Latest / Eerily Beloved / Bellingham Steam Plant John Doe

Transcript

Bellingham Steam Plant John Doe · Eerily Beloved

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast and eerily beloved, we are gathered here today with Liam Mom.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Jared.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Zelda May and Dad are in the background.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to be talking about the Bellingham John Doe, also known as the Bellingham steam plant, John Doe.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know mom has heard of it because she helped me do research for it.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Have either of you?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're gonna talk about it today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: At 5 22 a.m.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: on September 20th, 1987, Roy Harris, an employee at the Georgia Pacific Mill in Bellingham, Washington, went to check on boiler number nine.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The smoke alarm had been going off, which usually meant that there was a leak in the steampipe.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Boiler number nine was one of the ten boilers used at the mill.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: The boilers were only used occasionally, so they weren't checked often, and Boiler 9 was one of the least fired and the most difficult to get to.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: When Roy Harris got to Boiler Nine, he noticed the lid was already ajar, which wasn't super abnormal since the access door at the base of the smokestack was never used.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Looking into the smokestack, Roy Harris, to his shock, discovered a body that he described as partially skeletalized.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think you got it.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And extensively carbonized, laying on eleven parallel grid-like metal pipes at the base of the smokestack, 17 feet down from the four and a half foot opening.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Police were notified immediately of this discovery.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Boiler 9 was not easy to get to.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Bellingham Herald reports that to reach a stack, a person had to climb three flights of metal stairs or ride a vertical conveyor belt inside the steam plant to reach the roof.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: From there, there were several routes to the top of the stack.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: A person could use a ladder from a catwalk by the base of the stack or scramble up using pipes or other handholds.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: While the boilers didn't run frequently, they definitely weren't a place you wanted to be in at all.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The temperature in them was 95 degrees off, but reached up to 400 degrees when the boiler was on.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: The eleven parallel pipes at the bottom carried 240 degree water.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: The steam shower.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: As a result of the high temperatures in the boiler, the body the body was in a severe state of decomposition with little to no items that could be used to identify it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Detective Richard Nolte noted that it appeared to be almost an entire skeleton with very little flush remaining.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, he got like jerkified.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: The medical examiner even says that.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Did he really?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: According to the Watcom County medical examiner, Dr.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Rood, the body had suffered extensive damage.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The MA report cited a broken right and left femur, left fibula, right humerus, right tibia and fibula, and right and left pelvis.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: However, whether these were caused by the fall and impact from the crossbar that was seven feet down from the top of the smokestack, or fractured from the extreme heat after the fact is unknown.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The listed official cause of death was hypothermia.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's a lot of broken bones.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, bro got spit roasted and they're calling it hypothermia?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hypothermia?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: From the body, however, they were able to determine the skeleton was male, about 5'8 to 5'9, 130 to 155 pounds, and had a size 8 shoe.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: He had extensive and good quality dental work, and I thought he was between the ages of 20 and 40.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: However, this was amended in 1999 when Detective Alan Jensen sent the skull for another review to Dr.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Richard Tucker, and he felt by the wear in the teeth the victim was older at the time of death, between 40 to 45 years old.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Articles of clothing were found under the body, potentially to protect him from the high temperatures or as a result of hypothermia.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And clothes were also wrapped around the left leg, similar to a tourniquet, to potentially help him.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: So so cold he felt like he was hot, so he took off his clothes.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Could be, yeah, if the hypothermia thing is accurate, yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't it 95 degrees when it's off?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it doesn't really make sense to me yet, so we have to learn more.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing on the body helped give police a clue on who this man could have been.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And oddly found with the body along with ashes of what would have been a wallet, the FBIA lab was able to determine a partial airline or baggage check ticket for Continental Airlines was found along with the body, but no identifying numbers to help them figure out who this person was.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: So potentially someone traveling.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: But the age discrepancy from the time to 1999 makes it really hard if they were looking for a potential missing 20-year-old and now looking for a potential missing 40-year-old.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and this guy wasn't a worker, he was a like some some guy traveling.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and weird that a plane ticket or whatever it was ticket would survive when the rest of the body was Well, and the clothes.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that guy got cremated.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because of the state of the body, they were unable to determine how long he could have been in the boiler and estimated had been from a few days to a few weeks.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The boiler was in operation on September 17th to 18th, or 34 hours shortly before the body was found on September 20th.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's likely that he could have bled out from his extensive injuries instead of being like roasted to death essentially.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that that happened after he died.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so he was already they likely assumed that he was already dead by the time the boilers were operating.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So since there are hardly any issues with the boilers, they were rarely checked.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: As far as security goes, there were little boundaries around the mill to keep trespassers out.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: No fencing surrounded the building, and while security did patrol, cameras didn't exist in the 1980s to keep watch on all areas all the time.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: A police interview with plant superintendent Don Bailey stated that Mr.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Deviley advised that if someone had dumped a body in boiler number nine, it would be a good place.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said you would have a better chance of winning the lottery than have someone look down stack number nine.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: The plant was closed over Labor Day weekend, September 4th through the 7th, which police suspect is when he could have gained access to the plant without anybody being there.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so go in there over the holiday weekend to nothing's running, nothing's working.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: They looked at smokestack number nine that infrequently.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: It was one of the least used.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: So this could have been an inside job then, somebody who knew.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Potentially.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, why would the guy make that statement about smokestack number nine?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's actually written in the police report.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Superintendent Don Bailey states that exact clue.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's the spot?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, if you want to have a body vacation, because it's so because it's so rarely checked.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if the boiler was operating for a certain number of hours, like there would be nothing left of a body to find.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Initially, they went through Georgia Pacific employees to see if anyone had missed work or missed a paycheck, but they were all accounted for and no abandoned vehicles were reported in the area.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: The DNA samples that were sent into the forensics labs could have led to some answers.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, when they arrived at the lab, the samples were essentially carbonized and no DNA was able to be pulled from those.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Autopsy results and forensic recreation drawings were sent to multiple state agencies, but no matches led to the closure of the case in 1993.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: So they just closed it as unsolved.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Cool, because they were able to get nothing from the body.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was basically dust when they tried to pull samples from it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and even when they had the guy relook at it in 1999, he was like, There's nothing that I can see that would be identifying enough.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not like the dental bridge from the lady in the lake case.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was just regular crowns and nothing that's super identifiable.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: No foreign dentistry.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: In 2004, the skull was sent for additional DNA typing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing was able to be pulled from that either.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: In the police report, it says with the completion of the DNA testing, there does not appear to be any additional follow-up that can be done to assist in the identification of the bones discovered.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: In August of 2004, with a failure to gather any DNA and determining all leads had been exhausted, the body was cremated, and the case once again was closed.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: No disrespect, but was that necessary?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why did yeah, because they totally could have waited another 20 years to see if anything any DNA could have been pulled or No, I meant why'd they put them back in the back in the oven.
• 8:38
  unknown: Okay.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, like it wasn't necessary.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm I'm serious.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: In 2006, information about the body and forensic drawings were added to the DOE network database, and with renewed interest in the case, it was reopened.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: On November 29, 2006, Dean Conn published an article for the Bellingham Herald.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Up until this point, it was widely accepted after the original autopsy findings and the clothing found with the body that the remains were covered belonged to a man.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: However, in this article, steam engineer Richard Severson recalls an odd encounter with a woman that he gave a tour of the Western Washington University steam plant.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: During this tour, she asked multiple times to climb inside a boiler, and when she was led to an inactive boiler, proceeded to walk in and out of it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she did this about four or five times before Richard asked her to leave.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: But that wasn't at the plant, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, that was at Western Washington.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was at the Western Washington steam plant.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: So was she like plotting a suicide or something?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not that far away from the other mill.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: The interaction was strange, but Richard became alarmed after seeing the news stories about the skeleton found in the boiler and immediately went to police.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: When he tried to talk to officers there, he recalls being brushed off because it was assumed at that point that the victim was a man.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the margin of error is like 5% when determining because they can only determine from like the size of the pelvis.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: And shoe size.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Very that's a very small size.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: Also, shoe shoe size for a man.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: An eight?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's like a woman's night.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, wasn't the pelvis broken too?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was broken in two places.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it could Okay, so that leaves some questions.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also in 2006, after the article was published and interest in the case was growing again, police received a call from a man named Robert Brown.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 1987, Robert had worked at the Mount Baker plywood mill.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: According to police report, while he was working, a coworker followed by two other men who didn't work at the mill came up to him and the group started chatting.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: They got to talking about what they liked to do outside of work, and Robert remarked he enjoyed diving, and in response, one of the two unfamiliar men said that he and some friends would climb the towers at Georgia Pacific for fun.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: He continued to tell Robert that a member of his friend group worked at the plant and would let them in after hours.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: They had developed a system so they could avoid detection and leave without getting caught.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever they thought had been seen would blow a whistle and they'd all meet at a pre-arranged location outside the plant.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: According to this man, one of their most recent additions to this group was a man from New York, and on their last group outing at Georgia Pacific, he failed to return to the group's pre-arranged location after the whistle was blown.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: After the story of the body found at Georgia Pacific came out, Robert claimed he contacted a friend that worked at the police department in 1987 and relayed this story.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the cops are just sitting on their hands.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that seems pretty.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2006, when this came up again, investigators immediately contacted the Mount Baker Plywood mill to try to find who the other employee was in order to track down the two mystery men that could have been with him.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: However, no former employees matched the last name Robert had given, and police went further and looked into missing persons' cases in New York, but no dental records matched any open cases that the state had.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or but their dental records didn't match any open cases that the state had.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean 20 years later at this point.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Also, this man had very strange teeth.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: He had a severe overbite, and the description, or even like the drawing of the teeth, they were an arrow.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like the front teeth were instead of, you know, curved.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was I mean, but someone has a very relative somewhere.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: In April of 2022, a tip from Cramstoppers was sent to police.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: The anonymous tip stated that a man named John Kay had found a motorcycle on the side of the road near the smokestack.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: He took the motorcycle and parted it, but allegedly kept the license plate.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The tip goes on to state that John suspected the motorcycle could have been related to the missing person found in the smokestack.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: If this tip about John Kay was legit, the license plate could aid in identifying who this person was.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: So police located this John and followed up.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: John didn't work at Georgia Pacific at the time, but he was a contractor working at Georgia Pacific and was aware of the motorcycle, but was involved after the parts had already been sold.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: He did remember, however, that the bike had a Canadian license plate.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if the bike did exist, nothing was ever recovered.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but that seems like so long for a tip to come in.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: 40 years?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody's leaving this world and they had a guilty conscience.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but it was kind of correct.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this man did work there.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't work for them, but he was there.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: They had some facts straight, sure.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: But that would have been nice for them to know years before they might not have cremated the body.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Another theory is that this man had been a potential whistleblower.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Online online sleuths speculate that because of the many problems within the plant prior to the body being found, including several job cuts in 1987, in August of 1987, fines for pollution, evacuations, health risk, and impossible relocation, etc.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Which isn't a stretch considering while investigators were on site, high levels of dioxin were reported in the exhaust and subsequently absorbed absorbed by the body and transferred to those who were involved in the initial investigation.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: A report even states the dioxin levels are toxic and should be of concern.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but that would uh mean that that would be someone who worked there and they already went through the records of the people that worked there.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if it was an inside job, maybe they could get rid of the records, do something to make it look like no one was missing.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but I'm still caught up on this.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Could this be a woman, the shoe size?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't say if it was a men's size eight.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that lady was looking at at boilers, why she was going in and out of the boiler.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they could have followed up with that person.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: They would have had a log of that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but also if you're trying to commit suicide, why would you inferno yourself?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean at 400 degrees is probably pretty quick.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't know when it's gonna happen.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well they run for 36 hours or whatever.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't know when they're running, because these boilers run very infrequently and sporadically.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they also made like a tourniquet thing to like stop their bleeding.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I kinda like the the idea of the the group that went climbing and then the guy fell.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, the guy fell, but then when they look for him?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, we're supposed to meet up, blow the whistle.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody doesn't meet up, you just don't go, oh well he didn't meet up.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not if you're not not supposed to be there and yeah, it's illegal and you could get in trouble.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Especially if you're the guy that's the employee at the plant.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then there's a dead body, and so now you don't want to speak up because you're an accessory to murder.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, maybe he didn't fall and die, maybe he got caught.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, he didn't meet up, he must have gotten caught by the by security.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there are also some hauntings that have been reported out of the Georgia Pacific plant before it was demolished.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: What year was it demolished?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Georgia Pacific Mill closed in 2001, and the Port of Bellingham acquired the property in 2005, and a development is planned for the area.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: As all places like this are.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this person says, People have seen an operation of an old man walking in the offices above the production floor, sometimes walking through the walls.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen shadow figures moving in the facility after we close.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've also seen an amorphous blob shape float up from the ceiling once.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've also heard a voice answer me talking to myself in the customer service area.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Several employees believe the building is haunted based on their experiences.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Another person said, years ago when I first started working at GP, I would walk in a specific area of the walkway and would feel feel a very sharp pinch or bite on my behind.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: This happened approximately eight or nine times over a course of the month.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: A fellow employee mentioned the name of the man who had passed away on the premises back in the early 1980s.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So one day it happened again.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said the man's name and said, I need you to stop doing that, and it never happened again.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the one I'm thinking of is the shadowy figures after dark.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: That might be our rowdy bunch of dudes he was going climbing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Shadowy figures after we close.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: That could be the gang.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Could be them.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of the question, there's not really anything else that's happened in the case since that tip came in 2022.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as of this document, it was pulled in 2024.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is kind of was it a planned suicide?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Was it an accident or someone trying to get rid of a body?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: A planned suicide makes sense to me.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: But the tourniquet part doesn't.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're gonna commit suicide, why would you?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Why would you try to save yourself?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess like survival instincts, but And some articles say that they put the socks on their hands and they were trying to like climb out and there were marks on the wall.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The police report doesn't say that, but so I don't know how true it is.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But also if it was a suicide, you wouldn't be trying to get out.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, unless unless you didn't die from the fall, and then all of a sudden, like, it's not really Well, and it's more than just a fall.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, it's seven feet it's 17 feet high, and seven feet down there's a crossbar that goes all the way across.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the bottom is the eleven, like the grid of eleven pipes.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if they didn't know that crossbar was there.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't think the hide the body is really plausible.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like why would you take the body of the thing?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: But especially because it's hard to get there.
• 18:52
  unknown: It isn't.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right, they had to get to the top of the stack, even though right there's a chamber not far above where the person was found, but that was bolted shut.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like they went through the very, very top of the stack.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, there's that door at the bottom of the subs at this of the smokestack, but it was bolted shut and it took police two hours to open it to gain access to the body.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's widely accepted that he must have fallen in.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: From the top.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Especially and that's consistent with the injuries that the body received, too.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's more the horse and round, somebody's gonna get caught, blow the whistle, but they were stuck.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the man is supposed to be 40 to 45.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: What forty to four forty-five-year-old man is Urbex exploring at a steam plant?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: It just seems kind of strange.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not unheard of now, because I think that's more common with the internet and stuff, but not really of the time.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, the aging didn't seem super accurate, 20 to 40 and then 40 to 45.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's the thing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: If they would have kept around some of the stuff, maybe it would have been able to be identified or furthered further tested with the advancement of DNA analysis.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just I don't know why they would have cremated the body.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: I just feel bad overall for the lack of information on this John Doe, because you think there would be something.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and multiple times there were missing person cases that families were run into police saying, Oh, this kind of matches the description of our missing person.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to tell the family, no, sorry, that's not and they looked at missing person cases three years prior to when the accident happened and three years after in the US and in Canada.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't match any of the records that they have for any of the open cases.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So an international Yeah, I mean likely someone knows something.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's just are they still alive?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because now it's just been so long.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and then there's a question of the t the airline ticket.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Did they fly there?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be kind of strange.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Flying wasn't as common in the eighties as it is now.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it definitely wasn't as common.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: So they were either coming or going or had just come and gone from somewhere.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or it could have been a trip they went on and they just kept the boarding ticket because it's like a memory.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just very strange of all things that so many so many what ifs are crazy.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, still still seems like an accident to me.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: An accident, even though the person was not a worker and they shouldn't have been there to begin with.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not like they put themselves there, but like they didn't I mean, like we were saying earlier, like either it was the whistle when he couldn't get out or whatever else happened and he fell in.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who clients smokestacks for fun?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently like a group of dudes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: A group of forty year old men.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there's some some booze involved as well.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Up to Shenana Gannery.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Crazy Friday night.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's sad that if it was a group of people that they wouldn't come forward and called the anonymous hotline or whatever, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean Well, that guy did.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's how we know there's a group of these.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: No, but that was in 2022, 40 years later.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Nah, that was in 2006.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:24
  unknown: Okay.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Only 20 years later.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that person had allegedly talked to police in 1987.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: But there was no record of that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there was no no who he talked to and if he talked to somebody.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of hearsay.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: So typically we do the believability and creepy.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously, like the last week's episode, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's a verified story.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: There's a a real body police report.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not that it didn't happen.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: We don't clearly have obviously all the facts, but believability-wise, I mean, it's for sure a 10 out of 10.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have all the facts that they've been able to get.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more facts than given it was 1987.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they bulldozed the plant, they cremated the guy, like what yeah, there's nothing.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna find anything else.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: So creepy-wise, though, the ghosts in the I know the plant's not there anymore since they decommissioned it and then tore it down and have now sold the property.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I imagine there's probably gonna be ghost stories or you know, something that will will come out of that.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I think I just I find it odd that they don't run those smokestacks for a long time.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: Then they finally do run them, it alarms, and they find a body.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they they really have no idea how long that body could have been there.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give it a a zero on the creepy score.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: Why zero?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because climbing a smokestack is a hundred percent optional.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: True.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's true.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was thinking about like the ghosts or the I mean, you know, the I'm sure people have been hurt or um injured there, maybe died on that property.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I I give it a very low creepy score myself.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe like a a two.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: I just feel like you just know there's gonna be more stories about Well, yeah, now my family's moving in.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there are there are people that other people that have died there before it closed.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not many, but just yeah, working at work accidents.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, working at the plant.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: Liam, what about you creepy?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe like a a one.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it didn't seem that creepy.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can climb a smokestack for fun.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, who's climbing 17 feet up for fun?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Not me.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm good on the ground.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm still worried about the shoe size, so I'd like to get some clarity on that, but I know that we won't have that, so no clarity, unfortunately.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's sad.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this person, because of the tourniquet, he didn't want to he didn't want to die and he was trying to prevent that from happening, but so sad factor of of ten.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Even if he wasn't supposed to be there and was an accident.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, bad way.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, unfortunately, it survived the fall with terrible injuries.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: So Well it was only 17 feet.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Only.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nah, but But if you hit something on the way down in the dark, and then you land like weird.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think you're dying though, unless you go dive headfirst.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they did break all their legs, so quite literally, yeah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And their pelvis.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I can't imagine that'd be fun.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, that's the case of the Bellingham John Doe.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Very sad.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have information about this case, contact the Bellingham Police Department at 360-778-8800.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any stories or cases that you would like us to look into, email Early Beloved Podcast at gmail.com.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on social medias, Early Beloved Podcast, and turn your notifications on for new episodes every Thursday.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, bye.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.