the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: first of these three canoes actually going into the dam,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and you see these seven people on this canoe. They're
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: kind of happy and excited looking. They have nervous anticipation,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: like they're about to start a roller coaster or something,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and they're making their way into this dark section inside
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of the dam. They're basically going through the gates of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the dam where they're going to go down this embankment.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And as they go into the darkness, as you begin
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to lose sight of them. You see the back end
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of the canoe suddenly pops up because now they're going
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: down the actual dam itself. They start sliding down and
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: then you hear someone in the canoe start to scream,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and then it goes completely silent, and then the video
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: just ends. That canoe right after it slid down that downslope.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: It would reach the waters below, but the canoe would capsize,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: throwing everyone on board into the water. And these seven people,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they didn't even have a chance to catch their breath
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: before they were sucked under, not only because the water
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: was rough at the bottom of the dam and kind
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of was churning and pulling them under, but also because
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: this is a hydro electric dam, and at the bottom
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of the dam, underneath the water where they were were
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: all these big openings to underwater tunnels, and these tunnels
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: functioned like back It pulled water down inside and then
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: ran the water past a turbine, causing it to spin,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and that would generate the electricity. That's what the dam
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: actually did, and so after the water was pushed past
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: this turbine, it would be jettisoned out somewhere else downstream. Now,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: even though this dam was not fully operational yet these
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: tunnels and the turbines at the bottom of them, they
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: were operational. So as these seven people are dumped into
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: these incredibly dangerous waters and they're getting pulled down towards
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: these tunnels the other two canoes, they have no idea
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: what's going on with this first canoe, and so they
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: just continue on and they go over the dam. The
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: second canoe that went down the dam, they also capsized
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: at the bottom. All seven occupants were thrown out and
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: they were stuck down underwater almost immediately. The third canoe
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that went over the dam, they did not capsize, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: so after they cleared the dam and kind of paddled away,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: they began looking around for the other two canoes that
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: should have already been down there, and there was nobody
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: out in front of them, and so they turned around,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: thinking maybe they're closer to the dam, and they don't
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: see anyone, but they see one of the canoes is
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: completely flipped over and the other canoe has been broken
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: apart in the churning waters right at the base of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the dam, and they see the wood from this canoe
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: just getting tumbled around, and so this third canoe immediately
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: turns and tries to paddle over to the base of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: this dam to try to start pulling people out of
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the water. But when they get over there, there's no
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: one there. The fourteen people that had been in these
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: two canoes, they're gone. Ultimately, thirteen of the fourteen people
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: that fell in the water that day would perish, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: one of the fatalities was the mayor. The only person
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: who survived who fell in the water was actually the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: mayor's wife, who by some miracle, managed to swim out
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: of the grasp of these tunnels under the water and
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: made it to shore. Over the next several days and weeks,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: police divers were able to eventually find all thirteen bodies,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: one of which had traveled twenty five miles away to Croatia.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: No information was given about the state of the bodies
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: when they were found, and so we don't know if
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: having been sucked down through these tunnels and forced past
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: these underwater turbines played a role in their death. All
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the public knows is that all or most of these
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: thirteen people were sucked down into these tunnels and then
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: they died. I have a major announcement. Ballen Studios, the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: home of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious has launched another
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: brand new show. It's called Late Nights with Nextpo. It
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: is totally free, it's a podcast, and it's hosted by
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: none other than Nexpo, who you might already know from YouTube,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: who's been around for many years. He's got millions of
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: subscribers on YouTube. He's got this incredible immersive storytelling style.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: So if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I know you're gonna like Late Nights with Nextpo and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the stories, the mysteries, the kind of bone chilling, crazy
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: stuff he's gonna cover on this podcast will be exclusive
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to the podcast, so you can't get these stories on
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: his YouTube channel. You can only get at them on
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: this ballin Studios production. Okay, so it's called Late Nights
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: with Nextpo. It comes out every Wednesday, and at the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: end of today's YouTube video, we're going to play you
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: a sneak peek of the first episode. But beyond that,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: after this YouTube video is over, you can just look
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: up Late Nights with Nexpo on any podcast platform and
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: you can listen today to the first two episodes because
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: they're live right now. So again, if you are a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: fan of the content you already get on this YouTube
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: channel The Strange, Dark and Mysterious. You're gonna love Late
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Nights with nextpo It's a free show out of ballin
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: studios every Wednesday. Enjoy. In the early nineteen eighties, John
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Harder was the classic athletic popular kid at his high
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: school in Delaware, Ohio, which is a relatively small town
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: just outside of the states capital. But unlike most stereotypes
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that paint high school jocks as being these total jerks
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: that bully people and they're kind of stupid, John was
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: none of those things. He was incredibly friendly and very
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: warm hearted and seemed to get along with everyone. John
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: also was known for having a great sense of humour.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: In particular, he liked to play these kind of harmless
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: pranks that would make people smile. At the time, he
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: very enthusiastically joined the cheerleaders during a high school pep rally,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: despite not actually being a cheerleader himself. John was set
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: to graduate from high school on June fifth, nineteen eighty three,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and his plan was to study accounting at Kent State
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: University the following year. A few weeks before his graduation,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: John's high school began selling these tickets to a grad
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: night at a huge amusement park called King's Island. King's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Island was located about two hours west of John's high school,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and it was home to dozens of roller coasters, water slides,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and many other attractions. During their so called grad nights,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this amusement park would shut down their public operations and
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: not let anybody into the park that did not have
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: these special student tickets that they gave to local area
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: high schools. John, who was seventeen years old at the time,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: was very excited at the idea of going to this
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: grad night, and so he went and purchased tickets along
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: with about twenty other students from his high school. At
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: about three thirty pm on Friday, May thirteenth, John and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the other students who had bought grad night tickets met
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: up outside of their high school. While this was a
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: school sponsored trip, these students were responsible for driving themselves
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to the park, and so after all the students were
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: accounted for, they all piled into a couple of their
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: cars and they began their journey to the park. After
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a few stops along the way to get food and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, these students finally arrived at the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: park at about seven pm, and on the drive, John,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: who had been a passenger, had drank half a bottle
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of rum and about three to six beers, and so
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: when he got out he could barely stand he was
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: so drunk. And so the students made their way over
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to the front gate. They showed the attendant their grad
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: night ticket and they were allowed inside. And surprisingly, despite
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: it being this special night where only people with these
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: tickets were allowed in, it was still pretty crowded. There
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: were lots of students that apparently wanted to come to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: this event. Once John and the rest of the students
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: from the Delaware High School had come inside the park,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: there was no rule that they had to stick together
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: for the duration of their time there, and so they
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: all kind of broke into their separate groups and went
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: their separate ways. In John's particular group was his girlfriend Pam,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and for the first hour they were in the park together,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: all they did was bicker and fight. Onlookers would say
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: John looked visibly upset and very emotional and very drunk.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: By eight thirty pm, when John's group had gotten in
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: line for this roller coaster, John was now openly saying
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be here anymore. I just want
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to go home. It was pretty obvious he was still
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: just mad at Pam and that's why he was saying
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: all this, was just trying to make Pam feel bad.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And so some of the group members told John just hey, man,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: calm down, you're overreacting. Just try to enjoy this ride,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and then afterwards we'll get some food. It'll be fine.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: But it was pretty clear that John was really worked
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: up and seemed incapable of having a good time at
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this point. But regardless, John and the rest of the group,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: they got on this ride at about nine pm, and
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: then after the ride was over, they disembarked and they
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: walked away from the ride to regroup and figure out
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: what was next. And they're looking around and John is
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. And so after waiting for a
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: few minutes and actually walking around looking for him, they
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: decided that, you know what, he was really upset before
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: he got on this ride. He probably just wanted to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: walk away and be by himself for a bit. I'm
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: sure we'll see him later in the night. So John's group,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: without John, just continued going around the park, going on
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: different rides, and for the next few hours they kind
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: of forgot about John. It wasn't until the end of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the night went over the loudspeaker the park officials said, okay,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: we're closing the park now. That they started walking out
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and wondering where John was, and they were convinced, you
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm sure he's back at the cars. He's
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: probably waiting for us because he just wants to go home.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So they leave the park. They get out to their
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: cars in the lot, and John's not there. And so
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: at this point, the group's started to get a little
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: bit concerned because no one knows where he is. They're
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: meeting up with the other groups from their high school.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: No one's seen John, and so they're all just kind
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: of staring at the front gate waiting for John to
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: come out, but he doesn't. And then eventually the lights
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: in the park starts shutting down and the security guard
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: comes out front and locks the front gate, and that's
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: when the group knew they had a problem. After an
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: extensive investigation by police, this is their best guess as
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to what happened to John. After John and his small
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: group rode that roller coaster around nine pm, John very
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: quickly disembarked the ride before anybody else in his group
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: could see him, and then John stumbled his way towards
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the replica Eiffel Tower that this park was famous for.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: This tower stood at about three hundred feet tall and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: was built to be an exact replica of the Eiffel
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Tower in Paris, France, but this one at King's Island
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: was only a third the size. It had three elevators
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: that went up the center of the structure, and the
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: elevators would stop at a fifty foot platform and a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy five foot platform where guests could
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: look out and have a great view of the park.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: While today the only way to access these two viewing
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: platforms is through these elevators, at the time John was
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: at the park in nineteen eighty three, the park actually
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: had a flight of stairs that went from the ground
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: all the way to the very top of the tower,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that went right up the middle of the structure, and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the public was allowed to take these stairs all the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: way up to the first platform, that fifty foot platform,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and while the stairs did actually continue beyond that up
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: to the two hundred and seventy five foot platform, the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: public was not allowed to go any higher on the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: stairs than that first platform, And so if you took
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: these stairs, once you got to the fifty foot platform,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: there would be a big fence right on the stairwell
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: preventing you from going any farther. And it says authorized
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: personnel only, don't go any farther. And so the only
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: people that would walk up those additional flights of stairs
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: were staff that had a special key. When John stumbled
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: his way over to the base of this replica tower,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: he did not get on an elevator. Instead, he took
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the stairs. So he made his way up to the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: fifty foot platform, and then when he got to the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: six foot tall gate preventing him from going any farther,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: he just climbed up and over it and continued walking
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: up the stairs, and nobody stopped him. He finally came
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to a stop just below the two hundred and seventy
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: five foot mark, and so he's on the stairwell and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: at this point he turns and faces the inside of
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the tower. It's all these metal beams all over the place,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and he climbs over the railing of the stairs he's on,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and he climbs onto this narrow beam that's actually a
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: part of the support structure of this tower, and he
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: grabs onto the beam above him and just begins walking
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: along this beam towards the center of the tower, where
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the three elevator shafts are. Now there's no safety net
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: on either side of John, so he slips and falls.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: He's falling hundreds of feet to the ground. And if
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: he keeps walking and actually gets into the elevator shaft
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: there's nothing protecting him from being struck by one of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the elevators. Because the people who built this tower were
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: not thinking about people walking on these exposed beams hundreds
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of feet up into the air. This is a totally
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: dangerous and unauthorized area. But John just continues shimmying across
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: this beam until he does get to the middle of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the tower. And now he's literally standing looking down into
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the elevator shafts, and as he's most likely looking around
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: admiring where he was, one of the elevator cars below
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: him began to start moving. To understand what happens next,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you need to have a rudimentary understanding of how this
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: elevator worked. A large metal rope was attached to the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: top of the elevator car, and from there it was
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: thread up the elevator shaft all the way to the top,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: where it was fed through a pulley that was anchored
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to the ceiling, and then that rope was fed right
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: back down the shaft to the bottom where it was
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: attached to a counterweight. A counterweight is just a large
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: heavy weight that's designed to balance this elevator car on
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: this pulley system. Without the weight, the elevator car would
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: just slip off of that pulley, and so anytime the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: elevator car moved up, the counterweight would move down, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: vice versa, making sure that car was always balanced. And
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: so John is standing right on the edge of this
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: elevator shaft, presumably just kind of looking around, admiring where
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: he was, when down below him, that elevator car starts
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: to move and it starts to actually descend away from John,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and so the car itself is not necessarily a threat
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to John. However, its counterweight is because if the car
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: is going down, its counterweight is going up and it's
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: right in the path of John. And so as John
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: is leaning out over the shaft looking around, this counterweight
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: comes screaming up and picks him off of the beam
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: he's on and harries him up into the shaft. The
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: impact on John was so strong that it's believed he
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: was actually impaled on some of the exposed metal wiring
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: on top of this counterweight, and he got totally tangled
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: up in all of the cables on top of there.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And so as John is desperately trying to free himself,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the elevator operator there was always a staff member inside
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: of these elevator cars. He actually noticed when John got
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: stuck on the counterweight, but of course this worker would
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: have no idea that's what it was. They would later recall.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It just felt like the car suddenly jumped, and so
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: this worker, fearing that something had gone wrong with the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: elevator car itself, he decided he would ride it all
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the way to the bottom, let everybody get out, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: then ride back up to the top totally empty, to
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: make sure that the car actually worked before allowing people
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: back on. And so the worker went to the ground,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: everybody got out, he closed the doors, he began his ascent.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: He got to that first platform at fifty feet no issues.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: He got about ten feet above that first platform, so
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: at about sixty feet when all of a sudden, he
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: hears an unbelievably loud thud on the roof of his
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: elevation causing his car to immediately come to a stop,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and then blood began pouring over the sides of the car,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: over the windows. After getting stuck on the counterweight, John
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: probably did everything he could to try to free himself,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: but he just couldn't do it. However, when that elevator
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: worker decided to go back up again to test the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: capacity of the elevator car, it reversed the direction of
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the counterweight that John was stuck on, and so as
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: that car was going up, John began going down. And
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: it was on this descent that parts of John's body
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: must have been dangling off of this counterweight, and they
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: must have struck one of the beams as he was
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: going down, and that beam effectively pried him off of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: whatever he was stuck on and threw him over the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: edge into the center of the shaft, and so John
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: would fall two hundred feet and he would land on
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: top of that elevator car, dying instantly. The park was
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: very quick to block off the ride and the whole
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: scene and got police involved very quickly, so only a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: very small number of guests and employees were aware an
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: accident had even happened, and very few of them were
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: aware that it had been a fatal accident. As for
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the police, they knew they had a dead body, but
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: they had no way to identify the body. There was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: no ID cards on John, and so they had no
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: way to let his friends know that were in the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: park or to tell his family, And so it wasn't
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: until that night, when John's friends are out in the
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: parking lot waiting for John to come out again, that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: they got really worried, and they went up and spoke
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to a security guard at the front of the park,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: and that security guard, after hearing their story, would tell
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: them that actually, there had been an accident in the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: park and there was a body, and the police are
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: still trying to identify this body, and so maybe you
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: guys want to go over to the hospital and see
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: if it's your friend. So sure enough, the friends went
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to the hospital and they would confirm that the body
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: was John Harder. To this day, no one knows for
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: sure why John did what he did. Some say he
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: was just drunk and it was a dumb decision that
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: led to his death. Others say he was suicidal, but
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: many of the people that were close to him say, no, way,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: he was not suicidal. And other people say, you know John,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: he loved the tension, and so perhaps this was a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: dangerous stunt gone too far. But regardless of his reasons,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: John had clearly intentionally entered an area that was off
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: limits and it got him killed. In the spring of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Antonio Navarette was on top of the world.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Just a year earlier, the twenty one year old Florida
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: resident had met the love of his life, a young
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: woman named Daisy Martinez, and now Daisy was pregnant and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: so she and Antonio were very excited about starting a
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: family together. For the time being, Antonio and Daisy were
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: living with Antonio's parents in his hometown of Waimama, which
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: is a quiet rural suburb just south of Tampa. But
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Antonio had a bright future ahead of him. Ever since
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: he had graduated high school, he knew what he wanted
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to do with his life. He wanted to be an
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: auto mechanic, and he had the skills to do it.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: From the time he was a toddler, he had always
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: been of cessed with cars, breaking apart his toy cars
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and putting them back together. And then as he got
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit older, he began drawing these very intricate
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: drawings of cars that he loved, or designs for new cars.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: And then when he was a teenager, he began actually
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: tinkering around with real cars until he finally acquired a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: car of his own. It was a white Chevy lowrider
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: pickup truck that he tricked out with all these fancy
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: lights and special rims and this huge sound system that
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: took up most of his back seat. It was thanks
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: in part to this truck, which he nicknamed Casper, that Antonio,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: who was too shy to be much of a ladies man,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: met up with Daisy. In the first place. Antonio had
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: driven Casper to a local car meetup for other car
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: enthusiasts where you could basically park your vehicle and you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: could walk around and see what other people did to
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: upgrade or enhance their vehicles. And so while Antonio was there,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: he was walking around when he saw on the far
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: side of this meetup there was this unbelievably beautiful young woman,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and he found himself just staring at her. He couldn't
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: help it, and this young woman, who was Daisy, she
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: eventually would look up and she would smile at him,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: and the rest, as they say, was history. Six months later,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: not long after Daisy had moved in with Antonio at
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: his parents' house and the couple had announced to their
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: delighted families that they were going to have a baby,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Antonio got yet another good piece of news. He'd landed
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a good job with a company that did maintenance work
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: for Tampa Electric Company's Big Bend power plant, which was
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: located in Apollo, Florida, which was about ten miles to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the east of Antonio's parents' home. Now, this was not
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Antonio's dream job. He still very much wanted to eventually
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: become an auto mechanic, but this job paid twelve bucks
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: an hour, nearly double what he was used to making,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and so with this job, he and Daisy would finally
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: be able to raise enough money to get a place
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of their own, hopefully before the baby arrived that fall. Also,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Antonio had been told by other people who worked at
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: this company that this was actually a really easy job,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that pretty much it just rolled around on golf carts
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: all day picking up trash. It was perfect. A few
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: weeks later, on June twenty fourth, Antonio found himself driving
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: in his truck to the Big Bend Power Plant for
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: his first day on the job. As he drove, he
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: would have glanced over at the picture of Daisy he
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: had taped to his dashboard. She was the only woman
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: he had ever loved besides his mother. When Antonio arrived
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: at the Big Bend Power Plant, he was totally amazed
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: at just how enormous this thing was. It was basically
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: this huge factory that sat right up against the water,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and there were four huge smoke stacks coming out of
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the ceiling of this factory with white smoke billowing out
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: of them. This plant produced electricity, and they did this
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: by burning coal. This process was done in four distinct
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: units that were inside of this factory that Antonio was
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: looking at. And each of these units is comprised of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a humongous boiler, which is basically a twelve story tall oven.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And so coal is loaded into this huge boiler and
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: it burns at the bottom of the boiler, creating some steam,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and that steam goes up the boiler and begins to
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: turn these huge turbines, creating the electricity and then the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: steam just continues up the boiler and then out its
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: respective smokestack into the air. In newer units, the airborne ash,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: which is a natural byproduct of burning coal, is captured
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: inside of the boiler. But at Big Bend, three of
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: their four units were built in the nineteen seventies, so
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: they were older models and they did not capture the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: airborne ash inside the boilers. Instead, the ash would get
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: heated up so much that it would melt and turn
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: into a substance called slag, which basically is molten lava,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: like the stuff that comes out of volcanoes. That's what
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: slag is. And so as this slag kind of builds
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: up inside of the boiler, it would go through this
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: man size hole at the very bottom of the boiler,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and right below that hole is this thirty foot tall
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: water tank called a cooling tank, and this red hot
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: setla it basically dumps down into that water, which cools
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: it off, turning it into these kind of glassy rocks,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and then they settle at the bottom of this thirty
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: foot cooling tank. And at the bottom of the cooling
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: tank is this grinding mechanism that pulls these hardened cooled
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: off little boulders of slag into it, and it crushes
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: them up and spits them out on the other side
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: as little tiny bits of slag chips, and then these
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: chips get sold for use in everything from sandpaper to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: roofing shingles. So after Antonio had spent several minutes just
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: admiring this gargantuan building he would be working in, he
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: gathered up his things, he hopped out of his truck,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and he headed toward the front doors. That day and
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the next couple of days were very uneventful for Antonio.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: He basically just sat in a break room and watched
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: videos about safety and training, and then when he wasn't
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: doing that, he was out trying to navigate around the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: inside of this huge factory, which was basically this huge
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: maize and he found very quickly that it was a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: very hazardous place to work, as there were huge trucks
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: moving around inside of it, it was super loud, and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: there was just heavy machinery operating constantly all around you.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: But after several days of just kind of walking around
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: and asking people what things were, Antonio felt like he
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: had a pretty good handle on the layout and also
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: on what his job would entail on Thursday, June twenty ninth,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So just four days into doing this new job, Antonio
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: woke up in his parents' house in a really good
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: mood because the next day that Friday, Daisy was going
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: in for an ultrasound and they were going to find
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: out whether their baby was a boy or a girl.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And he was very excited about this, and so Antonio
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: came downstairs, he grabbed a quick bite to eat, and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: then he kissed Daisy on the cheek and he had
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: it outside into his truck and began the commute to work.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: A few hours later, Antonio's mother was in the grocery
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: store when she pulled her phone out of her purse
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and she noticed Antonio had called her and she missed it,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: but he had left a voicemail, and so she played
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the voicemail and then put the phone to her ear,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and what she heard was quite possibly the most traumatic
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: thing a mother could ever hear from their child. After
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: leaving the house that morning, Antonio drove all the way
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: to work, no problem. He parked in the lot, he
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: went inside the building, and initially the day was like
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: any other day. He just kind of drove around the
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: facility and picked up trash and that was it. But
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: just a couple of hours into his shift, two fairly
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: significant issues arose simultaneously inside of Unit two. In the boiler,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the slag that was building up had somehow created a
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: sort of plug over that man sized hole where the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: slag was supposed to dump into the water chamber, and
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: so as more and more slag was being created as
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the ash melted, it wasn't draining into that chamber, and
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: so all of this slag was just building up on
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: top of itself inside of the boiler, and then in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the water chamber, completely unconnected from the issue in the boiler,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the slag that had fallen into the water chamber that
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: had cooled and settled at the bottom, it had landed
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in such a way that it actually blocked the grinding mechanism,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and so none of the cooled slag, boulders and rocks
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: were being ground up and expelled out the other side.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: And so they needed to fix these two issues quickly,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: otherwise Unit two would become basically ineffective. Now, the safe
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: way to fix these two blockages would be to start
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: by turning off Unit two's boiler and then once it
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: was off, you could drop dynamite into the boiler itself
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and break up the blockage over the man sized hole,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and you could send a team into the water chamber
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: after you drained it to chip away and move the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: blockage over the grinding mechanism. However, turning a boiler off
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: at a power plant is extremely expensive, and so the
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Tampa Electric Company decided, you know what, let's just have
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: them fix these blockages without turning the boiler off. And
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: so at four in the afternoon, a senior plant manager
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: rounded up five other employees, which included Antonio, to come
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: with him and do these repairs inside of Unit two.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: And so the plan was to empty all the water
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: are from the cooling chamber of Unit two, and then
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: once it was empty, they would open something called the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: doghouse store, which is on the outside of the cooling
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: chamber towards the bottom. They would open that up, giving
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: them a line of sight into the bottom of this
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: cooling chamber where that grinding mechanism was, where all those
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: slag rocks had kind of come to a stop on
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: top of it. And they would fire water cannons into
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the bottom of this cooling chamber to attempt to dislodge
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: these slag rocks off of the grinding mechanism, and then
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: after they cleared that blockage, they would shut the doghouse
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: store and they would somehow deal with the blockage inside
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of the boiler. But that felt like a secondary issue.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: They needed to make sure the grinding mechanism was cleared
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: before they did anything else. Now you need to understand
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: that this company had asked their employees to do this
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: type of repair before, to do it with the boiler
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: still on, and in the past nothing bad had ever happened,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and so these six guys, including Antonio, must have thought
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: this was just totally routine that we would be asked
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to do something like this if it was extremely hazardous.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: But it would turn out what they were doing, making
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: these repairs with the boiler still on was quite possibly
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: the most hazardous thing they could possibly do at this plant.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: But either way, the six man team made their way
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: over to Unit two and they began taking up positions
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: with their water cannons right in front of the doghouse store.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Antonio's job for this operation was actually not to be
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: involved in getting the slag free. He was just going
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: to be there to clean up during and after the operation,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: and so he stood kind of in front of the
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: doghouse store, but maybe ten or fifteen feet back, just
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: kind of standing back watching the other guys do their jobs. Now,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you need to understand the scale of the machinery. In
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: front of Antonio and these other men. You have the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: water chamber, which is thirty feet tall, and then above
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the water chamber is the twelve story tall boiler that
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: is still on. So there's coal actively burning inside of it.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: There's red hot slab so like lava just kind of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: tumbling around inside of it. And the steam inside of
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: this boiler is well over a thousand degrees fahrenheit. And
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: so they are dwarfed by this totally dangerous piece of machinery.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: But eventually their operation begins. The senior plant manager has
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the water chamber drained, and then after it's empty, they
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: opened the doghouse door, and Antonio watched as the other
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: five men took turns with their water cannons, firing them
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: through the store at the big slag rocks that are
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: sitting on top of the grinding mechanism. And it wasn't
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: really working that well, but they were starting to make
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: some progress and Antonio likely was just kind of getting
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: bored waiting for this to be over because there really
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't much for him to do. There wasn't much cleanup.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: And then as he's standing there, something horrible happened. Because
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the boiler had been left on, all that ash was
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: still getting melted and turned into slag, and the slag
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: was not being drained because that plug had formed over
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the man sized hole in the boiler. And see of
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: all the slag that's building up, building up, it's getting
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: heavier and heavier and heavier. And about twenty minutes into
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: their cleanup operation, the weight of all that slag broke
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: through that plug, immediately creating an opening where all this
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: red hot slag, this lava came tumbling down. It rebounded
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: on the back end of the empty water tank and
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: shot out of the doghouse door like a tidal wave
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of hell fire. And in seconds, thousands of gallons of
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: this lava like substance was all over all six men.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: It was like a wave going over them. And then
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: after the slag hitsed the ground, they were all standing
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: in six inches of basically lava that stretched in forty
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: feet in any direction. Now, unlike trying to run in
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: let's say mud or deep water, where you're just kind
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of moving slowly. Every step you take in this slag,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: basically your foot melts into the slag. So with every step,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: your shoe melts, then your skin melts, then your bones
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: melt into this substance. And so all these men, after
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: immediately being hit with this stuff and catching on fire, literally,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: they likely tried to start running, but it was like
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: their bodies were slowly consumed by this slag feet first,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: and so Antonio tried to run like the rest of them,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: but he couldn't go anywhere, and he fell onto the slags.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: He's laying on his side, and as he's melting and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: burning to death, he reaches into his pants pocket with
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: his free hand and he pulls his phone out and
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: he calls his mother. She doesn't pick up, and so
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: he leaves her a voicemail, and all he says is, Mom, Mom,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I'm burning. Please call the cops, please, Mom. And in
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: the background of this voicemail, all you hear is the
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: hissing sound of the steam and slag pouring out of
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: the boiler. In total, five of the six men that
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: were a part of this repair operation would be killed
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: from this tidal wave of slag. Antonio would be one
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: of them. Tampa Electric would end up paying out a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: settlement to each of the families of the deceased. Something
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: most people don't know is you can't just put scuba
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: tanks on and then dive down to any depth and
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: come right back up again. The compressed air inside of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: those scuba tanks would be a mixture of oxygen as
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: well as most likely helium and nitrogen, and when you're
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: breathing that compressed air, the oxygen would get breathed up
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and then not linger inside of your body, but the
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: other inert gases, the helium and the nitrogen, they would
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: be breathed up and then absorbed into your bloodstream and
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: they would stay there until you're resurfaced. Now it's completely
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: harmless as long as you understand how it works getting
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: those gases out of your body in a nutshell. As
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: you ascend, these innert gases will leave your body on
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: their own, but it's a gradual process. If you rock
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: it to the surface before this takes place, these inert
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: gases will not leave your body, and they'll expand inside
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of you and your body will become the equivalent of
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: a shaken up soda can, and so at best, having
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: all these bubbles inside of you is very painful. At worst,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: it's lethal. The term for this condition is decompression sickness,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: but it's better known as the bends. The way divers
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: protect themselves from getting the bends is on their ascent,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: they do what's called a decompression stop. This is something
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: that is planned into the dive where they stop at
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: a certain depth for a certain amount of time, and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that guarantees the innert gases have diffused out of their
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: body before they reach the surface. Now, the deeper you go,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the more decompression stops you'll have to do, and the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: longer they will take. For example, ascending from two thousand
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: feet would take over thirty three hours to do safely.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: But luckily, none of us are trying to dive down
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: to two thousand feet well, unless you're trying to be
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: an oil and gas saturation diver. Saturation divers or SAT
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: divers do construction and demolition at depths of up to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: two thousand feet below the surface, but they don't spend
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: thirty three hours ascending after every single dive. Instead, after
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: their dives, they're artificially kept at their working depth. The
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: way this works is the SAT diver climbs inside of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a pressure chamber on board a ship or on board
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: an oil rig, and this chamber also doubles as their
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: living quarters. There's beds and there's a bathroom, but it's
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: laughably small and uncomfortable. It looks like a small submarine.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: And once they go inside, they steal the door and
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: then they pressurize it to match the depth that they're
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: going to be working at at the bottom of the ocean.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And then also there's another pressure chamber called the dive
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: bell that's connected directly onto the side of the chamber,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and that's also pressurized to match the working depth. When
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: it was time for the SAT diver to go to work,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: they would put their dive gear on inside of the chamber,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: they would crawl directly into the dive bell. They would
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: shut the door behind them and seal it, and then
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: people outside of the dive bell would physically disconnect it
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: from the chamber and then using a crane, they would
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: place it in the water and then lower it down
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: to their working depth. And once they get down there,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: because the pressure inside the bell is equal to the
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: pressure outside the bell. They can just slide open a
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: door on the bottom and the water does not come inside,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and so the divers do slip through this hole and
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: they do the work they need to do, and when
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: they're done, they come back inside the dive bell that
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: shut it up, and then using the radio they communicate
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: with the people up on the boat or up on
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the rig and they raise the bell back up. They
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: reattach them to the chamber. They go inside, they take
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: their stuff off. There's bunk beds and there's a bathroom
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: inside of the chamber, and that's what they hang out
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: until their next dive. This process is repeated for days
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: and days and days, keeping them saturated with these gases,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and then at the end of their shift, which is
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: usually about a month long, they will have one long
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: decompression they do inside of the chamber. While this system
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: is highly efficient, it does not change the fact that
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: saturation diving is extremely dangerous and terrifying. The sun doesn't
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: reach below seven hundred feet, so most of the time
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: these divers are in complete and total darkness, and it's
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: unbelievably cold down there, and so their suits have hot
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: water pumped into them through a tether that's connected to
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the dive bell, but if that were to fail, hypothermia
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: would kick in almost immediately. They have flashlights, but the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: water is so full of sediment around the areas that
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: they work that shining the light is basically like shining
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: it into fog. You can't really see very far besides
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: right front of your face. SAT divers also report that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes the water around them will suddenly move violently and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: they'll look around, but their crummy light and lack of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: visibility means they can't see what it was, but they
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: know it's a large animal that's checking them out. Other times,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: these fairly large fish will swim right up to them
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and come right under their light. It's almost like they're
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: being affectionate with the diver, but they're not being affectionate.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: They're trying to hide behind the SAT diver from some
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: large predator that's out there watching them. Experienced SAT divers
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: have learned to just accept their harsh environment down there
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and don't easily get scared. But there is one thing
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that all SAT divers are afraid of, and that is
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a lost bell. When SAT divers are down at their
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: working depth, the dive bell that's brought them down there
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: is usually situated right next to them, just kind of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: floating in the water, and this dive bell is connected
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: to the ship or the oil rig above by a cable,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: and if that cable were to snap, the dive bell
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: would fall to the bottom and it would take with
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: it the divers because they're always tethered to the dive bell.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: If the divers survived the crash to the ocean floor,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: they would then just be trapped and have to hope
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: that someone comes down to get them at some point
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: before they run out of air or they succumbed to hypothermia.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: While a lost bell scenario is incredibly rare, it has
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: happened before. On August seventh, nineteen seventy nine, Richard Walker
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: was inside of a pressure chamber on board a ship
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in the North Sea. He was a saturation diver who
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: for the past ten days had been in saturation and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: honestly was just over it. He wanted to go home
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: to his wife and his fifteen month old daughter. That
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: evening before his schedule dive, he wrote in his journal,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Dear God, I just want to get out. Soon after
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: writing this entry, he and his partner, Victor Giel, put
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: on their dive gear and hopped into the dive bell.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: The bell was detached from the chamber and then brought
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: over to the side of the ship, and right before
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: they lowered it into the water, somebody noticed the location
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: transponder that basically beamed up where it was down below
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: had become loose, and so the decision was made to
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: just remove it, and so after they pulled it off,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: they lowered the dive belt onto the water and then
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: slowly lowered it down to their working depth, which was
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty five feet. Once they got down there,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: they opened up the hole at the bottom of the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: bell and then they began taking turns exiting the bell
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: to go work on this underwater structure. A few hours later,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: at two forty five in the morning, Richard was the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: one outside of the dive bell and he heard something
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: behind him, and he turned around and he saw the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: dive bell had slightly tilted on its side. Right as
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: he noticed this, the radio and his helmet kicked on
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: and told him he needed to go back inside the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: dive bell immediately and they were going to try to
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: pull them back up, and so Richard went inside the bell,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: he closed the hole behind him, and then he and
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Victor listened to the radio as they told them that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: the main cable holding the dive bell had slipped out.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Now this main cable was not the only thing connecting
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the dive bell up to the ship. There was also
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: another clump of wires and tubes that was called the
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: umbilical that ran all their power and hot water and
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: their calms down to the dive bell. But this umbilical
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: was not meant to be load bearing. But as it stood,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: with this main cable gone, the umbilical was holding the
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: dive bell from slipping to the bottom of the ocean.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: And so the crew up on the ship decided their
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: only choice was to use the umbilical to reel this
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: dive bell back in, and so they began pulling them
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: up by the umbilical, and almost immediately it completely snapped
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and the dive bell fell to the bottom of the ocean,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: about fifty feet below. Now, normally a dive bell would
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: have what's called a clump weight hanging off the bottom
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: of it, and in an emergency, you could detach this
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: clump weight, and the dive bell is buoyant enough it
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: would go up to the surface. But Richard and Victor's
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: company had cut corners and not used a clump weight,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and instead attached weights directly to the dive bell, which
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: meant when they hit the ocean floor, the actual dive
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: bell was sitting on the ocean floor, where that hole
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: they would normally escape from was pressed into the seabed,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: so they could not get out of their dive bell,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Whereas if there had been a clump weight, the clump
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: weight would have hit the ground and the dive bell
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: would have hovered slightly over it, and so worst case scenario,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: that could have gotten out and done a wet transfer
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: into another dive bell. So with the umbilical cut, they
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: had no radio communication, they had no heat, they had
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: no light, and they had very little remaining oxygen and
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: so all they could do was just sit in darkness
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: and hope somebody rescues them. Less than thirty minutes later,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: another dive ship arrived and offered to help. Now they
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: were not expecting to die that night, so it took
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: about three hours before they actually had their rescue divers
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: in the water, and unfortunately, because the location transponder had
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: been removed from the dive bell before Richard and Victor
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: went under. It made it almost impossible for these rescue
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: divers to find it, but after an hour of looking around,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they finally found it. It was seven am, and they
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: went right down to the porthole and they shined a
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: light inside of the dive bell, and inside Richard and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Victor are given the thumbs up, like, hey, we're okay,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: We're just ready to get rescued. The fact that Richard
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and Victor were okay was communicated back up to the surface,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and everybody on top was so excited, so relieved, and
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: in fact, they called Richard's wife and they told her that, hey,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: there's been an accident, but your husband's just fine. He'll
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: be out very soon. But despite these rescue divers locating
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the dive bell, because the ship up above that they
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: were attached to kept moving around, it was proving to
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: be extremely difficult for them to stay over the dive bell,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: and so for the next two hours, these rescue divers
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: desperately tried to thread a new wire through the top
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: of the dive bell, but it was going so poorly,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: and they kept going around and shining their light into
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the porthole to check on Richard and Victor, and it
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: was very clear that their situation was getting worse and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: worse by the second. They were not giving thumbs up
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: and smiling. They looked panicked and desperate, and they'd been
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: without heat now for hours, and it was obvious they
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: were running out of oxygen. Finally, at nine am, so
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: six hours after Richard and Victor had first hit the seafloor,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the rescue divers managed to get a new cable through
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the top of the dive bell, and before they signaled
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: to have it brought back up again, they shined the
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: light through the porthole to check on them one more time,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: and they saw that Richard and Victor were just sitting
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: there with their head in their hands. They were clearly
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: still alive and lucid, but it was like they understood,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: they have very little time left and if this doesn't work,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: they're doomed. At this point, the rescue divers called up
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and said it was ready. They got pulled up to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: the surface and then the ship began pulling up the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: dive bell, and almost immediately the cable snapped, and everybody
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: up on the surface knew that at this point it
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: was almost impossible for them to survive, but nonetheless, rescue
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: divers went down and it took a while to find
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the dive bell because it had moved, But when they did,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: they shine the light through the porthole, and Richard and
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Victor were still very much but they were not looking
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: to interact with the divers at the window anymore. They
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: were just sitting there looking down. They were despondent. It
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: was like they were making peace with what they understood
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: was going to happen. They were not going to get
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: out of there. And over the course of the next
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: several hours, as these rescue divers tried desperately to get
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: a new cable to the top of the dive bell,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: that kept checking on Richard and Victor, and each time
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: they checked, they would slouched lower and lower in their
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: seats until both of them were laying on their side.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And then finally the rescue divers got a cable to
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: the top, and then afterwards they went back up to
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the ship, and then the ship was able this time
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: to pull the dive bill up and back on board,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: but when they opened the door, both Richard and Victor
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: had passed away. At seven to twenty pm on Friday,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: January twelfth, two thousand and seven, nineteen year old college
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: freshmen Wade Stephi walked into Ford Dining Hall, which is
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: one of five dining halls on Purdue University's campus. Purdue
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: is a prestigious American university located in Indiana that is
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: known for its excellent athletics and academics. Wade, who was
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: an aviation technology student and was at Purdue on a
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: full academic scholarship, grabbed some food and then sat down
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: at a table with some friends. This was the first
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Friday of the two thousand and seven spring semester, and
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: so Wade and his friends at the table, and the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: hundreds of other students that were sitting all around them
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: were buzzing with excitement about what they were up to
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that night and what they were up to that weekend.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: And so Wade and his friends they sat there chatting
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: about their plans for about an hour, and then at
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: around eight twenty pm, Wade realized he needed to leave,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and so he stood up. He said goodbye to his friends,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: He carried his tray to the trash can, and then
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: he made his way out of the doors he came
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: in on and so once he was outside of the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Dining Hall, he immediately turned right and walked the very
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: short distance to the building that was right next to
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Fort Dining Hall. And so that building was called Owen Hall,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and it was a dormitory. Now this was not Wade's dormitory.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: He actually lived in a different dorm called Carrie Quad West,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: which was located on the other side of Fort Dining Hall.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: And so Wade goes inside of Owen Hall because he
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: has some friends in there, and he makes his way
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: to their room and when he goes inside, he sees
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: they're all kind of sitting around chatting and drinking some
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks, and so Wade sits down and he has
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: a couple of drinks and he just hangs out with
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: his friends for about an hour. And so around nine
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: to thirty pm, Wade and the other people he was
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: with in this room, they left Owen Hall and they
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: walked the half mile away from campus to the west
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: to this huge party at a fraternity. And so Wade
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: would stay at this fraternity for several hours until about midnight,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: at which point he pulled one of his friends aside
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: and he told them that he just remembered he had
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: left his jacket inside of Owen Hall, and so he
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to go back and return it. The dorms on
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: produced campus all lock at night, and so the only
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: way you can get inside is if you live there,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: and so you have a key, or if you know
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: someone who lives there who will open the door for you.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: And so during his walk back to Owen Hall, Wade
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: would make six phone calls in an attempt to get
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: someone in Owen Hall to open the door for him.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: But four of his phone calls would just be the
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: wrong number, and so the people that were picking up
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: and he was asking to open the door, they didn't
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: know what he was talking about, and so they hung up.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: But he did call two people that did live inside
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: of Owen Hall. However, they didn't answer their phones. And
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: so around twelve thirty am Wade arrived at Owen Hall.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: He put his phone back in his pocket and he
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: just walked up to the doors, which were locked, and
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: he just started knocking. And eventually a resident of Owen
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Hall who didn't know Wade, and Wade didn't know them,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: they heard the knocking and they came out to the
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: door to see what was going on, and they looked
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: through the glass and they saw Wade, and apparently they
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: decided that Wade looked too intoxicated to let into the building,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: and so they refused him entry, and so Wade apparently
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: stood there. He kept knocking for a little bit, but
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: he eventually just kind of gave up. He turned around,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: and he walked away. Fast forward a few days to Tuesday,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: January sixteenth, and Wade's roommate, who had actually been gone
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: all the past weekend, he returned and the first thing
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: he noticed when he got back to his dorm was
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: that Wade was not in the dorm, and so he
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: called and texted Wade, but he didn't get a response,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: and so the roommate went out around the floor that
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: they lived on to ask people if they had seen Wade,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: and no one had seen him since the previous Friday,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and so starting to get pretty concerned, the roommate called
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Wade's family to see if maybe they knew what was
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: going on with him, but his family had no idea,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and so by the end of that day, the police
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: had been contacted about Wade potentially being missing, and they
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: in turn contacted Wade's cell phone provider and they were
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: able to determined that Wade's cell phone was still showing
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: up somewhere on produced campus, although they couldn't figure out
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: exactly where, so that evening, a massive campus wide search
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: was launched with hundreds of police officers and volunteers. Even
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: the school's equestrian club came out with their horses to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: search the nearby woods. But despite this huge search effort
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: that would go on for several weeks, the only thing
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: they would find of Wade's was one of his shoes.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: It was found on January twentieth, so just four days
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: into the search, and it was located right outside of
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: an exterior door that led into a maintenance room inside
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: of Owen Hall. But when they searched this maintenance room,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Wade wasn't in there. Finally, after nearly a month of searching,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: when they still had not found Wade, the official search
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: was called off. On March nineteenth, roughly two months after
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Wade had been reported missing. A maintenance worker was downstairs
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: in the laundry room of Owen Hall when they heard
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: a strange popping sound. At first, the worker thought it
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: was actually coming from one of the washers or dryers
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: that was on, and you know, maybe there's a loose
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: coin or some piece of metal that was inside of
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: the washer or dryer that's getting banged around inside and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: that's making the sound. And so this worker began walking
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: around the laundry room kind of listening in to each
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: of the washers and dryers that were on to see
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: if they were making this sound. And so as he's
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: doing this, he hears the popping sound again, but it's
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: clearly not coming from any of the washers and dryers.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: In fact, it's not even coming from inside the laundry room.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: It's coming from somewhere out in the hall. Curious, he
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: leaves the laundry room and he goes out into the hall,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: and as soon as he's standing in the hall, he
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: hears the popping sound again, and this time it was
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: obvious that it was coming from behind the closed door
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: that was directly opposite the laundry room. So the worker
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: pulled out his big set of keys, he opened the
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: door that was directly in front of him, and he
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: stepped inside. Moments later, he would make a big discovery.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Based on that discovery and the investigtion gation that would
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: follow it, this is a reconstruction of what happened to
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Wade's stepfy in the early morning hours of January thirteenth,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: right after Wade had been denied entry into Owen Hall
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: because the student who was in there, who didn't know him,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: thought he was too intoxicated. Right after that happened, Wade
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: left the front doors and made his way around to
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: the left side of the building to look for another
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: way inside. And when he got to the left side
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: of the building he found another door. Now, even though
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: this door did not have a sign on it that
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: said keep out, it was fairly obvious that this door
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: was not designed for students to use. There was a
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: metal railing that lined the outside of the door, clearly
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: to prevent pedestrians from getting to the door. And the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: door itself was actually not built at ground level. It
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: basically was built at basement level, So you'd be standing
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: at this railing looking down at the door, and down
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: in front of the door was a slab of cement
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: right out in front of it that gave the door
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: enough clearance to be able to open. And so basically
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: there was a railing around a pit and that was
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: where the door was. The proper way to get to
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: this door was to literally climb over that railing and
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: jump down into this pit and then you need a
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: key to open the store because it was always locked, well,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to always be locked. And so when
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Wade saw this clearly off limit stoor on the side
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: of Owen Hall in his drunken state, he decided it
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: would be a good idea to try to go into it,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: because in his mind, he thought, you know, whatever is
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: behind the store doesn't really matter. As long as I
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: can just get inside of some part of Owen Hall,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: I can find my way up to my friend's room
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and I can get my jacket. And so he rushes
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: over to the railing, he climbs over, he leaps down
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: into that pit area. He grabs the doorknob of this
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: off limit stoor and he pulls on it and it's open.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: So he opens it up. He steps inside and it's
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: totally and all he can hear is the sound of
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: machines humming and whirring in the darkness. And again, in
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: his drunken state, he decides this is still a good idea.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: His only concern was he couldn't find a light switch,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and it really was basically pitch black in here, and
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: he was worried once the door shut, not only would
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: his only light source be totally cut off, but it
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: might actually lock behind him and then he'd be trapped
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: inside of this room. And so he took off one
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: of his shoes and he tucked it in the door
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: jam of the door he came in on to keep
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: it open. And so with the door propped open behind him,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: he began walking into this room and pretty much right
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: away he bumped into this big metal structure. He couldn't
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: see what it was because again it was too dark,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: but he could feel it and he could tell, you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: it was a flat metal structure. It felt like a
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: machine of some kind, and he could hear that it
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: was one of the machines that was buzzing and worrying,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and so he just decided he would try to walk
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: around it, because again his goal is just to get
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: through this room and another door somewhere and kind of
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: continue his journey up into the dorm. And so Wade
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: began moving his way left along this machine, kind of
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: believing it was going to come to a stop at
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: some point and then he could walk around it. But
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: it would turn out this machine was very big, very wide,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: and so by the time he actually got to the
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: left edge of this machine, he was practically right up
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: against the wall of the room he was in. And
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: when he got there, he realized the space between the
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: side of the machine and the wall of the room
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: was big enough that if he turned sideways, he could
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: basically squeeze his way past it. Now, he had no
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: idea how far into the room this strange machine went,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: but in his drunken state, he decided it was a
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: good idea, and so he turned sideways. So his back
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: as to the wall of the room, and his chest
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: is going to be facing the machine, and he begins
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: pushing himself into that narrow space. And so as he's
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: making his way, his hands are up kind of protecting
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: his face and neck, and at some point he kind
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: of became trip. Now he didn't actually fall, because he's
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: basically wedged into this tight space, but for a second
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: he reflexively grabbed with his hands onto this machine right
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: in front of him, and just by chance, his left
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: ring finger slipped into a very narrow hole that was
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: about two inches deep. The room that Wade was inside
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: of was called an electrical vault, and it contained six
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: large transformers, one of which Wade's finger had just stuck
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: inside of. The job of these six transformers is to
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: take the high voltage they received from the main power
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: grid and then transform it, hence the name, into lower
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: usable voltage that gets dispersed into Owen Hall for residents
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: and teachers. Even though the outside of these transformers had
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: mostly been covered with protective materials that mitigated the electrocution risk,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: there were still several parts of these machines that there
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: was just nothing you could do. They just presented a
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: really high electrocution risk. And one of those sections you
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: needed to be extra careful with was that two inch
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hold that Wade's finger slipped inside of. At the back
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: of that hole was an exposed electrical conductor, and the
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: second the tip of his finger touched that conductor, between
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four thousand volts of electricity were pumped
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: into his body. For reference, when people get executed via
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: the electric chair, they are electrocuted with two thousand volts
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: of electricity. Wade likely died instantly, but because of the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: fact that he was kind of wedged between the transformer
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: and the wall. After he died, he didn't just slump
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: onto the ground. Instead, he remained in a semi upright
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: position with his finger still stuck inside of that hole.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: And so for the next two months, his body just
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: continued to be electrocuted every second. Finally, sometime in March,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: as a result of Wade's body fluids draining out of him,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: the electrical current that was being pumped into him altered
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: its course and began snapping outside of his skin into
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: the ground. And so the sound of the electrical current
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: actually striking the ground was that popping sound that the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: maintenance worker heard. The door that the maintenance worker opened
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: in order to investigate the sound was the only other
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: door that led into the electrical vault, the other being
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the exterior door that Wade had gone in on. Initially,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: when the worker opened that door and looked inside of
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the vault, he actually didn't see Wade, but he smelled
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: something funny, and that was what led him to walk
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: into the room and make his way around, and that's
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: when he spotted Wade's body. Earlier, on January twentieth, when
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: they found Wade's shoe, which at some point had just
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: slipped out of the door jam, so it was not
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: propping open. The exterior door when it was found, it
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: was just sitting in that pit area and the exterior
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: door was shut. And so when they found that shoe,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: the police, they did go inside of the electrical vault,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: but they didn't go in through the exterior door. They
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: went around and went in the same door that the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: maintenance worker opened from right across the hall from the
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: laundry room. And when they opened it up, they just
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: looked into the room. They didn't walk into the room.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: They just looked from the doorway and from their perspective,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: they couldn't see Wade. And so that was why initially
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: they had said, you know, Wade is not inside of
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that room. Ultimately, because that exterior door to the electrical
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: vault was supposed to be locked at all times, and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: clearly it was not. Because that's how Wade got in.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Purdue was found to be negligent, and so they agreed
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: to pay Wade's family five hundred thousand dollars and they
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: also set up a scholarship in Wade's name. And now
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: from Ballin Studios, here is a clip from our brand
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: new show Late Nights with Nexpo. You can find the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: show on any podcast platform. So when you're done listening
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: to this. Go find it, give it a follow, and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: tune in every Wednesday for new episodes. Enjoy.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: You awake from a shallow sleep. For a moment you
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: think it's morning already, but then you remember and still night.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: During the summer in Finland, midnight is indistinguishable from dawn.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: From where you lay inside your tent. The night sounds
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: perfectly peaceful. Crickets chirped softly outside.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: Not far away.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: The Lenk's gentle waves lap rhythmically against the shore. It's idyllic,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: and yet you can't shake the sense that something is wrong,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: something imminent. Then you hear it, a crunch of foliach
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: outside the tent, the twain, the sound of a rope snapping.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Someone is cutting the corns that hold off your tent.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: You try to escape, but the tent is already collapsed
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: down around you, smothering your cries for help.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: You can find the show on any podcast platform. Go
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: find it, give it a follow, and tune in every
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Wednesday for new episodes. Thank you so much for watching.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Let me know what you thought of today's episode in
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: the comments, and remember, we have hundreds of videos for
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: you to binge right now. But if you're looking for
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: a recommendation for me of that one video that's worth
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: your time, Well it's this one right here, so give
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: it a watch. All right, until next time, see y