Latest / Crime and Horror / Social experiment gone HORRIBLY WRONG... - MrBallen

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Social experiment gone HORRIBLY WRONG... - MrBallen · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and today I'm
0:03
Speaker 1: going to tell you three stories that demonstrate that. But
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Speaker 1: before we get into those stories, if you're a fan
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Speaker 1: of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format,
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Speaker 1: let's get into today's stories. On the afternoon of June
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Speaker 1: twenty ninth, nineteen thirty four, a thirty seven year old
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Speaker 1: police officer named Captain Alan Falby pressed the throttle on
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Speaker 1: his plays motorcycle and sped down a street in Alpaso, Texas.
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Speaker 1: Captain Falby's motorcycle lights and sirens were on because he
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Speaker 1: was chasing a speeding pickup truck down the road. But
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Speaker 1: despite the fact that obviously Captain Fhlby was in pursuit
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Speaker 1: of this person, they were not slowing down at all.
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Speaker 1: So Captain Falby had been a police officer for eleven
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Speaker 1: years and he loved his job, He loved his motorcycle,
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Speaker 1: and he hated when suspects got away. So he kept
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Speaker 1: his hand on the throttle and kept chasing down the suspect.
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Speaker 1: But suddenly the truck he was going after slammed on
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Speaker 1: its brakes and swerved hard to the left. Falby tried
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Speaker 1: to slow down, but it was too late. He slammed
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Speaker 1: into the back of this truck and then he and
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Speaker 1: his bike went sliding across the asphalt for a few seconds.
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Speaker 1: And the whole time Faalby is feeling his body getting
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Speaker 1: totally scraped against the pavement and the winds getting knocked
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Speaker 1: out of him. And then finally when he came to
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Speaker 1: a stop, you know, he was splayed out in the
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Speaker 1: middle of the road and his motorcycle, his beloved motorcycle,
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Speaker 1: was laying on top of him, pinning his legs under him.
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Speaker 1: And this bike weighed like five hundred pounds and adding
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Speaker 1: insult to injury here, you know, as Faalby is screaming
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Speaker 1: out in pain because obviously horrible injuries have been sustained here,
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Speaker 1: you know, he looks down the road and he sees
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Speaker 1: the truck he was chasing, who clearly knew he just
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Speaker 1: wrecked behind them. They're not going to stay in help.
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Speaker 1: They just drove off, protecting themselves. And so pretty quickly
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Speaker 1: Fallby kind of assessed the situation he was in. You know,
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Speaker 1: he tried for a second to push this bike off
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Speaker 1: of him, but not only could he not move it,
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Speaker 1: but every time he moved it just a little bit,
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Speaker 1: the weight would kind of come down even harder and
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Speaker 1: a little bit more pointed on his legs, which were crushed,
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Speaker 1: and he had this excruciating pain down there, and worse,
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Speaker 1: he's looking underneath him and he's seeing this growing pool
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Speaker 1: of blood. Clearly he's sustained potentially life threatening injuries here
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Speaker 1: and he's all alone, like there's nobody here to help him,
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Speaker 1: and he's totally stuck. And so even though he began
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Speaker 1: calling out for help, the reality was, you know, if
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Speaker 1: nobody came along, soon he was done for. And he
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Speaker 1: found himself starting to pay. Luckily, though, just then, two
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Speaker 1: men from down the road came running up to Captain Fallby.
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Speaker 1: Apparently they had been sort of behind the captain and
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Speaker 1: were watching him pursuing this truck and they had actually
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Speaker 1: seen the accident, and so they had pulled over and
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Speaker 1: they were now running up to see if he was okay,
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Speaker 1: and so right away, without even needing to ask Captain
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Speaker 1: Fallby what he needed, these two men saw the situation.
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Speaker 1: You know, the bike is pinned on top of the
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Speaker 1: cop and so together these two men were able to
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Speaker 1: lift this heavy motorcycle off of the captain's legs. And
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Speaker 1: as soon as they did, all three of them looked
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Speaker 1: and they could clearly see, you know, the reason there's
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Speaker 1: all this blood all over the pavement. There was this
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Speaker 1: huge gash in Captain Falby's leg right above his knee
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Speaker 1: that was just pouring out blood. And Captain Falby, you know,
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Speaker 1: he saw that and he was already starting to feel
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Speaker 1: lightheaded from blood loss, but just seeing this huge wound
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Speaker 1: was totally disorienting. Fortunately, though, the two men who had
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Speaker 1: arrived on the scene to help Captain Fallby kept their
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Speaker 1: composure and one of them actually noticed that Captain Fallby
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Speaker 1: was wearing a necktie, had a formal police uniform on
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Speaker 1: that had you know, a necktie as part of it,
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Speaker 1: and he gently reached over and he told Captain Pholby
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Speaker 1: to relax, and he undid his necktie. Meanwhile, the other
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Speaker 1: man he ran over to the side of the road
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Speaker 1: where this big tree was, and he got a stick,
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Speaker 1: a pretty sturdy stick. And so the guy who undid
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Speaker 1: the necktie, he tied it around Captain Phalby's leg above
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Speaker 1: the wound, basically cutting off circulation to that wound. A tourniquet,
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Speaker 1: he tied it off, and then the other guy came
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Speaker 1: back over with the stick and he handed it to
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Speaker 1: the guy with the necktie, and he took the stick
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Speaker 1: and threaded it carefully through the necktie that was now
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Speaker 1: wrapped around the captain's leg, and he began twisting the stick,
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Speaker 1: wrapping up the fabric as he twisted it, which in
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Speaker 1: turn mechanically tightened that tourniquet around the captain's leg much
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Speaker 1: tighter than you could do, you know, without something mechanical
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Speaker 1: like this is somebody who clearly knew how to make
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Speaker 1: a real tourniquet out of sort of everyday materials. And
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Speaker 1: so they tie off the super tight tourniquet. They stopped
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Speaker 1: the bleeding, and it ultimately saves Captain Falby's life. In fact,
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Speaker 1: by the time Captain Folby actually got brought to the
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Speaker 1: hospital and they took off this DIY tourniquet and patched
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Speaker 1: him up for real. The doctor would tell Captain Fulby that,
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Speaker 1: you know, he was about ten minutes away from death
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Speaker 1: from blood loss. So had it not been for those
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Speaker 1: two guys who showed up and made that tourniquet, he
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Speaker 1: very likely would have died. Four years later, on December twelfth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, Captain Faalby was back at work and
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Speaker 1: he had been, you know, ever since maybe six months
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Speaker 1: after his injury. He had just gone back to work
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Speaker 1: fully recovered. You know, he did have some scar tissue
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Speaker 1: on his leg, but he was basically back to full capacity.
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Speaker 1: And so on this particular day, Captain Falby was on
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Speaker 1: patrol like he normally was in El Paso, when he
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Speaker 1: got a call over the radio about a bad car
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Speaker 1: accident that had happened out on Route eighty, which is
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Speaker 1: a major road in that town. And so Captain Falby
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Speaker 1: races over to the scene and he sees there's this
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Speaker 1: car that's clearly veered off the road and smashed into
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Speaker 1: a tree, and the driver, or who appears to be
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Speaker 1: the driver, is sitting still in the driver's seat, and
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Speaker 1: they were unconscious, and so Faalby was the first on
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Speaker 1: the scene. He pulls over, he gets off his bike,
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Speaker 1: he rushes over to the car, and he carefully pulls
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Speaker 1: this unconscious man out of the car and he lays
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Speaker 1: him on the ground, and he sees this guy has
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Speaker 1: a horrible gash in his leg and it's bleeding profusely.
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Speaker 1: But because this basically mirrored the exact same type of
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Speaker 1: injury that Faalby himself had had four years earlier when
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Speaker 1: he crashed his motorcycle, Falby knew what to do. He
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Speaker 1: didn't have, you know, a issued tourniquet on hand, but
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Speaker 1: he knew how to make one. He had a necktie,
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Speaker 1: and there were sticks on the side of the road,
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Speaker 1: so as quick as he could, he rushed over, grabbed
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Speaker 1: a sturdy stick, took off his neck tie, tied it
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Speaker 1: around this man's leg, used the stick to tighten it
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Speaker 1: up even further, and he cut off the bleeding to
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Speaker 1: that wound. And so at this point, now that Captain
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Speaker 1: Falby has realized that, okay, you know, this guy appears
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Speaker 1: to be stable. Now, he's not actively bleeding. He's clearly
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Speaker 1: still breathing, albeit unconscious, but you know, it seems like
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Speaker 1: he has a fighting chance here. So he's waiting for
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Speaker 1: paramedics to show up take this guy to the hospital,
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Speaker 1: and he's just sitting there sort of, you know, happy
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Speaker 1: he was able to be here and save this guy.
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Speaker 1: When he sort of looks at this guy and he
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Speaker 1: realizes something. The man he had just saved with his
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Speaker 1: DIY tourniquet was literally the actual same guy who had
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Speaker 1: saved Captain Falby with a DIY tourniquet four years earlier.
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Speaker 1: Captain Falby had never even gotten the guy's name. They
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Speaker 1: had not stayed in touch after his accident, they had
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Speaker 1: gone separate ways. But now he's looking down at this
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Speaker 1: man and he's realizing it's the same one. The guy's
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Speaker 1: name was Alfred Smith, and he would make a full recovery,
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Speaker 1: but when he was rushed to the hospital, they would say,
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Speaker 1: you know, you were within about maybe ten minutes of
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Speaker 1: bleeding to death had it not been for Captain Falby.
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Speaker 1: So literally, this DIY tourniquet story played out almost exactly
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Speaker 1: the same way, with these two guys doing it to
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Speaker 1: each other, but four years apart. Later on Captain Faalby
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Speaker 1: and Alfred Smith would give an interview to Ripley's Believe
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Speaker 1: It or Not to talk about the incredible coincidence that
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Speaker 1: saved both their lives. And when the interviewer at some
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Speaker 1: point congratulated Captain Folby on his heroic efforts, Fallby simply stated, quote,
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Speaker 1: one good tourniquet deserves another. You see, Alfred Smith was
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Speaker 1: the man who put the tourniquet around my leg and
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Speaker 1: saved my life when my motorcycle hit that chuck. After all,
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Speaker 1: one good tourniquet deserves another. Well, and there you have it,
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Speaker 1: month of therapy. On the e evening of December sixteenth,
10:01
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, a twenty four year old electrical engineer
10:05
Speaker 1: named Huh how Ron walked through the courtyard of a
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Speaker 1: pretty low rent CD apartment complex in Hong Kong. He
10:11
Speaker 1: held hands with his longtime girlfriend, twenty three year old
10:14
Speaker 1: Jen U. The pair had just finished having dinner together
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Speaker 1: at Ho Ron's apartment, which was part of this complex,
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Speaker 1: but now he was walking his girlfriend across this courtyard
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Speaker 1: to the other side of this complex where her apartment
10:25
Speaker 1: was located. And so how Ron always walked you home.
10:29
Speaker 1: The pair had been together for a few years now.
10:31
Speaker 1: They'd actually met in college after a close mutual friend
10:33
Speaker 1: had introduced them, and ever since then they had been inseparable.
10:37
Speaker 1: And so how Ron was just sort of protective of you,
10:39
Speaker 1: and he felt like their neighborhood was not very safe,
10:42
Speaker 1: and so any time, especially at night, when he knew
10:44
Speaker 1: his girlfriend would be sort of out and about in
10:47
Speaker 1: their neighborhood, he would walk with her to keep her safe,
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Speaker 1: and so that's what he was doing tonight. Eventually, the
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Speaker 1: couple reached the front door of the section of this
10:55
Speaker 1: complex that would lead up to U's apartment, and so
10:57
Speaker 1: the two walked in through the front door, and they
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Speaker 1: made the way over to the building's elevator bank. There
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Speaker 1: were two elevators. How Ron reached over and pressed the
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Speaker 1: up button, and then he and You just stood there
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Speaker 1: and waited. And as they waited, they began to hear
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Speaker 1: the familiar sound of one of the old elevator cars
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Speaker 1: clanging its way down the elevator shaft. These were old
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Speaker 1: and creaky and really kind of sketchy elevator cars that
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Speaker 1: both how Ron and You hated riding on. But you
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Speaker 1: lived up on the thirteenth floor, and neither of them
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Speaker 1: liked walking up that many steps, and so it was
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Speaker 1: sort of like the only other choice is to ride
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Speaker 1: one of these elevator cars. And so eventually the car
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Speaker 1: came down, the doors dinged, they opened up, and nobody
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Speaker 1: was on the car, and so how Ron and You
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Speaker 1: stepped inside. They pressed thirteen, The doors rattled to a close,
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Speaker 1: and they slowly began going up. And the whole time
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Speaker 1: they're going up, neither of them spoke. It was just
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Speaker 1: kind of like anxious anticipation that, you know, hopefully this
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Speaker 1: car will make it all the way up to the
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Speaker 1: thirteenth floor, And so as they're moving up, you know
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Speaker 1: they're hearing the car banging into the walls and it's
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Speaker 1: it's just so uncomfortable. But eventually they do reach the
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Speaker 1: thirteenth floor. It dings, the doors open up, and both
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Speaker 1: of them are so relieved when they step out of
12:07
Speaker 1: the car onto solid ground and they make their way
12:10
Speaker 1: over to use apartment, and the two, you know, they
12:12
Speaker 1: give each other a hug and kiss and say they
12:15
Speaker 1: had a really nice time together. And then you she
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Speaker 1: retreats into her apartment, and how Ron goes back down
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Speaker 1: the hallway and presses the down button to go back
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Speaker 1: down the elevator, and sure enough, a couple of seconds later,
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Speaker 1: how Ron heard the familiar sound of the elevator car
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Speaker 1: shaking and banging against the shaft as it made its
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Speaker 1: way up to him. There was a bell sound, the
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Speaker 1: doors opened up. Nobody was on the elevator car. How
12:38
Speaker 1: Ron stepped inside, pressed the loppy button, turned around, and
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Speaker 1: watched as the doors closed, and then slowly he began
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Speaker 1: to go down. And again as he's going down, you know,
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Speaker 1: how Ron had that same sort of nervous energy, hoping
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Speaker 1: this elevator didn't come to a you know, lurching stop
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Speaker 1: or something that it just got him down to the ground. Safely,
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Speaker 1: and so he's going down. It's floor twelve, ten down,
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Speaker 1: he's going. And then at floor seven the car came
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Speaker 1: to a stop. But it was kind of a hard stop,
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Speaker 1: not like emergency status hard, but it was a fairly
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Speaker 1: hard stop at floor seven. And so how Ron he's
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Speaker 1: instinctively thinking, okay, well, clearly someone on the seventh floor
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Speaker 1: has called the elevator and the doors are going to
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Speaker 1: open any second here, and you know, someone's gonna get on.
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Speaker 1: But as he's waiting for the doors to open to
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Speaker 1: alleviate this sudden stress that, oh my god, is something
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Speaker 1: wrong here, the doors don't open, and instead the elevator
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Speaker 1: suddenly lurches down another foot. It stops, but clearly this
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Speaker 1: is not normal elevator behavior. There is something wrong with
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Speaker 1: this elevator. Like his worst fears are coming true and
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Speaker 1: the doors still are not opening, and so how Ron's
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Speaker 1: looking around wondering like what's he gonna do? Like what
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Speaker 1: can he do? You know, he's trying to tell himself
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Speaker 1: that everything's okay, you know, maybe the doors still will
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Speaker 1: open up, but they're not. And then he begins to
13:55
Speaker 1: smell something. It was almost like a sort of chemical smell.
13:58
Speaker 1: He couldn't really place what it was, and he's sort
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Speaker 1: of looking around wondering what's going on here, and his
14:02
Speaker 1: panic is rising, like this is a bad situation, has
14:05
Speaker 1: no idea what's happening, but clearly something bad is going
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Speaker 1: on here. And then this already horrible situation gets a
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Speaker 1: thousand times worse because he looks down and he sees
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Speaker 1: the floor of the inside of the elevator is now
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Speaker 1: on fire. And as he's realizing the floor is on
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Speaker 1: fire and that's what he was smelling, is like this
14:26
Speaker 1: burning smell, he sees his own legs are now on fire.
14:29
Speaker 1: And so, in a completely panicked like fight or flight moment,
14:33
Speaker 1: how Ron remembered that most elevator cars have an escape
14:37
Speaker 1: patch somewhere, usually on the ceiling. And he looked up
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Speaker 1: and he couldn't believe it. There it was. There was
14:42
Speaker 1: this escape patch to get out of the car. And
14:44
Speaker 1: so right away that's what how Ron began trying to do.
14:47
Speaker 1: He kind of scaled the walls of this car, he
14:50
Speaker 1: punched open this hatch, and he climbed out out of
14:53
Speaker 1: the elevator, out of the fire, saving his own life.
14:56
Speaker 1: And so while all this chaos was happening in the
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Speaker 1: elevator shaft. Ron's girlfriend You was in her apartment looking
15:03
Speaker 1: out the window, and her view was basically the same
15:06
Speaker 1: courtyard that she and hal Ron had walked across just
15:09
Speaker 1: you know, five minutes ago to get to her apartment building.
15:12
Speaker 1: And it was sort of customary that every time he
15:14
Speaker 1: would drop her off at her apartment, she would look
15:17
Speaker 1: out the window and wait for him to come out
15:18
Speaker 1: the front door, and she would watch him walk back
15:21
Speaker 1: across that same courtyard to his building on the other side.
15:24
Speaker 1: And so you sort of understood how long it would take,
15:27
Speaker 1: you know, for how Ron to come down the elevator
15:29
Speaker 1: and walk out the door. But now it had been
15:31
Speaker 1: you know, five, six, seven, eight minutes, and he still
15:34
Speaker 1: hadn't come out the front door, and there really wasn't
15:37
Speaker 1: any reason for him not to have exited the building
15:39
Speaker 1: at this point, and she started to get worried. And so,
15:42
Speaker 1: given the fact that you, much like how Ron, was
15:45
Speaker 1: fearful that those old elevators in this building were eventually
15:48
Speaker 1: going to get stuck while they were on them, given
15:51
Speaker 1: she had that fear, she instinctively was like, oh, my gosh,
15:55
Speaker 1: maybe he's stuck in the elevator, like, that's why he
15:58
Speaker 1: hasn't left the building yet. And so instinct she left
16:00
Speaker 1: her apartment and walked down the hallway to the elevator
16:03
Speaker 1: bank and she looked up above the doors and it
16:06
Speaker 1: showed where the respective cars were located, and she saw
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Speaker 1: that one of the cars was stuck at floor seven
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Speaker 1: and it wasn't moving up or down. It didn't matter
16:15
Speaker 1: if she pressed the button. That car would not go
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Speaker 1: up or down. The other car would, but not that car.
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Speaker 1: And so it convinced her that how Ron has got
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Speaker 1: to be trapped on that elevator car. He's stuck right there.
16:27
Speaker 1: I better call authorities, and so she did. She called
16:30
Speaker 1: the fire department and said, you know, hey, my boyfriend,
16:32
Speaker 1: I believe he's trapped in the elevator. And so just
16:35
Speaker 1: a few minutes later, the local fire department showed up
16:38
Speaker 1: to the apartment complex and they walked up to the
16:41
Speaker 1: seventh floor where they believed, you know, this car was stuck. Now,
16:44
Speaker 1: they were not in some crazy, you know, emergency mode
16:47
Speaker 1: running down the hall to open up this elevator car,
16:50
Speaker 1: because they're thinking, you know, it's really just an inconvenience,
16:53
Speaker 1: getting stuck on an elevator car. It's not like life
16:55
Speaker 1: and death. And so they just make their way up
16:57
Speaker 1: to the seventh floor by taking the stairs, and then
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Speaker 1: on the seventh floor they go over to the elevator
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Speaker 1: bank where the two doors are to the respective elevator cars,
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Speaker 1: and on the one that you know shows the car
17:09
Speaker 1: is stuck on floor seven. You know, it says the
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Speaker 1: number right above the door. They use their tools to
17:13
Speaker 1: pry open the doors to see, you know, the car
17:16
Speaker 1: right behind it. And once they pry it open, they
17:19
Speaker 1: do see the trapped elevator car, and it's not exactly
17:22
Speaker 1: where it's supposed to be. It's not sitting, you know,
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Speaker 1: right in front of the door. It's actually situated sort
17:28
Speaker 1: of below the seventh floor. They can basically only see
17:31
Speaker 1: the top of the elevator car, like this car has
17:33
Speaker 1: actually gotten stuck between the seventh floor and the sixth floor.
17:37
Speaker 1: But that in and of itself was not a huge thing.
17:40
Speaker 1: I mean, they could basically mechanically move this car up
17:42
Speaker 1: and down that they needed to either up to the
17:44
Speaker 1: seventh or down to the sixth to get whoever was
17:47
Speaker 1: on the car out. What they noticed right away, though,
17:49
Speaker 1: which was the way bigger problem is they smelled and
17:52
Speaker 1: saw smoke and it was coming from this elevator car,
17:56
Speaker 1: the trapped car, and so the firefighters immediately go into Okay,
18:00
Speaker 1: we've got to figure out where this fire is coming from.
18:02
Speaker 1: Is it coming from this elevator car. Is it somewhere
18:05
Speaker 1: down below at the bottom of the elevator shaft? Like
18:07
Speaker 1: they don't know, but from their perspective outside looking into
18:10
Speaker 1: the shaft, they could see that the hatch, the emergency
18:14
Speaker 1: hatch on this stopped elevator car, was open because they
18:17
Speaker 1: can see the roof of this car, and they're thinking, Okay,
18:20
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the trap guy is right in there
18:23
Speaker 1: and we can look down, grab him, pull him out
18:24
Speaker 1: and deal with this fire. And so they go in.
18:26
Speaker 1: They're yelling out Howron's name, and they look down into
18:30
Speaker 1: this elevator car. They're literally on top looking through his hatch,
18:33
Speaker 1: and they see the carpet inside of this car is
18:36
Speaker 1: all charred and burned, and there's some smoke sort of
18:38
Speaker 1: sitting inside the car, but there's nobody inside the car.
18:43
Speaker 1: It's empty. But they see there's blood all over the
18:45
Speaker 1: inside and up on the walls, and then they realize
18:48
Speaker 1: there's also blood kind of coming up, you know, through
18:51
Speaker 1: this hatch, and it's on the top of the elevator car. Clearly,
18:55
Speaker 1: you know, whoever was in this car was badly hurt
18:58
Speaker 1: as they exited out the roof. But now the firefighters
19:01
Speaker 1: are wondering, like, well, where did he go? Did he
19:04
Speaker 1: fall down to the bottom? I mean, because basically there's
19:07
Speaker 1: just these two elevator cars that move up and down.
19:09
Speaker 1: Inside of the singular shaft, there's basically nothing dividing the
19:13
Speaker 1: two shafts that these elevator cars move in. It's kind
19:16
Speaker 1: of like one big shaft. And so to the side
19:19
Speaker 1: of this frozen car is this huge shaft, multi story
19:23
Speaker 1: shaft that goes all the way to the ground. And say,
19:25
Speaker 1: look over the edge, and they shine their light down
19:27
Speaker 1: the elevator shaft because you know, the car on this
19:30
Speaker 1: side was up top, it was not obstructing their view.
19:32
Speaker 1: And sure enough there is a man maybe one floor
19:36
Speaker 1: down who looks very badly injured. He cuts all over him.
19:39
Speaker 1: He's bleeding, it looked like his ankle was broken, and
19:42
Speaker 1: he was sort of huddled on this very small platform
19:45
Speaker 1: basically one floor below. At every floor when you walk
19:49
Speaker 1: onto the elevator, when those doors open up, there's like,
19:52
Speaker 1: you know, a one foot long little platform that extends
19:56
Speaker 1: into the shaft just enough that it meets the entrance
19:59
Speaker 1: to the car. So when the car opens up, you
20:01
Speaker 1: walk across this little platform into the elevator. The door
20:04
Speaker 1: shut and it goes up or down. But if you're
20:07
Speaker 1: in the elevator shaft, each floor basically has that little protrusion,
20:11
Speaker 1: that one foot you know, small platform, and there's the guy,
20:14
Speaker 1: presumably how Ron, who is positioned perched on the one
20:18
Speaker 1: right below them, on that little platform. And so, of
20:21
Speaker 1: course the firefighters forget the fire because you know, that's
20:24
Speaker 1: a separate issue at this point, and they got to
20:26
Speaker 1: go rescue how Ron. And so they go down to
20:28
Speaker 1: the sixth floor, they open up the doors, they grab
20:31
Speaker 1: how Ron, they pull him into the hallway where he
20:33
Speaker 1: is safe. You know, he's obviously in an enormous amount
20:36
Speaker 1: of pain. He's been burned, he's got a broken ankle,
20:38
Speaker 1: he's in rough shape, but it appears like he's going
20:41
Speaker 1: to survive. And so as the firefighters placed how Ron
20:44
Speaker 1: on a stretcher, and he's barely talking, you know, he's
20:46
Speaker 1: very shaken up. He's just laying there. And so at
20:48
Speaker 1: this point, you the girlfriend she found out the firefighters
20:52
Speaker 1: had saved her boyfriend and he was on the sixth floor,
20:54
Speaker 1: and so she comes charging down the stairs, runs down
20:57
Speaker 1: the sixth floor hallway to be by her boyfriend side,
21:01
Speaker 1: and she looks at how Ron for the first time,
21:04
Speaker 1: and she just freezes and she stares at him and
21:07
Speaker 1: she says, that's not my boyfriend. It would turn out
21:11
Speaker 1: this whole elevator disaster was highly coordinated, because what neither
21:16
Speaker 1: hal Ron nor his girlfriend you knew was that the
21:19
Speaker 1: same mutual friend who had actually introduced to the two
21:22
Speaker 1: of them deeply regretted it. He himself was in love
21:27
Speaker 1: with you and he couldn't bear to see her with
21:30
Speaker 1: another man. And so this mutual friend, whose name was
21:34
Speaker 1: Leo wen Jong, that night, he had secretly waited until
21:38
Speaker 1: he was sure how Ron had climbed on the elevator
21:41
Speaker 1: car by himself, and then he had cut off electricity
21:45
Speaker 1: to that car, freezing it at the seventh floor, actually
21:48
Speaker 1: between the seventh and the sixth floor, and then he
21:51
Speaker 1: climbed on top of the elevator car, opened up the
21:54
Speaker 1: hatch just enough to pour kerosene into the car with
21:58
Speaker 1: how Ron. That was the smell that how Ron began
22:01
Speaker 1: to talk about and smell inside the shaft, like he
22:03
Speaker 1: clearly knew there was something off, but how Ron didn't
22:06
Speaker 1: realize it was, you know, this friend of his right
22:09
Speaker 1: above him. And then before how Ron could even understand
22:12
Speaker 1: what was happening, Leu lit a match and threw it
22:15
Speaker 1: into the elevator car. That was what caused the big fire.
22:18
Speaker 1: But then when how Ron panicked and climbed up out
22:21
Speaker 1: of the hatch to save himself, Leu was waiting for him,
22:25
Speaker 1: and he stabbed how Ron and then threw him off
22:29
Speaker 1: the roof of this elevator car, where he fell all
22:32
Speaker 1: the way down seven floors to the bottom of the
22:34
Speaker 1: shaft where he died. The man that was crouched on
22:38
Speaker 1: that platform, you know, one floor below where this car was,
22:41
Speaker 1: was Leu. And basically what he did is after murdering
22:45
Speaker 1: how Ron, he leapt onto that platform from the top
22:49
Speaker 1: of this elevator car down onto that platform sort of
22:52
Speaker 1: intentionally to hurt himself to make it seem somehow like
22:56
Speaker 1: you know, he was just trying to help Holron. But
22:58
Speaker 1: then you know, basically fell and hurt himself too, Like
23:00
Speaker 1: he didn't do anything wrong. But when they looked at
23:03
Speaker 1: how Ron inside the shaft, he was clearly stabbed. And
23:06
Speaker 1: also they knew this fire had been started on purpose.
23:08
Speaker 1: It was clearly arson. And so once all this evidence
23:11
Speaker 1: had piled up and it was pretty obvious that Leu
23:13
Speaker 1: had done it, he did confess and he was ultimately
23:16
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison. One evening in February of
23:33
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, a thirty four year old man named
23:37
Speaker 1: Jose Louise Panna walked down a staircase inside of a
23:40
Speaker 1: cafe in Madrid, Spain. At the bottom of the stairs
23:42
Speaker 1: was this sort of basement seating area. It was pretty quiet,
23:44
Speaker 1: only a few people were down there, but Jose Louise,
23:48
Speaker 1: as soon as he was down there, he saw his
23:49
Speaker 1: friend Fernando Seesma had already found a booth on the
23:52
Speaker 1: other end of the seating area, and he was beckoning
23:55
Speaker 1: Jose Louise over, and so Jose Louise, who had come
23:58
Speaker 1: here to meet Fernando, eagerly walked over towards him. And
24:02
Speaker 1: then before he even sat down, Fernando, who was grinning
24:05
Speaker 1: ear to ear, he held up this envelope and showed
24:08
Speaker 1: Jose Luiz, like I got to tell you about this. So,
24:10
Speaker 1: Jose Luiz and Fernando were both members of a small
24:13
Speaker 1: club called Ballana Allegri, which means happy whale in Spanish,
24:19
Speaker 1: and their meetings were all about aliens and UFOs. Now,
24:23
Speaker 1: Fernando was actually a post office employee during the day,
24:26
Speaker 1: but at night he was the de facto leader of
24:28
Speaker 1: this club, and he'd always been fascinated by aliens. As
24:31
Speaker 1: for Jose Luise, he actually was much more of a skeptic.
24:35
Speaker 1: He actually kind of actively did not believe in aliens,
24:38
Speaker 1: UFOs or anything paranormal. But about a month prior, he'd
24:41
Speaker 1: had this sort of inexplicable, you know, ufo sighting, or
24:44
Speaker 1: he didn't even know what it was. He was driving
24:46
Speaker 1: along and thought he saw something in the sky that
24:49
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily make him a believer, but he didn't know
24:52
Speaker 1: who to talk to about this thing he had seen.
24:55
Speaker 1: He couldn't make sense of it, and so that's how
24:57
Speaker 1: he had found his way into this group. It was
24:59
Speaker 1: just because it was an outlet to talk about this
25:01
Speaker 1: weird thing he had been through, and to be honest,
25:04
Speaker 1: he didn't know if he'd be staying any longer than
25:06
Speaker 1: maybe the next couple of weeks. He was just here
25:07
Speaker 1: for now. But regardless, you know, Jose Luise and Fernando
25:11
Speaker 1: had made plans to meet up in this cafe tonight
25:14
Speaker 1: to sort of catch up on all things about the
25:16
Speaker 1: club before their actual club meeting that was gonna happen
25:19
Speaker 1: maybe thirty minutes from when they were actually meeting. But
25:22
Speaker 1: as Jose Louise is sitting down, Fernando's got this envelope
25:25
Speaker 1: that he's really excited about. And once Jose Louise sits down,
25:29
Speaker 1: Fernando puts it in front of him and he's like, look, look,
25:32
Speaker 1: there's no return address, and he points there's like the
25:35
Speaker 1: strange symbol on the outside of this envelope and it
25:38
Speaker 1: just looks sort of foreign. Like Jose Luise didn't really
25:40
Speaker 1: even know what he was looking at. But Fernando, who
25:42
Speaker 1: again is a full believer, he says to Jose Luiz,
25:45
Speaker 1: He's like, I just got this letter and I'm gonna
25:47
Speaker 1: show it to the club tonight because I think it's
25:49
Speaker 1: from an alien. Now, when Jose Luise heard this, you know,
25:53
Speaker 1: he was open to the idea of the UFOs being
25:56
Speaker 1: a thing, because again, he couldn't explain what happened to him,
25:59
Speaker 1: but he just felt like, give me a bring, like
26:01
Speaker 1: what an alien sent you a letter? Why why would
26:03
Speaker 1: they send you a letter? And he sort of said
26:05
Speaker 1: as much to Fernando. But Fernando he was ready for this,
26:07
Speaker 1: like he knew Jose Luiz was a skeptic, and he
26:10
Speaker 1: knew he would cut this letter apart. But Fernando he
26:13
Speaker 1: took the envelope back, you know, before Jose Luiz could
26:15
Speaker 1: say anything more about how fake this was, and he
26:18
Speaker 1: pulled out the letter inside. And the letter it was
26:21
Speaker 1: typed out, so it wasn't by hand, it was by typewriter.
26:23
Speaker 1: And the writer wrote that they were literally from an
26:26
Speaker 1: alien race called the Umites, and they'd come from a
26:29
Speaker 1: planet called Uma. And they said that, you know, the
26:32
Speaker 1: Umites had very advanced technology and they'd actually already been
26:36
Speaker 1: living on Earth for the last sixteen years. However, humans
26:40
Speaker 1: didn't recognize them because they sort of looked like normal people.
26:43
Speaker 1: And so this alien writer said, for all these years,
26:47
Speaker 1: they had been searching for, you know, a true believer
26:50
Speaker 1: to share this secret with, and apparently the believer they
26:54
Speaker 1: had found was Fernando. Now Jose Luiz could tell that
26:58
Speaker 1: Fernando was really excited, and so he sort of throttled
27:01
Speaker 1: back how much he sort of rained on his parade here,
27:04
Speaker 1: and he just let him have his moment and said, wow,
27:06
Speaker 1: you know, that's really interesting. And then before long the
27:09
Speaker 1: other members of their club came into this basement seating
27:12
Speaker 1: area inside this cafe, and as soon as they were
27:15
Speaker 1: all assembled, Fernando got up to the front of the
27:18
Speaker 1: room and he held up this envelope and he said,
27:19
Speaker 1: you won't believe it. I got this letter. It's from
27:22
Speaker 1: an alien race. They want to talk to me, like,
27:24
Speaker 1: can you believe this? We finally have proof, you know,
27:27
Speaker 1: the aliens are here. And unbelievably, as he says this,
27:31
Speaker 1: Jose Louise is looking out to get the reaction of
27:34
Speaker 1: the other folks in the club, to see how invested
27:36
Speaker 1: they are, you know, in this new revelation. And Jose
27:39
Speaker 1: Louise can't believe it when others in this club began
27:42
Speaker 1: reaching into their bags and pulling out identical looking envelopes
27:46
Speaker 1: with these strange symbols on them, and they're like, we
27:49
Speaker 1: got these letters too, We just got them last night.
27:51
Speaker 1: We brought him here for this meeting. Can you believe it?
27:54
Speaker 1: And so the whole meeting was completely dominated by, you know,
27:57
Speaker 1: talks of the the ulit alien race and how you
28:00
Speaker 1: know these letters have got to be legitimate, Like this
28:03
Speaker 1: can't be a prank the way Jose Louise said it
28:05
Speaker 1: could be a prank, like this is going to be real.
28:07
Speaker 1: Who would want to prank us? Where does this little
28:09
Speaker 1: group that you know investigates the paranormal, Like why would
28:13
Speaker 1: anyone care about pranking us? And Jose Louise said to them,
28:16
Speaker 1: that's why, because you believe in the paranormal and they're
28:19
Speaker 1: playing into that, like you're the perfect target to be pranked.
28:22
Speaker 1: That's why this is likely happening. But pretty much the
28:25
Speaker 1: entire club disagreed with Jose Louise, and they reminded him,
28:29
Speaker 1: Fernando in particular, that he should recall the club's motto,
28:33
Speaker 1: which was to believe everything until proven otherwise. Basically, the
28:38
Speaker 1: whole group was demanding that Jose Louise keep an open
28:41
Speaker 1: mind because this might be the exact moment most of
28:45
Speaker 1: them were all waiting for a little over a year
28:47
Speaker 1: later in June of nineteen sixty seven, and Jose Louise
28:51
Speaker 1: was back inside at that basement seating area of that
28:54
Speaker 1: cafe in Madrid, Spain. To this point, Jose Louise had
28:57
Speaker 1: continued attending these meetings of the Blena Allegria. You know,
29:00
Speaker 1: he had thought about leaving a couple of times, especially
29:03
Speaker 1: as this whole Umite fervor had really took hold inside
29:06
Speaker 1: the club. He just he didn't buy it, but he
29:09
Speaker 1: had stuck it out and continued attending meetings. But on
29:11
Speaker 1: this particular day he was here for a very specific reason.
29:15
Speaker 1: It was because he had seen an article in the
29:17
Speaker 1: local newspaper that he knew the club would be really
29:20
Speaker 1: eager to see. So at this point Fernando actually was
29:24
Speaker 1: writing a weekly column in the newspaper about the Umites,
29:28
Speaker 1: because shortly after getting that first letter, and all the
29:30
Speaker 1: other members of the club getting those letters, he had
29:33
Speaker 1: written to the news. They had been really interested and
29:36
Speaker 1: asked for weekly updates. And sure enough, over the past year,
29:40
Speaker 1: the club continued receiving these letters Fernando included, you know,
29:43
Speaker 1: from the Umites, whoever they were, and he would write
29:46
Speaker 1: these update columns, and really, by this point a year later,
29:50
Speaker 1: that column had become really popular in Madrid, and so
29:53
Speaker 1: people of Madrid were pretty invested in the Umites. And
29:56
Speaker 1: you know, whatever was happening with them, And also adding
29:58
Speaker 1: to the intrigue was these letters were no longer just
30:01
Speaker 1: arriving on the doorsteps of Blena Alegri members. They were
30:05
Speaker 1: arriving in front of random people's homes all over Madrid,
30:08
Speaker 1: like random people were being contacted by you know, this
30:11
Speaker 1: alien race. Now, Jose Louise still very much believed that
30:15
Speaker 1: there is no way this could be real, like this
30:17
Speaker 1: can't actually be Aliens, but the Omites had basically become
30:22
Speaker 1: the only conversation topic in the club every time they met,
30:25
Speaker 1: like it was all they ever talked about, and it
30:28
Speaker 1: increasingly felt like it was a lot of what Madrid
30:30
Speaker 1: talked about. I mean, this was a big deal at
30:32
Speaker 1: the time, but today the reason Jose Louise had brought
30:35
Speaker 1: the newspaper to bring to the group was actually because
30:39
Speaker 1: you know, they had published something that, even to Jose Louise,
30:42
Speaker 1: was pretty unbelievable. You know, it wasn't an article that
30:45
Speaker 1: Fernando had published. It was not you know, another recounting
30:47
Speaker 1: of another letter showing up. It was actually you know,
30:50
Speaker 1: this newspaper themselves, covering what appeared to be a local
30:54
Speaker 1: UFO sighting and apparently somebody had captured a photo of this,
30:58
Speaker 1: you know, presumed ufo oh, and that photo had been
31:01
Speaker 1: published in the news. And wouldn't you know, on the
31:04
Speaker 1: outside of this alien craft was that same strange symbol
31:09
Speaker 1: that adorned the front of all the Umte letters that
31:12
Speaker 1: Fernando and the club members and all people of Madrid
31:15
Speaker 1: were getting from these oumtes. It was the same symbol,
31:18
Speaker 1: and so it sort of felt like for the first
31:20
Speaker 1: time it was not just you know, letters that could
31:23
Speaker 1: be fabricated and sent to the masses. It was like
31:26
Speaker 1: this vehicle that had shown up in Madrid that had
31:30
Speaker 1: that same symbol, like it had to be the Omtes. Also,
31:33
Speaker 1: remember it's nineteen sixty seven, and so faking photographs was
31:38
Speaker 1: very hard to do, at least, you know, making something
31:40
Speaker 1: look convincing, and so that's why Jose Luise, you know,
31:42
Speaker 1: he had brought this newspaper in to show the other
31:45
Speaker 1: members of this club to be like, you know what,
31:47
Speaker 1: I got to say, this is pretty unbelievable, and you know,
31:50
Speaker 1: the reaction from the club was equally amazed. They had
31:53
Speaker 1: all already seen this photo. I mean, they are completely
31:56
Speaker 1: locked in on all things oh Mites and so this
31:59
Speaker 1: photo was sort of like centerpiece of that day's discussion,
32:02
Speaker 1: and Jose Luise found himself sort of admitting that, you know,
32:05
Speaker 1: this is pretty unbelievable and I don't know what to
32:07
Speaker 1: make of it. But by the end of the meeting,
32:09
Speaker 1: Jose Louise still caution the group like, look, you know,
32:12
Speaker 1: I know this looks so real and it feels so real.
32:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm bringing this to you. I think this
32:18
Speaker 1: is pretty unbelievable. But there's just got to be an
32:20
Speaker 1: angle here. Somebody has to be faking this, Like there
32:23
Speaker 1: isn't a way that some alien species is doing this.
32:27
Speaker 1: This just doesn't feel real to me. But at this
32:29
Speaker 1: point it was like everybody shut him down. They're like, hey,
32:32
Speaker 1: you brought this to us today. You're the ones saying
32:35
Speaker 1: this is hard to deny, Like this makes it feel real,
32:38
Speaker 1: and so at this point, you know, forget your dissenting opinion.
32:41
Speaker 1: What we need to do as a group is take
32:44
Speaker 1: the news of the Uemites in this photograph and all
32:46
Speaker 1: the letters and not just show it to the rest
32:48
Speaker 1: of Spain, but we need to show it to the
32:51
Speaker 1: whole world. And so sure enough, after that, Fernando began
32:54
Speaker 1: going on TV and insisting the Oumites were real, which
32:58
Speaker 1: actually did cause mass panic across all of Spain. People
33:01
Speaker 1: couldn't explain the thousands of letters and that UFO photo,
33:05
Speaker 1: and so belief in the Umites really caught on, and
33:08
Speaker 1: wal Fernando and seemingly the entire general public of Spain
33:12
Speaker 1: became increasingly radicalized. Jose Luise grew more isolated from his
33:16
Speaker 1: friends in Bolena Allegri, and soon he quit attending meetings altogether.
33:21
Speaker 1: And then shortly after that he began going on TV,
33:24
Speaker 1: but not to advocate for the belief in the Omites,
33:27
Speaker 1: but the opposite, to say, stop believing in this. There's
33:31
Speaker 1: no way this is real. But nobody really listened to him.
33:34
Speaker 1: You know, the Oumites story had really taken on a
33:36
Speaker 1: life of its own, and it was sort of beginning
33:38
Speaker 1: to spin out of control. A few years after the
33:41
Speaker 1: Umite letters began showing up and making headlines, two men
33:45
Speaker 1: had lied down on railroad tracks and basically taken their
33:48
Speaker 1: own lives by letting the train run them over. And
33:50
Speaker 1: police actually found notes in these men's pockets that just
33:55
Speaker 1: said the aliens call us, and given the timing of
33:59
Speaker 1: you know, their deaths, it seemed like it had to
34:01
Speaker 1: be connected to the Omites. Then two Spanish sisters died
34:05
Speaker 1: in a murder suicide and police discovered they had been
34:08
Speaker 1: receiving oh myit letters that might have contributed to this crime.
34:11
Speaker 1: By the nineteen seventies, there were also multiple Umite related
34:15
Speaker 1: cults operating in Spain, and one of those cults targeted
34:18
Speaker 1: young boys, and in the early nineteen seventies, when Jose
34:22
Speaker 1: Luise's own son was seven years old, that child was
34:26
Speaker 1: targeted by one of these cults to be brought in
34:29
Speaker 1: because of his father, Like, they were trying to bring
34:32
Speaker 1: this child in to be exposed to who knows what,
34:35
Speaker 1: just because of Jose Luiz's public stature as it related
34:38
Speaker 1: to the Omites. Now, Jose Luiz's son would not be
34:41
Speaker 1: pulled into that cult. He would be just fine. But
34:44
Speaker 1: for Jose Luiz, like this was pretty eye opening and terrifying.
34:47
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that his family could be targeted
34:50
Speaker 1: because of this Omite stuff was crazy. And so around
34:52
Speaker 1: that same time, Jose Louise stopped trying to tell people
34:55
Speaker 1: to not believe in this stuff and instead retreated from
34:58
Speaker 1: the public eye and just tried to live a quiet,
35:01
Speaker 1: isolated life. Over the next several decades, people all over
35:05
Speaker 1: Spain continued receiving Omite letters and nobody knew why. And
35:10
Speaker 1: these cults that you know, sort of focused on the
35:13
Speaker 1: Omites continued to flourish and continued to believe that absolutely
35:17
Speaker 1: the Omites are real. As for Jose Luise, he really
35:20
Speaker 1: did try to live a private life away from all
35:22
Speaker 1: this craziness, but it was hard to escape it. I
35:25
Speaker 1: mean he would see Fernando on the news all the
35:27
Speaker 1: time talking about the Omtes, and he even published a
35:30
Speaker 1: book about it. I mean, it was kind of everywhere.
35:33
Speaker 1: But everything changed in nineteen ninety six, thirty years after
35:37
Speaker 1: the first Omite letter was received. One night in nineteen
35:41
Speaker 1: ninety six, people all over Spain gathered in front of
35:44
Speaker 1: their TVs very expectantly as there was going to be
35:47
Speaker 1: this special report about the Umites. And when the guest
35:51
Speaker 1: of honor, who was going to be a big part
35:53
Speaker 1: of the special report, came on screen and began talking
35:57
Speaker 1: about the Omites, it truly shot the entire country. This
36:01
Speaker 1: person explained that in their own lives they had recently
36:04
Speaker 1: had a near death experience and that experience had made
36:08
Speaker 1: them realize it was finally time to admit to the
36:11
Speaker 1: world that they had made the whole Omite thing up.
36:15
Speaker 1: It really was a hoax. They said they had written
36:18
Speaker 1: those first Uhmite letters and sent them to Blena Allegri
36:22
Speaker 1: because they believed they would be susceptible to believing in
36:25
Speaker 1: the hoax. And they also said they really did fake
36:28
Speaker 1: that photograph that was put in the newspaper of the
36:30
Speaker 1: UFO with a strange symbol that matched the symbol on
36:34
Speaker 1: all those letters. But the person said, you know, after that,
36:37
Speaker 1: they sort of had no intention to keep up the hoax. However,
36:41
Speaker 1: the story kind of took off and all these copycats
36:44
Speaker 1: began sending their own umite letters to random people all
36:47
Speaker 1: over Spain, and then the news picked it up. Then
36:50
Speaker 1: it was everywhere, and even though this person was trying
36:53
Speaker 1: so hard to literally tell the world that they faked
36:56
Speaker 1: this thing, nobody listened. The hoaxter was none other than
37:01
Speaker 1: Jose Louise. He literally had done this just to show
37:05
Speaker 1: the Blena Allegri how easy it was to get people
37:09
Speaker 1: to believe in aliens and conspiracies, because that's what people want.
37:13
Speaker 1: He basically wanted to show them that he was skeptical,
37:16
Speaker 1: and he had this UFO experience and he was trying
37:18
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of it. But everyone's like, oh,
37:21
Speaker 1: it's going to be aliens, and it's like, no, let's
37:23
Speaker 1: step back and be rational. He was trying to prove
37:26
Speaker 1: a point that look, I faked aliens writing to you
37:29
Speaker 1: and you all believed it, like, how are we going
37:31
Speaker 1: to actually figure out what's real and what's not. But
37:34
Speaker 1: he wasn't expecting it to take on a life of
37:36
Speaker 1: its own. However, Jose Luiz's confession never actually reached Fernando
37:42
Speaker 1: because Fernando died years before Jose Luiz admitted this really
37:46
Speaker 1: was a hoax, and so he died absolutely still believing
37:49
Speaker 1: that umites were real. And despite the fact there were
37:52
Speaker 1: at least four deaths linked to this SMUMO craze, and
37:56
Speaker 1: also there were all these cults that were doing who
37:58
Speaker 1: knows what probably sit in illegal things also tied to
38:02
Speaker 1: the Omo hoax. Despite all that, Jose Luise never faced
38:06
Speaker 1: any criminal charges. He died in twenty fourteen. Thank you
38:15
Speaker 1: so much for watching. Let me know what you thought
38:17
Speaker 1: of today's episode in the comments, and remember we have
38:21
Speaker 1: hundreds of videos for you to binge right now. But
38:24
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a recommendation for me of that
38:26
Speaker 1: one video that's worth your time, well it's this one
38:30
Speaker 1: right here, so give it a watch, all right, until
38:32
Speaker 1: next time, see ya.