April 16, 2025 • 58 mins
On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt, the immensely popular prime minister of Australia, went for a swim -- and vanished. In the decades since, his family and the public still have questions about what exactly happened. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel explore a mystery that remains unsolved in the modern day, along with a meditation on empathy, and a bevy of increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew, the
try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
this the stuff they don't.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Want you to know.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
You know, guys, we were talking, oh a little while
back off air. We've spent quite a bit of time
recently exploring present and future conspiracies and folks with so
many bizarre and troubling events occurring, who can blame us?
Like Noel, Matt, Andrew. Have you guys checked the stock
(01:02):
market recently?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I looked at it this morning. As of April seventh,
it was way down.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
You know what, though, y'all, we've we've sorry. I hate
to be silver lining guy. It's very bad, but we
have lived through these kinds of corrections and recessions before.
And you know, I just remember at the time the
last big recession happened, my mom sold all of her stock,
which was a really dumb thing to do because that's
when you actually, you know, show the loss. So if
(01:36):
she had just sat on it, it would have been
fine because it all came back around. But no, what's
going on right now is bonkers.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's why we love cafsper mastresses. It's a great place
to store that.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
No man, keep the cash, keep the cash, but don't
pan excel.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Your stock as well as as well as of course
Hellman's Bonnat's jars, Helman's Bonnai's jar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Ours set it, forget it, bury it in your.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Yard or just your couch, you know coinstar that's down there.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
By your put it in your couch or your Casper mattress.
That's where we put the jar. Then you bury it in.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Your yard so when it turns into Kim chee in
a couple.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So we're clearly top level financial advisors, but we are
counseling people about the importance, yea, of staying calm right
in chaotic times. And that's a question that we're going
to explore in this Evening's episode. When the Nation of
Australia and indeed the world panicked because imagine, all right,
(02:42):
we're in chaotic times, right, Now, some people love the
current US president. Some people are not fans of the
current US president. What if one day he went swimming
and disappeared.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
I mean, you know, some people might feel various ways
about that in one direction or another. But yeah, certain
they would be a big news item.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
You mean, like in the band one direction.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Exactly that, that's exactly could say.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
But for real, and imagine if the sitting president of
the United States was very well liked, like just all around,
you know, pretty dang high approval.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Rating and folksy guy.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, imagine, but imagine if that occurred like that,
would there would uh, there wouldn't be much other news
coming out besides where where did the president go?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, and this this evening we're diving back to you'll
see why that's.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
A bad bit of word play.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
In a minute, we're diving back to our roots with
a classic mystery, some classic stuff they don't want you
to know. A disappearing prime minister. This one is for you,
fellow aussy listeners from down under. What happened to Harold Holt?
And why do so many conspiracies about his disappearance abound?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Today?
Speaker 5 (03:56):
We'll find out right after a teeny tiny quickie word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Here are the facts, all right, Who's Harold Holt? This
name might not be familiar to a lot of a
lot of our fellow listeners outside of Australia.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
While Harold Edward Holt was born on the fifth of
August nineteen eight in Sydney, Australia, both of his parents
were teachers, and he had moved around quite a few times,
and by the age of twelve had lived in Sydney,
Adelaide and Melbourne, where Holt ultimately finished school.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, and he is not a guy coming from a
silver spoon background, you know what I mean. He's not
the scion of some multi generational mining dynasty or anything
of that nature. He's not an aristocrat. He is a
very smart kid and he's a very popular guy at
(04:58):
school at the University of mel But where he studies,
he's known for being an avid outdoorsman, a real sporty guy.
But he's also great at debate club. He cleans up
and he studies law, as did many of his colleagues
at the time. He graduates in nineteen thirty with a
law degree and he starts working for a local firm
(05:20):
before he passes the bar in nineteen thirty two and
becomes a full fledged lawyer.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
He's only twenty four.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
We do have to give points to the name of
his very first legal employer or his very first law firm,
Think Best and Miller.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Great name for a love think.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I don't know man first rat Like.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Is it with the accent? Though?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Maybe it is? Maybe it's like, how would that be?
Speaker 5 (05:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I don't know if it would be. It has to
be something with a vowel. It's true, right, uh.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Miller, Miller, basycle well.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Fabits So unfortunately, as we know, as history proves, he
becomes a lawyer at one of the worst times to
enter the job market, the Great Depression. So this bore
a little bit of homework for us because he was
not able to make a living as a barrister. Here
(06:21):
in the United States, when we say a lawyer, we
usually mean a barrister or what people in the Commonwealth
would call a barrister. That's the person who goes to
court and represents clients or as specialized legal advice. Because
he couldn't make a living this way, he was, you know,
he's crashing and boarding houses. He was asking friends for money.
(06:44):
He had to go into business instead, as something called
a solicitor. They'll handle legal matters outside of a court,
and they often do all the legal homework for the barristers.
So it's kind of like how you have a teacher
and a parapro.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Is this the same as in the UK? I guess
I've always thought that the barrister and solicitor were interchangeable.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
This is interesting, Yeah, this is our understanding. We'd love
to hear more from legal experts in the Commonwealth, which has,
you know, a couple different rules of the legal road.
But in short, either way you look at it, it
was a less auspicious job. Times were tough for everybody
during the depression, other than the folks who you know,
(07:28):
caused the depression. However, his father at this time had
moved on. He was no longer a school teacher. He
was now working in the world of entertainment. He was
managing theaters. He was partnered with some radio concerns, and
these contacts in the entertainment industry, combined with Holt's affable
(07:50):
nature and his gregarious approach to things, they made him
a great success. He took a job as secretary of
the Victorian Cinematograph Cinematograph Cinematograph.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
I probably overdid it, but that's fine. That's a tough one.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
They are exhibitors association. So he was the secretary of
a film industry lobby. And while he was working in
this capacity, we see him cultivating relationships with a lot
of politicians, a lot of up and comers, a lot
of celebrities and public figures as well.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So let's pause here just to remember some of the
stuff we've learned about the entertainment industry here in the
United States, where you know, these films oftentimes are so
expensive it's difficult to fund all of them. So funding
comes from other places, often private investment in a particular
(08:49):
film or in let's say, a certain company that is
making a bunch of films, right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Sure, or sometimes international.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Investment, sometimes international investment just and sometimes not always obviously,
but sometimes that money comes from places that you know,
maybe they want you to pay him back, and they
want to make a little money off of this thing.
Maybe that money was under the table or was made
(09:19):
from means that wouldn't be above board, right.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Or wouldn't pass the domestic financial regulations of Australia. That's
why we have to point out international investment water that
one a little.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
All that is to say this, this part of his
life is kind of key to some of the conspiratorial
thoughts that exist around his disappearance.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Yeah, and shortly after passing the bar, he inculcates himself
in this, in this industry and all the connections it provides.
He also enters politics in a big way, which is
a natural transition, right or a natural He joins the UAP,
the United Australia Party and various subsidiaries thereof the original
(10:06):
UAP exactly, the original UAP perfect, And he repeatedly and
unsuccessfully runs for office until nineteen thirty five or so.
That's when he snags a rule in parliament. This leads
to even greater success. Here in the US, we often
use the phrase career politician as a insult, right, as
(10:28):
a denigrating remark. But he is a career politician. He's
twenty seven when he goes into parliament, and he spends
thirty two years in office. Yeah, and people like him,
people dig him well.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, And he is also just one of those names
that imagine hearing the same politician's name for thirty five years. Right,
So like when you're a kid learning about politics, you
hear the name. Now you're you're older, you've got your
first job, you hear the same name in politics. Even
if you don't know this person, right, you just hear
him talking and talking and talking. It's a kind of name,
(11:03):
like a Nancy Pelosi here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Or strom Thurmond.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, you don't know that much about them, maybe necessarily
even personally or what they stand for, but just you
know they're there and they've been there. So it's almost like,
I don't know, there's that familiarity thing that makes people
household na things, yeah, or maybe not like things. But
when you have that familiarity, it's almost as though you're
(11:28):
more likely to have a positive view on it.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Yeah, perhaps right, whether the devil one knows, he also
has great pr Maybe part of that is due to
his his understanding of the entertainment business. He's an avid outdoorsman, right,
so there are photo ops of him like spearfishing. He
doesn't want a bunch of security because he feels it
(11:54):
alienates him from the common voter, and he has all
these outdoor adventures. He's a likable guy.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
So on January the twenty sixth of nineteen sixty six,
Harold does go on to become the seventeenth Prime Minister
of Australia, and this sort of caps off what many
would consider a logical trajectory in his astonishing rise to power,
his successful traversing of the political ranks. You know, so
maybe like the I don't know, you could maybe even
(12:22):
say a positive version of that career politician. Maybe right
at least he's liked, right.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Yeah, he starts from the bottom. You know, he's seen
as an everyman. He's erudite, but he's not a nerd.
He's physically fit, but he's not a jock or a
meat head.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
He's the he's somebody who has something for every voter.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Yeah, that's the way John F. Kennedy type figure in some.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Ways when you say yeah, but I think this fact
that he goes out, I mean, he is a spear fisherman.
Towards the end of his life, he was just talking
about going on spearfishing trips. He's like, oh, yeah, let's
let's actually go spearfishing in a couple of days, or
maybe tomorrow, let's go Yeah, let's go spearfishing. And this
is an older gentleman like that's just cool.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
It's also yeah, it reminds me of you know, there's
that kind of soft touch diplomacy that you see in
some Western political figures, like I can't remember, I think
was the.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
In Ireland.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
There's a guy who's famous for always bringing his dog
to everything.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
That's cool, Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I get it right, But another this isn't.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Like going I'm not a big avid golfer, no man,
I spearfish.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Right right, right, Yeah, golf also has a different, different
vibe here in the States. It has for a while. Yeah,
he does spearfish though. He's about that life and people
are starting to ask themselves, you know what an amazing,
thoroughly Australian success story. What sort of legacy will Prime
Minister Holt imprint upon our land? What kind of changes
(13:55):
could this every man's administration make for the world? We
will never know. It's about twenty two months after he
attains office when Harold Holt disappears to date, as we
record on Monday April seventh, twenty twenty five. He has
not been seen since officially, So what happened? We'll tell
(14:17):
you after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
I think we have to begin by thanking an author
named T. R. Frame who wrote the book The Life
and Death of Harold Holt, So we want to this
is one of the best primary sources to read all
the twists and turns and context here, and a lot
of the work you'll see is actually quoting that book.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yes, and let's also shout out the National Film and
Sound Archive of Australia as well as the National Archives
THEMSE of Australia, because they've got the original documentation on
all of the stuff that everything's built on, the original
reports that came from you know, both the Commonwealth and
from the news media at the time.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Not yeah, not to derail too much, but I just
think it's so neat. The idea seem the obvious of
like what was Australian cinema like.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
In the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
It's just a world that's completely other than like Mad
Max and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and maybe a
couple other Australian films that are more modern. Like I
have no idea, but there must have been a rich
culture of cinema for them to have an organization like this,
and now it makes me really want to kind of
dig in to that world and find out who was
like the Coppola of Australia, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Ooh, the Copola Australia. I like that. It'd be a
good one to check out.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Do tell us, folks, and what did Harold Holt like
to watch exactly?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
You know? So we know that he we know that
he did love.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
The outdoors, but obviously he would have to be a
fan of cinema as well. When he disappears, he is
with a group of friends and they're swimming at a beach.
We'll attempt the pronunciation cheviot or cheviot beach c h
e v IoT.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, I want to shout out, Morgan Kurajeong, I think
is how you would say it on YouTube. Just found
a random video he's out there and he calls it
cheviot beach.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Cheviot beach, which is an accent. Question.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
That's funny because I linked the same video in the
episode here.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Oh for real?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, he describes as the most dangerous beach in Australia.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, oh, I love that guy.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Well, and that's saying a lot considering how danger as
Australian wildlife can be and just how you know, untamed
much of it is what made it so dangerous, just
like treacherous and rocky and things like that.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah, let's talk about its location. Get into the beach.
So it's near Ports Sea, Victoria. When we're talking danger here,
a lot of the danger comes from the currents, ripped currents,
which can be They can appear deceptively calm, but even
experienced swimmers can be challenged or find themselves in a
(17:12):
situation going quickly sideways on this beach in particular.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, so imagine you're pretty far into shore when there's
a low tide and you're looking out at the sea
right on the chevy At Beach. To your right there
is a like basically a very rocky beach, and to
your left there is a very rocky beach. And then
in the center it's nice and sandy or much more
sandy and clear going out. If you're hanging out in
(17:40):
that area with the sandy beach, where humans would want
to go and oh hey, it's a lovely beach, I
want to swim out there, there are two pretty intense
currents just beneath the water because of the rocky beaches
there to both the right and left. If you get
caught up in one of those, you're getting sucked right
out to see.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, and the Beaches Act.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Actually its namesake is an iron steamer that wrecked on
the beach because of these currents back in eighteen eighty
seven and.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Thirty five people died.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
So it's kind of like anytime you go to a
place that's named after a disaster that occurred there. It Yeah,
tread Lightley's step carefully, walk right.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yes, swimmy.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
The other thing is the tides, Like, the tides are
pretty intense when it comes to changing what's happening beneath
the water. At a high tide in this beach, it
becomes much more treacherous.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
Well, at this point, he's sixty years old, right.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
He is, Yeah, at this point, he's around sixty. His
disappearance grips the country. It makes national and then international
news within twenty four hours, obviously because it's you know,
like we're saying at the top, imagine if your country's
prime minister, president, ruler simply disappeared. That is somehow more
(19:01):
challenging and disturbing than an assassination, as tragic as an
assassination can be. This results in a massive man hunt.
We know a little bit about the timeline. You can
find this extensively researched and documented. I found National Archives
of Australia to be a great source for this. But
(19:23):
you walk through the timeline and every source you see
says this is a normal day for this guy. Like
he gets up, he goes to the general store. You know,
he talks with this wife. He thinks the weather's nice,
they're gonna go He's gonna go on an excursion with
some friends.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's very much not anomalous.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sounds like, oh dude, it's it's it's awesome. And where
he is staying, he knows all the neighbors, right this
imagine this is the Prime Minister. He knows all the neighbors.
He's just popping by neighbors houses to have, you know,
a quick drink and hang and listen to some stereo music,
which is what said in the report by the Commonwealthfare.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
As opposed to mono music.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Well, yes, but he's and he's stopping by other neighbor's house.
When he goes to that story you were talking about Ben,
he that's when he talks to the store owner like
and just says, hey, let's hang out later at your place,
which happens to be his neighbor's house. He's just like
living his life almost like on a vacate of a
little bit of a vacation schedule.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Yeah, And so it makes sense then logically that he
would go and do I like that idea of a
vacation schedule. Man, he would logically then go do things
people do when they're kicking back and relaxing ed as
a guy who loves the swim, that's on his list.
He's near the shore, it's go time.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
We know.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
He was especially excited. He and his friends were excited
about seeing a then famous sailor named Alec Rose. Alec
Rose was circumnavigating the globe on a sailing trip. Pretty
neat stuff, pretty impressive. So as he is going around
the world, he's going to make a stopover in this area,
(21:11):
and that's kind of their main impetus to go to
the beach that day. And Holt is there with several friends.
They're not you know, high muckety MUCKs or foreign dignitaries.
He's with a lady named Marjorie Gillespie, her daughter Viner Gillespie,
her boyfriend Martin or Marjorie's boyfriend Martin Simpson, and one
(21:35):
of his buddies, just one of his homeboys named Alan Stewart.
You can also see reports that he had some bodyguards
with him, which is interesting because for a long time,
before some unpleasant events, he had rejected bodyguards like full stop,
but after a couple of attacks and some close calls
(21:57):
in his career, he later rescented that and did have
a little bit of a security detail, so he was
not alone on the beach. There's no audio, there's no
video given the timeframe, but there were multiple eyewitnesses. Another
important piece of the story.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
Well, and as we've alluded to, this guy was a
seasoned outdoorsman and well let's call him a strong swimmer, y'all.
This was something he had done many times before, and
like you said, Matt, it was kind of just another
day in the life for this man, and he had
specifically swum at this beach despite all of the warnings
(22:38):
around it's very very strong rip current.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yep. It's stated by his friends who were there that
he mentioned specifically, quote, I know this beach like the
back of my hand. And he also noted that, yeah,
the tide is unusually high, as in it's even at
high tide, it's not this high.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Usually, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And at this point, as you had mentioned, no, Holt
is around sixty years old, so like so many world leaders,
his age and undoubtedly the stress of his position had
caused some or contributed to some health issues. In earlier months,
he had collapsed due to what doctors suspected was either
(23:21):
a vitamin deficiency or possibly a heart condition, and he
had genetic predisposition to that in his family. And in
September of that same year, he had begun treatment for
an old, painful shoulder injury that he got during his
youth as a football player, as a footballer, and this
(23:43):
wasn't you know, debilitating to him, but it did require
him to be on a regimen of physical therapy and painkillers.
And what do you need when you swim good shoulders?
Speaker 5 (23:54):
It's right, And I mean, you know, he had folks
in his inner circle that and his medical care staff
that were, you know, certainly warning him against this type
of strenuous activity and some of the potential dangers of it.
But you know, he was he was a guy who
was very confident in his abilities, and he didn't seem
(24:14):
to listen. Maybe he could argue he was a little
hardheaded about it.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
He just quit. You know.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's probably one of those things where they say, okay, doc,
I hear you. You worry too much. You know, you're
telling me not to go, try not to try to
swim to China. I get it, but I can go,
you know, take a dip. I could take a lap, right.
I know this water like the back of my hand.
It's kind of like saying, you know, I think we
(24:41):
interpret that kind of medical advice in very similar ways.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Even now.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Your doctor might say, hey, don't do too much of this,
and then your head says, okay, so I can play
a little tennis.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You're telling me not to compete for Wimbledon, right, right.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
So there's a matter of degree there, and it's not
a surprise that despite the slightly higher water level, Holt
decides to take a dip. In fact, he may have
been somewhat excited to see it, you know, it may
have made it feel more adventurous. One of the people
and the crew guy named Alan Stewart, says, okay, man,
(25:18):
I'll all right homie, I'll go with you into the
shallow water right just off the shore. But no one
in his entourage, including Alan Stewart, will venture further away
from the shore. Nobody wants to go with him, so
Harold Holt goes solo, and the folks who watch him
go into the water end up being, as far as
(25:41):
we know, the last folks to see Harold Holt alive.
Let's go to a quote from the Smithsonian. I think
this is just a great summation of this.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Absolutely. Holt's four companions climbed a rocky cliff and searched
the water for traces of him, Finding none, they began
to panic. Stuart went for help, and within minutes three
scuba divers were wading into the water.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It continues, but the undertow was too strong even for them.
That's the scuba divers who are then going to look
for him, and the currents made the water turbid and
difficult to see in. They retreated from the surf, climbed
a rock, and scanned the water with binoculars until police
and search and rescue teams arrived. It should be noted
(26:28):
here that even the search and rescue teams, once they
arrive even the other They call them skin divers in
some of the reporting here. When everybody is there attempting
to look for wherever the heck mister Holt went, they
cannot even continue their search effectively because of danger things
danger the waters you can't see in, and basically the
(26:50):
conditions in general of the water.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Right right, which are also ever changing.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You know, when someone disappears in water, especially this kind
of situation, it's not impossible for as gold as it sounds,
it's not impossible for the body to quickly disappear or
be washed away. And there's another part in the Smithsonian article.
Just loved the writing on this where it seems to
(27:18):
apply that of the people on the scene, Marjorie Gillespie
is the last to actually see Holt. She keeps an
eye on Holt as he swims further away, quote, drifting
from them, until the water seemed to boil around him
and he disappeared. That's the part that stays with you
(27:40):
because that turbid water. That description just shows us how
violent and chaotic the tides and the currents were becoming.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The movement of the water also makes me think of
a potential animal attack or something if he's that far
out and then you see alarn bubbles or something happening
below him, like, it could mean that something came up
and pulled him down, at least initially. And if you're
that far out, it's going to be difficult to see
if he's then under the water being attacked.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
And if you already have a shoulder injury, then an
injury that you could have swam away from, yeah, might
be debilitating to the point where you lose motion well.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
And if I'm not a second the same riptides that
would carry you out in that direction in the first
place would do the very same to any remains.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It is interesting to me with a shoulder injury because
it's reported in the National Archives when the Commonwealth did
the investigation that he played tennis the Saturday before he
went missing. And if anyone who's ever played tennis, that's
your shoulder, right, I mean, that's everything is in your shoulder.
And I believe the quote from doctor Bruce Edwards, that's
(28:53):
the person they played with. He said he didn't mister
Holt didn't play up to his regular standards and he
did complain of his shoulder, but he still played tennis
just fine.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Right, Like, that's what we're saying with the swimming too.
You know, you're aggravating an injury too. Yeah, and you're
engaging in that repetitive motion.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's to me it sounds like something that would be
really painful if he had to swim, you know, it
would hurt really badly, but he would still be able
to do it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Sure? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
And this is These are some of the many questions
that have been asked over the decades since nineteen sixty seven. However,
once five days had passed and searches were still continuing, right,
investigations were still continuing. But the nation is a nation, right,
(29:44):
And so five days had passed, Holt is declared gone
and Australia continues with the business of government. But perhaps
the most important question, one that's been asked in multiple ways,
multiple times ever since that day in December, is this
what happened? So we're going to pause for word from
our sponsor and we'll dive into the theories.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
And we're back. So, guys, what actually happened to Holt?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Do we know, well, he disappeared as we know that.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
We know that, we know that the Australian government has
ever since their initial investigation, including in quest as recently
as two thousand and five, they have always concluded the
explanation is that Holt disappeared, not just didn't just disappear
at see but drowned by accident and that led to
(30:47):
his death. This is understandable. Again, it's a notoriously dangerous
stretch of beach, even for experienced swimmers. But you know,
this happens in so much conspiracy lore. Given Holt's high
political position, the pivotal role of Australian and global governance,
the tense issues of the region and the time, it's
(31:10):
no surprise that there were alternative theories that would arise
to explain his vanishing, you know, especially because to date
nobody has been recovered.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, there was a lot of talk at the very beginning,
like we're talking early January nineteen sixty eight. People were thinking, well,
is it possible that mister Holt decided to swim out
there and knowing it was dangerous, knowing that his life
was in danger, and knowing that he would likely die,
(31:44):
like as in, did he do this on purpose?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (31:48):
The possibility that may he may have taken his own life,
And this is initial scuttle, but right, it's a less
speculation that, as we can imagine, would be tremendously offensive
to friends and more importantly family. The proponents of this
idea were saying, I have it on good record, or
(32:08):
I have it on anonymous record, that Holt was depressed,
perhaps mentally unstable in the months leading up to his disappearance,
that for one reason or another he felt his political
career was damaged or inherently doomed.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And so let's go really quickly to the Kimber of
Times in nineteen sixty eight January twenty second, and this
this is right after the official reporting is released, the
one that the Commonwealth puts together. So all the police,
working together with the investigators, all of the initial witnesses,
(32:46):
anybody that interacted with mister Holt basically weeks before his disappearance,
they make a very let's say, strong point to talk
about how mister Holt was his normal self at the time.
They go to a lot of those initial witnesses who
say things like he quote was in good spirits, in
(33:08):
his usual jovial mood. Another person, mister Edgar, says he
was in excellent health and spirits. And then even a
doctor who examined him on Friday, December fifteenth, just days
before he went, just said quote there was no reason
either physical or mental, that could cause or contribute to
his death under ordinary circumstances.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Additionally, it made no statements to that effect to friends
or family.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
He had shown know what you would call suicidal ideation.
And even though.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Some of the quotes that are rallying against this at
the time, their attribution is not super great, there is
a uniform stance in the media and in statements from
neighbors and friends, because he knew a lot of people
and they're all so this feels like unfounded speculation. But
(34:03):
to jump in time a little bit, if we're explored
by theory rather than by chronology, this idea or this
theory of suicide is still around right now, most particularly
because in two thousand and seven Australian network called nine
Network aired a made for TV documentary about the disappearance
(34:25):
called Who Killed Harold Holt? And in this documentary a
bit of a loaded title, right, I.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Mean right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And in this documentary they treat claims of suicide with
I think more credence than they should and when people
hear that claim despite being initially dismissed, when they hear
that claim being given so much credibility decades later, you know,
the average viewer might say, huh, quite possibly. And so
(34:55):
many Australians are so many viewers we should say, who
saw this started along this line or giving sand to
this theory that living friends of the missing Harold Holt
and his family rallied in strident reaction. And I always
(35:15):
just exercise empathy. It's got to be terrible for your
father to disappear. This is something Sam Holt had to
deal with. Your father has disappeared all of a sudden.
Decades later, you're still dealing with this trauma. Some network
airs a show that says your dad killed himself, and
now you have to go back on air and say, hey,
(35:39):
thanks for bringing this up. Also, as we always said
for decades, no, I mean, that's a terrible thing to
do to anybody's family.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, to me, it feels like no offense, guys, and
to myself as well, a bunch of producers sitting around saying, ah,
what's juicy about this Harold Holt story that we could
make a whole thing on You know, it's.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
All on the title.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
You know, it's pretty exactly as other journalism.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
It's the title, right, it might be frank imbiting. So
it's gross. And as we said, the police always disagreed
with the suicide theory. Every reputable source that you will find,
and even some disreputable sources spoiler, disagree with that theory.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
But it's not the only theory at play.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
A second one which doesn't get I think a whole
lot of attention is the possibility that Holt was somehow murdered,
that maybe someone sent him out to the water. And
that's based on the small number of eyewitnesses. That's also
based on the fact that there's no audio or visual recording,
(36:48):
and that's based on the fact still that they haven't
found the body. So that's really just a hall of
mirrored unknowns I would call it.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
But again, like I really like Matt's animal will attack
theory with the bubbling waters and stuff, and again that riptide,
I mean, it would be highly unlikely they'd find the body.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Just to yes, but just to contradict myself, it feels
as though there would be more evidence floating debreas of clothing.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Thatide, though it sucks everything out. I mean, maybe, you know,
it's pretty intense. Maybe I wouldn't have left the shred behind.
But I'm with you, Matt, I'm with you.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
The yeah, well, the the inquest again they looked at
the possibility of animals too, and they found bupkus.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah. We we do know that on a lot of
shores of Australia and a lot of you know, beaches
and places, it is very dangerous to be swimming out
in the water because of the specific species of sharks
that populate a lot of those waters.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Or just the jellyfish.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And the jellyfish and the snakes really just anything, uh, spiders, No,
I'm just I guess what I mean is I I've
remember recently, guys, and I can't remember exactly what it was.
I think it was an episode of Radio Rental or
something that I just watched. They talked about the extremely
dangerous waters in Australia in a bunch of places that
(38:13):
you wouldn't expect to be dangerous, like this place if
you just came upon it, especially back in the day
when there were steps going down into the water. It
looked friendly, like a place where people could just go swim.
If you wanted to. You just wouldn't expect. Oh no,
there's like a pretty good chance you die here if you.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Just happened upon it. You know, you're from out of town,
you haven't spoken with the locals, you don't have you know,
the Internet or something like that. Sure, and that's probably
led to deaths, not just in this area, but in
multiple areas of the world. Right, It's easy to underestimate
the dangers of the shore, in the ocean, or just
(38:51):
water in general, you know, because humans, despite being built
of water, humans are not built for water.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
It's probably the best way put it.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
The Yeah, I think those were tiger sharks, by the way,
the ones that I'm thinking about from.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
That specific radio rental.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, I think. So it's like just where tiger sharks exist,
not in this beach that we're talking about today, just
a beach that you wouldn't expect. There's a ton of
sharks below the waters.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, or even or the tricky little guys who hide
under the sand.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, they're a way for you to step on them.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Another perhaps one of the more bizarre theories here are.
The bizarre set of theories is that Harold Holt did
not die at all. But rather instead of purposely dying,
he purposely disappeared. And there are a few versions of
this one and one Holt fakes his death. He's gonna
commit pseudo sides, start a new life under an assumed identity.
(39:50):
None of this is really none of these I think
the general ones are fact based. They have all the
trappings of a gripping story, you know, high politics celebrity
like Asa Brock would say fast car, danger, fire and knives.
But to make a theory like this really zing, you
got to throw a little bit more into the cauldron.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Right, So how about this? Right?
Speaker 4 (40:14):
What if for the entire entirety of his political career,
the Minister of Australia Harold Holt was a spy?
Speaker 3 (40:25):
You know, he was an asset?
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Would you imagine, I mean for people who didn't live
in Australia.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It's a cool story, but you know.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Could you imagine, just guys, hypothetically, how terrible it would
be for a country if its leader was the asset
of a foreign power.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Hmm, that would be really strange. I wonder how you
would figure that out.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yeah, I'm just saying hypothetically, I think that would be
a chaotic time to be it.
Speaker 6 (40:56):
It'd be a weird time tariffs. Wait what what imagine?
Imagine that it's almost too absurd to even consider.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, there we go, jumping in there, becoming prime minister,
you know, destroying the economy.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
Doing things that are purposely, purposely against the interest of
the people.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, I'd like dismantle all of the stuff that helps
the country.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
Yeah right, oh boy, So this is the pitch. This
is a real pitch made by a British author named
Anthony Gray in his book they published in nineteen eighty three,
named in a burst of creativity, the Prime Minister was
a spy.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Once again.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
Man, they're really on the nose of these titles.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
Not leave it much to the imagination here.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yeah, and it's interesting. Let's let's let's go down the
rabbit hole a little bit. Guys. What if mister Holt
was indeed working for China the whole time.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
Which is crazy, because China had a bit of a
sea change themselves as a government over the time that
Holt would have been an asset. It was a nationalist
government and then you may have heard about it, it
became a communist government. So this book would argue that
he was a spy for both versions of the Chinese
(42:27):
government somehow, somehow right. The most spectacular claim is that
Holt was depressed, despite what everybody says to the contrary,
Harold Holt was depressed, But he wasn't depressed because his
career was over. He was depressed because he knew people
(42:47):
are catching on he would be exposed. So instead of
resigning and risking prison, he faked his own death. He
swam in waters known to be extremely dangerous, made statements
about how he knew the waters were dangerous, and when
he went under the water, he secretly boarded a submersible
(43:07):
stationed off the coast. It was a Chinese craft that
would take him to Beijing. And he lived out the
rest of his life in comfort and obscurity, never contacting
his children, never contacting his wife, never contacting any of
his best friends, or even you know, picking up the
phone when people called, well.
Speaker 5 (43:22):
Yeah, Ben, you sadly were on Adventurers. When we talked
to Maggie recently about up and Vanished weekly and the
idea of pseudo side came up, And in fact, Maggie
mentioned that book that you're always referencing Ben, and I'm
totally losing the.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Night by Elizabeth Woods.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
That's plain dead a million percent and just once again,
how incredibly challenging. Dare we say impossible? Not impossible? It
would be to unlive yourself in that fashion.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Most people mess up because they ask for money or
they re re emerge for a personal contact.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Look, guys, I want to get back into the China thing, because,
as you said, Ben, we're talking about the differences and
the changes in China that occurred like nineteen forty nine
on when the Republic of China is declared to be
the People's Republic of China. But then the Republic of
China that was still recognized by a lot of other countries,
(44:23):
including the United States. And I do not know, but
I am assuming probably Australia, the Republic of China that
power is still recognized, but as seated in Taiwan. Yes,
so that concept of during that time we're talking nineteen
sixty seven, right end of sixty seven, there is potential
(44:46):
there for spycraft to I don't know, exist, I don't know.
It feels less and less that weird to me, I
guess just the fact that he's an acting Prime minister
feels a little weird, but just both of those powers
on the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China,
both those powers wanting to have high level spycraft activities.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
It's also there is a tricky thing here past the
umami of the story, which is at that level of
state power, when you're the prime minister, you're already wrapped
up in a bunch of espionage stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (45:28):
You may not yeah, you might not even know it.
Like how vetted is your cook? How vetted is your secretary?
That's these are the questions. So it's it sounds like
a really good story, but it even it gets even
weirder when we learn more about Anthony Gray, the author.
He's alive today, he used to work for Reuters. He's
(45:51):
a novelist, he's a journalist. He's in his eighties. I
believe he knows China pretty well, or at least the
inside of China these prison cells, because he was captured
and locked away there from nineteen sixty seven to nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
So the year.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
Disappears, this guy has also disappeared right behind the Great Wall,
and he gets out of prison in nineteen sixty nine.
In May of nineteen eighty three, Anthony Gray, per his
own reports, he gets a call from an anonymous source
who essentially says.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I'm stayed anonymous. I know what happened to Harold holt Hold.
Speaker 5 (46:36):
He had to lay on his voice name.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Whoa yeah, kick him with some reverb, you know when
you're going anonymous. But yeah, so that's this guy that
he contacts. We now know his anonymous source, and the
anonymous source puts another twist into the story.
Speaker 5 (46:54):
That's right. He was later identified as one Ronald Titcom
Titcomb whatever you like, a former Royal Australian Navy officer
with quite the rap sheet, quite the dirty jacket, as
you put it. Ben. He'd earlier left the Navy in
order to avoid a court martial because he was a
(47:15):
real naughty boy whoopsie.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
And he also after leaving the Navy, he had a
lot of financial problems. He kept tempting to create businesses
that would fall into disrepute. He had a lot of
debts that he found very challenging. When you're looking at
people's credibility, sometimes you do have to look at their finances.
(47:45):
So critics of Gray's book will say that.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Titcomb is sorry.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
We'll say that Titcomb is out to make a quick
buck off of off of this tragic disappearance, and that
no matter what you believe happened to Harold Holt, this
book itself is not going to be It should not
be your prime source for information. The idea is, okay,
(48:16):
there are multiple claims in here that can be proven
factually inaccurate. The pitch is that the story begins in
nineteen twenty nine. Holt is at the He's a student,
right as we said, He's at the University of Melbourne,
and one of his research papers comes to the attention
(48:37):
of the Chinese government for some reason, and then he
gets recruited by the Melbourne Chinese consulate to write pro
Chinese articles. Were a trade publication, That's what they're saying.
And Ronald, I'm just going to call Ronald. You get
it in my head with Titcom Ronald is Ronald is
(49:01):
saying that he discovered this story after a civil servant
from a rock tipped him off, and then he gradually
pieced it together after meeting with different Chinese government officials
who for some reason told him the story that's the
other question.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
What I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like, okay,
so to the question you have, Matt, about what we're
talking about.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Working during the Chinese Communist Revolution, which side do you choose?
Apparently he becomes a sleeper agent, which meant he would
just continue along his bureaucratic political path for a while,
and then they would tell him when he needed to
send a memo right or needed to link some info,
(49:54):
leak some info. But he was too valuable, he was
too good, so they reactive because of the chaos happening
in China, and the Taiwan East side paid him in
nineteen fifty two, but then in fifty four he said, no,
I'm a communist sympathizer, so he switched the party to them.
(50:16):
Like the whole the whole story is the allegation of
him hopping back and forth across the lines of conflict
there and ultimately he gets to escape. He gets to
escape in a submarine. I just I don't know, I
don't see it happening. And I got a little too
(50:38):
weird with this, Like what was submarine technology like at
the time? How many subs did they have? You know,
do they have the wherewithal to just go pick up
this one guy who may have already expended his use.
Because one thing governments are not great at in tradecraft
is keeping their word.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
There you go, there you go. You know, this is
making me think about something I haven't really considered in
this case, and that is the JFK Lyndon Johnson of
it all. I go on, yeah, well, just this concept
of the power vacuum that remains when a prime minister
(51:19):
or president or somebody just departs suddenly like that we're
no longer in that seat. I wonder about the other
powers that would fill in, right, like who becomes prime
minister after Holt exits? And you know what is what
is that infighting like between you know, even inside the
(51:40):
same party, right and then also the other parties like arguing, well,
now this is a whole change. What do we do now?
Who gets to decide? Do we have an election? Do
we do this? What do we do? I just found
something on the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
It's from the Nine network in nineteen sixty seven, and
it's talking about Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen mce e
(52:04):
w E n Yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Becomes the caretaker prime minister.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah, he's like the he's kind of the Linda Johnson
who's like, well, next in line, Okay, you step in.
You're now going to act at least in this position
for a couple of weeks. I think it's only two
or three weeks that he actually did that. But then
there's also a treasurer named William McMahon m c m
A h O N. And they were kind of fighting
back and forth about who is actually going to get
(52:30):
the power and why and I'm gonna leave if you
get in there. Oh you're you're not ready for this
and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
And they're there.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
Their political anatomy is not as simple as the sort
of two party system we have in the US coalitions,
right and all that, Right, right, mc ewen is the
leader of what they call the Country Party. As he said,
he's the caretaker prime minister, sort of the substitute prime
minister from December nineteenth till I guess January ninth, like
(53:07):
you said, just a few weeks and the Liberal Party
has a leadership election, it gets a whole thing that's
frankly a little bit complicated for us Yankees because we
only have the two parties well, yeah, that are allowed
to run or succeed.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I honestly don't even understand how you put those pieces
together and say, well, who's actually benefiting from any of this?
Or you know, if you were looking at potential suspects
for foul play any and that kind of stuff, you
need to know why, right, who's the person who benefits?
So it just I don't know enough about this. I've
only I've literally looked at it for a few seconds.
But it doesn't seem like enough change occurred or enough
(53:53):
I don't know. It didn't seem like anybody benefited enough
to point a finger, at least in my eyes.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah, Greg Gorton becomes the nineteenth Prime Minister after a series.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Of intense what Corporate America would call healthy conversations.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, but then didn't McMahon also get in there.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
I believe that's correct. It's something that we would have
to look into, I think, further in depth.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
But that is excellent.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
The most important part of that question, I think is
it shows us how many stakeholders there were, how many
people would have been required to sustain a conspiracy if
such existed, and it does look as though. It does
look as though, because of the extraordinary nature of this tragedy,
(54:46):
people will continue to re examine it. If we go
to the report by the Commonwealth in Victoria Police from
January of nineteen sixty eight, we see the following there's
been no indication that the disappearance of the late mister
Holt was anything other than accidental, and then in two
thousand and five a later in quest finds the same thing.
(55:06):
It's it really does feel like this is a tragic
example of man versus nature rather than man versus man.
Speaker 3 (55:16):
I don't know, what do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Guys?
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah, yeah, to me, that's at least that's what I've seen.
After everything we've looked at, it does appear that somebody
underestimated what he was getting into. He took a little dip,
went out a little further. There's a mention in the
Canberra Times back in sixty eight where they talk about
his sand shoes that he was wearing didn't have laces
(55:39):
on him, and everybody thought that was a bit weird, like,
why would you go out there in sand shoes without
laces if you're going to actually take a dip in
the water.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
Also, what are sand shoes.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Laces?
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, don't know any of these things.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
What are shoes?
Speaker 4 (55:55):
No, it's it's true though, but it shows us people
were scrambling for any of lead, right, any sort of
break in the case. This is a tremendous tragedy and remains.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
So if you want to go deeper in this whole thing,
you can find on the National Archives of Australia a
PDF file of the contents of mister Holt's briefcase at
the time of his disappearance, which is a really fascinating
thing to go through. So it's all of the papers,
all of the official documentation pertaining to both his work
(56:27):
as Prime Minister and the human being mister Holt that
are hanging out in his briefcase when he does and
it's officially on record, and you know, see if there's
any rabbit holes you can find in there.
Speaker 4 (56:41):
And we'd again like to thank T. R. Frame, the
author of the Life and Death of Harold Holt. If
you'd like to learn more, this is one of the
best places to start, So thank you mister Frame for
your tireless scholarship on this tragedy.
Speaker 3 (56:57):
We want to hear from you folks.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
We want to hear your take, especially Australian conspiracy realists.
But you don't have to be Aussies. We just want
your thoughts. Is there anything you feel the investigations have missed?
What do you make of these alternative theories?
Speaker 3 (57:12):
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (57:15):
That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy
stuff where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group.
Here's where it gets crazy. Join in on the conversation,
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(57:37):
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Speaker 2 (57:39):
More, you can give us a call. Our number is
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Speaker 4 (57:55):
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Speaker 3 (58:03):
As a matter of fact, we're catching up with a
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew, the
try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
this the stuff they don't.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Want you to know.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
You know, guys, we were talking, oh a little while
back off air. We've spent quite a bit of time
recently exploring present and future conspiracies and folks with so
many bizarre and troubling events occurring, who can blame us?
Like Noel, Matt, Andrew. Have you guys checked the stock
(01:02):
market recently?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I looked at it this morning. As of April seventh,
it was way down.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
You know what, though, y'all, we've we've sorry. I hate
to be silver lining guy. It's very bad, but we
have lived through these kinds of corrections and recessions before.
And you know, I just remember at the time the
last big recession happened, my mom sold all of her stock,
which was a really dumb thing to do because that's
when you actually, you know, show the loss. So if
(01:36):
she had just sat on it, it would have been
fine because it all came back around. But no, what's
going on right now is bonkers.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's why we love cafsper mastresses. It's a great place
to store that.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
No man, keep the cash, keep the cash, but don't
pan excel.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Your stock as well as as well as of course
Hellman's Bonnat's jars, Helman's Bonnai's jar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Ours set it, forget it, bury it in your.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Yard or just your couch, you know coinstar that's down there.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
By your put it in your couch or your Casper mattress.
That's where we put the jar. Then you bury it in.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Your yard so when it turns into Kim chee in
a couple.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So we're clearly top level financial advisors, but we are
counseling people about the importance, yea, of staying calm right
in chaotic times. And that's a question that we're going
to explore in this Evening's episode. When the Nation of
Australia and indeed the world panicked because imagine, all right,
(02:42):
we're in chaotic times, right, Now, some people love the
current US president. Some people are not fans of the
current US president. What if one day he went swimming
and disappeared.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
I mean, you know, some people might feel various ways
about that in one direction or another. But yeah, certain
they would be a big news item.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
You mean, like in the band one direction.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Exactly that, that's exactly could say.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
But for real, and imagine if the sitting president of
the United States was very well liked, like just all around,
you know, pretty dang high approval.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Rating and folksy guy.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, imagine, but imagine if that occurred like that,
would there would uh, there wouldn't be much other news
coming out besides where where did the president go?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, and this this evening we're diving back to you'll
see why that's.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
A bad bit of word play.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
In a minute, we're diving back to our roots with
a classic mystery, some classic stuff they don't want you
to know. A disappearing prime minister. This one is for you,
fellow aussy listeners from down under. What happened to Harold Holt?
And why do so many conspiracies about his disappearance abound?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Today?
Speaker 5 (03:56):
We'll find out right after a teeny tiny quickie word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Here are the facts, all right, Who's Harold Holt? This
name might not be familiar to a lot of a
lot of our fellow listeners outside of Australia.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
While Harold Edward Holt was born on the fifth of
August nineteen eight in Sydney, Australia, both of his parents
were teachers, and he had moved around quite a few times,
and by the age of twelve had lived in Sydney,
Adelaide and Melbourne, where Holt ultimately finished school.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah, and he is not a guy coming from a
silver spoon background, you know what I mean. He's not
the scion of some multi generational mining dynasty or anything
of that nature. He's not an aristocrat. He is a
very smart kid and he's a very popular guy at
(04:58):
school at the University of mel But where he studies,
he's known for being an avid outdoorsman, a real sporty guy.
But he's also great at debate club. He cleans up
and he studies law, as did many of his colleagues
at the time. He graduates in nineteen thirty with a
law degree and he starts working for a local firm
(05:20):
before he passes the bar in nineteen thirty two and
becomes a full fledged lawyer.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
He's only twenty four.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
We do have to give points to the name of
his very first legal employer or his very first law firm,
Think Best and Miller.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Great name for a love think.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I don't know man first rat Like.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Is it with the accent? Though?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Maybe it is? Maybe it's like, how would that be?
Speaker 5 (05:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I don't know if it would be. It has to
be something with a vowel. It's true, right, uh.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Miller, Miller, basycle well.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Fabits So unfortunately, as we know, as history proves, he
becomes a lawyer at one of the worst times to
enter the job market, the Great Depression. So this bore
a little bit of homework for us because he was
not able to make a living as a barrister. Here
(06:21):
in the United States, when we say a lawyer, we
usually mean a barrister or what people in the Commonwealth
would call a barrister. That's the person who goes to
court and represents clients or as specialized legal advice. Because
he couldn't make a living this way, he was, you know,
he's crashing and boarding houses. He was asking friends for money.
(06:44):
He had to go into business instead, as something called
a solicitor. They'll handle legal matters outside of a court,
and they often do all the legal homework for the barristers.
So it's kind of like how you have a teacher
and a parapro.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Is this the same as in the UK? I guess
I've always thought that the barrister and solicitor were interchangeable.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
This is interesting, Yeah, this is our understanding. We'd love
to hear more from legal experts in the Commonwealth, which has,
you know, a couple different rules of the legal road.
But in short, either way you look at it, it
was a less auspicious job. Times were tough for everybody
during the depression, other than the folks who you know,
(07:28):
caused the depression. However, his father at this time had
moved on. He was no longer a school teacher. He
was now working in the world of entertainment. He was
managing theaters. He was partnered with some radio concerns, and
these contacts in the entertainment industry, combined with Holt's affable
(07:50):
nature and his gregarious approach to things, they made him
a great success. He took a job as secretary of
the Victorian Cinematograph Cinematograph Cinematograph.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
I probably overdid it, but that's fine. That's a tough one.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
They are exhibitors association. So he was the secretary of
a film industry lobby. And while he was working in
this capacity, we see him cultivating relationships with a lot
of politicians, a lot of up and comers, a lot
of celebrities and public figures as well.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So let's pause here just to remember some of the
stuff we've learned about the entertainment industry here in the
United States, where you know, these films oftentimes are so
expensive it's difficult to fund all of them. So funding
comes from other places, often private investment in a particular
(08:49):
film or in let's say, a certain company that is
making a bunch of films, right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Sure, or sometimes international.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Investment, sometimes international investment just and sometimes not always obviously,
but sometimes that money comes from places that you know,
maybe they want you to pay him back, and they
want to make a little money off of this thing.
Maybe that money was under the table or was made
(09:19):
from means that wouldn't be above board, right.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Or wouldn't pass the domestic financial regulations of Australia. That's
why we have to point out international investment water that
one a little.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
All that is to say this, this part of his
life is kind of key to some of the conspiratorial
thoughts that exist around his disappearance.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Yeah, and shortly after passing the bar, he inculcates himself
in this, in this industry and all the connections it provides.
He also enters politics in a big way, which is
a natural transition, right or a natural He joins the UAP,
the United Australia Party and various subsidiaries thereof the original
(10:06):
UAP exactly, the original UAP perfect, And he repeatedly and
unsuccessfully runs for office until nineteen thirty five or so.
That's when he snags a rule in parliament. This leads
to even greater success. Here in the US, we often
use the phrase career politician as a insult, right, as
(10:28):
a denigrating remark. But he is a career politician. He's
twenty seven when he goes into parliament, and he spends
thirty two years in office. Yeah, and people like him,
people dig him well.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, And he is also just one of those names
that imagine hearing the same politician's name for thirty five years. Right,
So like when you're a kid learning about politics, you
hear the name. Now you're you're older, you've got your
first job, you hear the same name in politics. Even
if you don't know this person, right, you just hear
him talking and talking and talking. It's a kind of name,
(11:03):
like a Nancy Pelosi here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Or strom Thurmond.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, you don't know that much about them, maybe necessarily
even personally or what they stand for, but just you
know they're there and they've been there. So it's almost like,
I don't know, there's that familiarity thing that makes people
household na things, yeah, or maybe not like things. But
when you have that familiarity, it's almost as though you're
(11:28):
more likely to have a positive view on it.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Yeah, perhaps right, whether the devil one knows, he also
has great pr Maybe part of that is due to
his his understanding of the entertainment business. He's an avid outdoorsman, right,
so there are photo ops of him like spearfishing. He
doesn't want a bunch of security because he feels it
(11:54):
alienates him from the common voter, and he has all
these outdoor adventures. He's a likable guy.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
So on January the twenty sixth of nineteen sixty six,
Harold does go on to become the seventeenth Prime Minister
of Australia, and this sort of caps off what many
would consider a logical trajectory in his astonishing rise to power,
his successful traversing of the political ranks. You know, so
maybe like the I don't know, you could maybe even
(12:22):
say a positive version of that career politician. Maybe right
at least he's liked, right.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Yeah, he starts from the bottom. You know, he's seen
as an everyman. He's erudite, but he's not a nerd.
He's physically fit, but he's not a jock or a
meat head.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
He's the he's somebody who has something for every voter.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Yeah, that's the way John F. Kennedy type figure in some.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Ways when you say yeah, but I think this fact
that he goes out, I mean, he is a spear fisherman.
Towards the end of his life, he was just talking
about going on spearfishing trips. He's like, oh, yeah, let's
let's actually go spearfishing in a couple of days, or
maybe tomorrow, let's go Yeah, let's go spearfishing. And this
is an older gentleman like that's just cool.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
It's also yeah, it reminds me of you know, there's
that kind of soft touch diplomacy that you see in
some Western political figures, like I can't remember, I think
was the.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
In Ireland.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
There's a guy who's famous for always bringing his dog
to everything.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
That's cool, Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I get it right, But another this isn't.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Like going I'm not a big avid golfer, no man,
I spearfish.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Right right, right, Yeah, golf also has a different, different
vibe here in the States. It has for a while. Yeah,
he does spearfish though. He's about that life and people
are starting to ask themselves, you know what an amazing,
thoroughly Australian success story. What sort of legacy will Prime
Minister Holt imprint upon our land? What kind of changes
(13:55):
could this every man's administration make for the world? We
will never know. It's about twenty two months after he
attains office when Harold Holt disappears to date, as we
record on Monday April seventh, twenty twenty five. He has
not been seen since officially, So what happened? We'll tell
(14:17):
you after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
I think we have to begin by thanking an author
named T. R. Frame who wrote the book The Life
and Death of Harold Holt, So we want to this
is one of the best primary sources to read all
the twists and turns and context here, and a lot
of the work you'll see is actually quoting that book.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yes, and let's also shout out the National Film and
Sound Archive of Australia as well as the National Archives
THEMSE of Australia, because they've got the original documentation on
all of the stuff that everything's built on, the original
reports that came from you know, both the Commonwealth and
from the news media at the time.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Not yeah, not to derail too much, but I just
think it's so neat. The idea seem the obvious of
like what was Australian cinema like.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
In the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
It's just a world that's completely other than like Mad
Max and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and maybe a
couple other Australian films that are more modern. Like I
have no idea, but there must have been a rich
culture of cinema for them to have an organization like this,
and now it makes me really want to kind of
dig in to that world and find out who was
like the Coppola of Australia, you know.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Ooh, the Copola Australia. I like that. It'd be a
good one to check out.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Do tell us, folks, and what did Harold Holt like
to watch exactly?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
You know? So we know that he we know that
he did love.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
The outdoors, but obviously he would have to be a
fan of cinema as well. When he disappears, he is
with a group of friends and they're swimming at a beach.
We'll attempt the pronunciation cheviot or cheviot beach c h
e v IoT.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, I want to shout out, Morgan Kurajeong, I think
is how you would say it on YouTube. Just found
a random video he's out there and he calls it
cheviot beach.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Cheviot beach, which is an accent. Question.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
That's funny because I linked the same video in the
episode here.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Oh for real?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, he describes as the most dangerous beach in Australia.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, oh, I love that guy.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Well, and that's saying a lot considering how danger as
Australian wildlife can be and just how you know, untamed
much of it is what made it so dangerous, just
like treacherous and rocky and things like that.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah, let's talk about its location. Get into the beach.
So it's near Ports Sea, Victoria. When we're talking danger here,
a lot of the danger comes from the currents, ripped currents,
which can be They can appear deceptively calm, but even
experienced swimmers can be challenged or find themselves in a
(17:12):
situation going quickly sideways on this beach in particular.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, so imagine you're pretty far into shore when there's
a low tide and you're looking out at the sea
right on the chevy At Beach. To your right there
is a like basically a very rocky beach, and to
your left there is a very rocky beach. And then
in the center it's nice and sandy or much more
sandy and clear going out. If you're hanging out in
(17:40):
that area with the sandy beach, where humans would want
to go and oh hey, it's a lovely beach, I
want to swim out there, there are two pretty intense
currents just beneath the water because of the rocky beaches
there to both the right and left. If you get
caught up in one of those, you're getting sucked right
out to see.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, and the Beaches Act.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Actually its namesake is an iron steamer that wrecked on
the beach because of these currents back in eighteen eighty
seven and.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Thirty five people died.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
So it's kind of like anytime you go to a
place that's named after a disaster that occurred there. It Yeah,
tread Lightley's step carefully, walk right.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yes, swimmy.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
The other thing is the tides, Like, the tides are
pretty intense when it comes to changing what's happening beneath
the water. At a high tide in this beach, it
becomes much more treacherous.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
Well, at this point, he's sixty years old, right.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
He is, Yeah, at this point, he's around sixty. His
disappearance grips the country. It makes national and then international
news within twenty four hours, obviously because it's you know,
like we're saying at the top, imagine if your country's
prime minister, president, ruler simply disappeared. That is somehow more
(19:01):
challenging and disturbing than an assassination, as tragic as an
assassination can be. This results in a massive man hunt.
We know a little bit about the timeline. You can
find this extensively researched and documented. I found National Archives
of Australia to be a great source for this. But
(19:23):
you walk through the timeline and every source you see
says this is a normal day for this guy. Like
he gets up, he goes to the general store. You know,
he talks with this wife. He thinks the weather's nice,
they're gonna go He's gonna go on an excursion with
some friends.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's very much not anomalous.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sounds like, oh dude, it's it's it's awesome. And where
he is staying, he knows all the neighbors, right this
imagine this is the Prime Minister. He knows all the neighbors.
He's just popping by neighbors houses to have, you know,
a quick drink and hang and listen to some stereo music,
which is what said in the report by the Commonwealthfare.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
As opposed to mono music.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Well, yes, but he's and he's stopping by other neighbor's house.
When he goes to that story you were talking about Ben,
he that's when he talks to the store owner like
and just says, hey, let's hang out later at your place,
which happens to be his neighbor's house. He's just like
living his life almost like on a vacate of a
little bit of a vacation schedule.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Yeah, And so it makes sense then logically that he
would go and do I like that idea of a
vacation schedule. Man, he would logically then go do things
people do when they're kicking back and relaxing ed as
a guy who loves the swim, that's on his list.
He's near the shore, it's go time.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
We know.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
He was especially excited. He and his friends were excited
about seeing a then famous sailor named Alec Rose. Alec
Rose was circumnavigating the globe on a sailing trip. Pretty
neat stuff, pretty impressive. So as he is going around
the world, he's going to make a stopover in this area,
(21:11):
and that's kind of their main impetus to go to
the beach that day. And Holt is there with several friends.
They're not you know, high muckety MUCKs or foreign dignitaries.
He's with a lady named Marjorie Gillespie, her daughter Viner Gillespie,
her boyfriend Martin or Marjorie's boyfriend Martin Simpson, and one
(21:35):
of his buddies, just one of his homeboys named Alan Stewart.
You can also see reports that he had some bodyguards
with him, which is interesting because for a long time,
before some unpleasant events, he had rejected bodyguards like full stop,
but after a couple of attacks and some close calls
(21:57):
in his career, he later rescented that and did have
a little bit of a security detail, so he was
not alone on the beach. There's no audio, there's no
video given the timeframe, but there were multiple eyewitnesses. Another
important piece of the story.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
Well, and as we've alluded to, this guy was a
seasoned outdoorsman and well let's call him a strong swimmer, y'all.
This was something he had done many times before, and
like you said, Matt, it was kind of just another
day in the life for this man, and he had
specifically swum at this beach despite all of the warnings
(22:38):
around it's very very strong rip current.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yep. It's stated by his friends who were there that
he mentioned specifically, quote, I know this beach like the
back of my hand. And he also noted that, yeah,
the tide is unusually high, as in it's even at
high tide, it's not this high.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Usually, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And at this point, as you had mentioned, no, Holt
is around sixty years old, so like so many world leaders,
his age and undoubtedly the stress of his position had
caused some or contributed to some health issues. In earlier months,
he had collapsed due to what doctors suspected was either
(23:21):
a vitamin deficiency or possibly a heart condition, and he
had genetic predisposition to that in his family. And in
September of that same year, he had begun treatment for
an old, painful shoulder injury that he got during his
youth as a football player, as a footballer, and this
(23:43):
wasn't you know, debilitating to him, but it did require
him to be on a regimen of physical therapy and painkillers.
And what do you need when you swim good shoulders?
Speaker 5 (23:54):
It's right, And I mean, you know, he had folks
in his inner circle that and his medical care staff
that were, you know, certainly warning him against this type
of strenuous activity and some of the potential dangers of it.
But you know, he was he was a guy who
was very confident in his abilities, and he didn't seem
(24:14):
to listen. Maybe he could argue he was a little
hardheaded about it.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
He just quit. You know.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's probably one of those things where they say, okay, doc,
I hear you. You worry too much. You know, you're
telling me not to go, try not to try to
swim to China. I get it, but I can go,
you know, take a dip. I could take a lap, right.
I know this water like the back of my hand.
It's kind of like saying, you know, I think we
(24:41):
interpret that kind of medical advice in very similar ways.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Even now.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Your doctor might say, hey, don't do too much of this,
and then your head says, okay, so I can play
a little tennis.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You're telling me not to compete for Wimbledon, right, right.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
So there's a matter of degree there, and it's not
a surprise that despite the slightly higher water level, Holt
decides to take a dip. In fact, he may have
been somewhat excited to see it, you know, it may
have made it feel more adventurous. One of the people
and the crew guy named Alan Stewart, says, okay, man,
(25:18):
I'll all right homie, I'll go with you into the
shallow water right just off the shore. But no one
in his entourage, including Alan Stewart, will venture further away
from the shore. Nobody wants to go with him, so
Harold Holt goes solo, and the folks who watch him
go into the water end up being, as far as
(25:41):
we know, the last folks to see Harold Holt alive.
Let's go to a quote from the Smithsonian. I think
this is just a great summation of this.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Absolutely. Holt's four companions climbed a rocky cliff and searched
the water for traces of him, Finding none, they began
to panic. Stuart went for help, and within minutes three
scuba divers were wading into the water.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It continues, but the undertow was too strong even for them.
That's the scuba divers who are then going to look
for him, and the currents made the water turbid and
difficult to see in. They retreated from the surf, climbed
a rock, and scanned the water with binoculars until police
and search and rescue teams arrived. It should be noted
(26:28):
here that even the search and rescue teams, once they
arrive even the other They call them skin divers in
some of the reporting here. When everybody is there attempting
to look for wherever the heck mister Holt went, they
cannot even continue their search effectively because of danger things
danger the waters you can't see in, and basically the
(26:50):
conditions in general of the water.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Right right, which are also ever changing.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You know, when someone disappears in water, especially this kind
of situation, it's not impossible for as gold as it sounds,
it's not impossible for the body to quickly disappear or
be washed away. And there's another part in the Smithsonian article.
Just loved the writing on this where it seems to
(27:18):
apply that of the people on the scene, Marjorie Gillespie
is the last to actually see Holt. She keeps an
eye on Holt as he swims further away, quote, drifting
from them, until the water seemed to boil around him
and he disappeared. That's the part that stays with you
(27:40):
because that turbid water. That description just shows us how
violent and chaotic the tides and the currents were becoming.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The movement of the water also makes me think of
a potential animal attack or something if he's that far
out and then you see alarn bubbles or something happening
below him, like, it could mean that something came up
and pulled him down, at least initially. And if you're
that far out, it's going to be difficult to see
if he's then under the water being attacked.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
And if you already have a shoulder injury, then an
injury that you could have swam away from, yeah, might
be debilitating to the point where you lose motion well.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
And if I'm not a second the same riptides that
would carry you out in that direction in the first
place would do the very same to any remains.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
It is interesting to me with a shoulder injury because
it's reported in the National Archives when the Commonwealth did
the investigation that he played tennis the Saturday before he
went missing. And if anyone who's ever played tennis, that's
your shoulder, right, I mean, that's everything is in your shoulder.
And I believe the quote from doctor Bruce Edwards, that's
(28:53):
the person they played with. He said he didn't mister
Holt didn't play up to his regular standards and he
did complain of his shoulder, but he still played tennis
just fine.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Right, Like, that's what we're saying with the swimming too.
You know, you're aggravating an injury too. Yeah, and you're
engaging in that repetitive motion.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's to me it sounds like something that would be
really painful if he had to swim, you know, it
would hurt really badly, but he would still be able
to do it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Sure? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
And this is These are some of the many questions
that have been asked over the decades since nineteen sixty seven. However,
once five days had passed and searches were still continuing, right,
investigations were still continuing. But the nation is a nation, right,
(29:44):
And so five days had passed, Holt is declared gone
and Australia continues with the business of government. But perhaps
the most important question, one that's been asked in multiple ways,
multiple times ever since that day in December, is this
what happened? So we're going to pause for word from
our sponsor and we'll dive into the theories.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
And we're back. So, guys, what actually happened to Holt?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Do we know, well, he disappeared as we know that.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
We know that, we know that the Australian government has
ever since their initial investigation, including in quest as recently
as two thousand and five, they have always concluded the
explanation is that Holt disappeared, not just didn't just disappear
at see but drowned by accident and that led to
(30:47):
his death. This is understandable. Again, it's a notoriously dangerous
stretch of beach, even for experienced swimmers. But you know,
this happens in so much conspiracy lore. Given Holt's high
political position, the pivotal role of Australian and global governance,
the tense issues of the region and the time, it's
(31:10):
no surprise that there were alternative theories that would arise
to explain his vanishing, you know, especially because to date
nobody has been recovered.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, there was a lot of talk at the very beginning,
like we're talking early January nineteen sixty eight. People were thinking, well,
is it possible that mister Holt decided to swim out
there and knowing it was dangerous, knowing that his life
was in danger, and knowing that he would likely die,
(31:44):
like as in, did he do this on purpose?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (31:48):
The possibility that may he may have taken his own life,
And this is initial scuttle, but right, it's a less
speculation that, as we can imagine, would be tremendously offensive
to friends and more importantly family. The proponents of this
idea were saying, I have it on good record, or
(32:08):
I have it on anonymous record, that Holt was depressed,
perhaps mentally unstable in the months leading up to his disappearance,
that for one reason or another he felt his political
career was damaged or inherently doomed.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
And so let's go really quickly to the Kimber of
Times in nineteen sixty eight January twenty second, and this
this is right after the official reporting is released, the
one that the Commonwealth puts together. So all the police,
working together with the investigators, all of the initial witnesses,
(32:46):
anybody that interacted with mister Holt basically weeks before his disappearance,
they make a very let's say, strong point to talk
about how mister Holt was his normal self at the time.
They go to a lot of those initial witnesses who
say things like he quote was in good spirits, in
(33:08):
his usual jovial mood. Another person, mister Edgar, says he
was in excellent health and spirits. And then even a
doctor who examined him on Friday, December fifteenth, just days
before he went, just said quote there was no reason
either physical or mental, that could cause or contribute to
his death under ordinary circumstances.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Additionally, it made no statements to that effect to friends
or family.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
He had shown know what you would call suicidal ideation.
And even though.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Some of the quotes that are rallying against this at
the time, their attribution is not super great, there is
a uniform stance in the media and in statements from
neighbors and friends, because he knew a lot of people
and they're all so this feels like unfounded speculation. But
(34:03):
to jump in time a little bit, if we're explored
by theory rather than by chronology, this idea or this
theory of suicide is still around right now, most particularly
because in two thousand and seven Australian network called nine
Network aired a made for TV documentary about the disappearance
(34:25):
called Who Killed Harold Holt? And in this documentary a
bit of a loaded title, right, I.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Mean right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And in this documentary they treat claims of suicide with
I think more credence than they should and when people
hear that claim despite being initially dismissed, when they hear
that claim being given so much credibility decades later, you know,
the average viewer might say, huh, quite possibly. And so
(34:55):
many Australians are so many viewers we should say, who
saw this started along this line or giving sand to
this theory that living friends of the missing Harold Holt
and his family rallied in strident reaction. And I always
(35:15):
just exercise empathy. It's got to be terrible for your
father to disappear. This is something Sam Holt had to
deal with. Your father has disappeared all of a sudden.
Decades later, you're still dealing with this trauma. Some network
airs a show that says your dad killed himself, and
now you have to go back on air and say, hey,
(35:39):
thanks for bringing this up. Also, as we always said
for decades, no, I mean, that's a terrible thing to
do to anybody's family.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, to me, it feels like no offense, guys, and
to myself as well, a bunch of producers sitting around saying, ah,
what's juicy about this Harold Holt story that we could
make a whole thing on You know, it's.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
All on the title.
Speaker 5 (36:03):
You know, it's pretty exactly as other journalism.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
It's the title, right, it might be frank imbiting. So
it's gross. And as we said, the police always disagreed
with the suicide theory. Every reputable source that you will find,
and even some disreputable sources spoiler, disagree with that theory.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
But it's not the only theory at play.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
A second one which doesn't get I think a whole
lot of attention is the possibility that Holt was somehow murdered,
that maybe someone sent him out to the water. And
that's based on the small number of eyewitnesses. That's also
based on the fact that there's no audio or visual recording,
(36:48):
and that's based on the fact still that they haven't
found the body. So that's really just a hall of
mirrored unknowns I would call it.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
But again, like I really like Matt's animal will attack
theory with the bubbling waters and stuff, and again that riptide,
I mean, it would be highly unlikely they'd find the body.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Just to yes, but just to contradict myself, it feels
as though there would be more evidence floating debreas of clothing.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Thatide, though it sucks everything out. I mean, maybe, you know,
it's pretty intense. Maybe I wouldn't have left the shred behind.
But I'm with you, Matt, I'm with you.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
The yeah, well, the the inquest again they looked at
the possibility of animals too, and they found bupkus.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah. We we do know that on a lot of
shores of Australia and a lot of you know, beaches
and places, it is very dangerous to be swimming out
in the water because of the specific species of sharks
that populate a lot of those waters.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Or just the jellyfish.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And the jellyfish and the snakes really just anything, uh, spiders, No,
I'm just I guess what I mean is I I've
remember recently, guys, and I can't remember exactly what it was.
I think it was an episode of Radio Rental or
something that I just watched. They talked about the extremely
dangerous waters in Australia in a bunch of places that
(38:13):
you wouldn't expect to be dangerous, like this place if
you just came upon it, especially back in the day
when there were steps going down into the water. It
looked friendly, like a place where people could just go swim.
If you wanted to. You just wouldn't expect. Oh no,
there's like a pretty good chance you die here if you.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Just happened upon it. You know, you're from out of town,
you haven't spoken with the locals, you don't have you know,
the Internet or something like that. Sure, and that's probably
led to deaths, not just in this area, but in
multiple areas of the world. Right, It's easy to underestimate
the dangers of the shore, in the ocean, or just
(38:51):
water in general, you know, because humans, despite being built
of water, humans are not built for water.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
It's probably the best way put it.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
The Yeah, I think those were tiger sharks, by the way,
the ones that I'm thinking about from.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
That specific radio rental.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, I think. So it's like just where tiger sharks exist,
not in this beach that we're talking about today, just
a beach that you wouldn't expect. There's a ton of
sharks below the waters.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, or even or the tricky little guys who hide
under the sand.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, they're a way for you to step on them.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Another perhaps one of the more bizarre theories here are.
The bizarre set of theories is that Harold Holt did
not die at all. But rather instead of purposely dying,
he purposely disappeared. And there are a few versions of
this one and one Holt fakes his death. He's gonna
commit pseudo sides, start a new life under an assumed identity.
(39:50):
None of this is really none of these I think
the general ones are fact based. They have all the
trappings of a gripping story, you know, high politics celebrity
like Asa Brock would say fast car, danger, fire and knives.
But to make a theory like this really zing, you
got to throw a little bit more into the cauldron.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Right, So how about this? Right?
Speaker 4 (40:14):
What if for the entire entirety of his political career,
the Minister of Australia Harold Holt was a spy?
Speaker 3 (40:25):
You know, he was an asset?
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Would you imagine, I mean for people who didn't live
in Australia.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It's a cool story, but you know.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Could you imagine, just guys, hypothetically, how terrible it would
be for a country if its leader was the asset
of a foreign power.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Hmm, that would be really strange. I wonder how you
would figure that out.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Yeah, I'm just saying hypothetically, I think that would be
a chaotic time to be it.
Speaker 6 (40:56):
It'd be a weird time tariffs. Wait what what imagine?
Imagine that it's almost too absurd to even consider.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, there we go, jumping in there, becoming prime minister,
you know, destroying the economy.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
Doing things that are purposely, purposely against the interest of
the people.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, I'd like dismantle all of the stuff that helps
the country.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
Yeah right, oh boy, So this is the pitch. This
is a real pitch made by a British author named
Anthony Gray in his book they published in nineteen eighty three,
named in a burst of creativity, the Prime Minister was
a spy.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Once again.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
Man, they're really on the nose of these titles.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
Not leave it much to the imagination here.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yeah, and it's interesting. Let's let's let's go down the
rabbit hole a little bit. Guys. What if mister Holt
was indeed working for China the whole time.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
Which is crazy, because China had a bit of a
sea change themselves as a government over the time that
Holt would have been an asset. It was a nationalist
government and then you may have heard about it, it
became a communist government. So this book would argue that
he was a spy for both versions of the Chinese
(42:27):
government somehow, somehow right. The most spectacular claim is that
Holt was depressed, despite what everybody says to the contrary,
Harold Holt was depressed, But he wasn't depressed because his
career was over. He was depressed because he knew people
(42:47):
are catching on he would be exposed. So instead of
resigning and risking prison, he faked his own death. He
swam in waters known to be extremely dangerous, made statements
about how he knew the waters were dangerous, and when
he went under the water, he secretly boarded a submersible
(43:07):
stationed off the coast. It was a Chinese craft that
would take him to Beijing. And he lived out the
rest of his life in comfort and obscurity, never contacting
his children, never contacting his wife, never contacting any of
his best friends, or even you know, picking up the
phone when people called, well.
Speaker 5 (43:22):
Yeah, Ben, you sadly were on Adventurers. When we talked
to Maggie recently about up and Vanished weekly and the
idea of pseudo side came up, And in fact, Maggie
mentioned that book that you're always referencing Ben, and I'm
totally losing the.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Night by Elizabeth Woods.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
That's plain dead a million percent and just once again,
how incredibly challenging. Dare we say impossible? Not impossible? It
would be to unlive yourself in that fashion.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Most people mess up because they ask for money or
they re re emerge for a personal contact.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Look, guys, I want to get back into the China thing, because,
as you said, Ben, we're talking about the differences and
the changes in China that occurred like nineteen forty nine
on when the Republic of China is declared to be
the People's Republic of China. But then the Republic of
China that was still recognized by a lot of other countries,
(44:23):
including the United States. And I do not know, but
I am assuming probably Australia, the Republic of China that
power is still recognized, but as seated in Taiwan. Yes,
so that concept of during that time we're talking nineteen
sixty seven, right end of sixty seven, there is potential
(44:46):
there for spycraft to I don't know, exist, I don't know.
It feels less and less that weird to me, I
guess just the fact that he's an acting Prime minister
feels a little weird, but just both of those powers
on the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China,
both those powers wanting to have high level spycraft activities.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
It's also there is a tricky thing here past the
umami of the story, which is at that level of
state power, when you're the prime minister, you're already wrapped
up in a bunch of espionage stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (45:28):
You may not yeah, you might not even know it.
Like how vetted is your cook? How vetted is your secretary?
That's these are the questions. So it's it sounds like
a really good story, but it even it gets even
weirder when we learn more about Anthony Gray, the author.
He's alive today, he used to work for Reuters. He's
(45:51):
a novelist, he's a journalist. He's in his eighties. I
believe he knows China pretty well, or at least the
inside of China these prison cells, because he was captured
and locked away there from nineteen sixty seven to nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
So the year.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
Disappears, this guy has also disappeared right behind the Great Wall,
and he gets out of prison in nineteen sixty nine.
In May of nineteen eighty three, Anthony Gray, per his
own reports, he gets a call from an anonymous source
who essentially says.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
I'm stayed anonymous. I know what happened to Harold holt Hold.
Speaker 5 (46:36):
He had to lay on his voice name.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Whoa yeah, kick him with some reverb, you know when
you're going anonymous. But yeah, so that's this guy that
he contacts. We now know his anonymous source, and the
anonymous source puts another twist into the story.
Speaker 5 (46:54):
That's right. He was later identified as one Ronald Titcom
Titcomb whatever you like, a former Royal Australian Navy officer
with quite the rap sheet, quite the dirty jacket, as
you put it. Ben. He'd earlier left the Navy in
order to avoid a court martial because he was a
(47:15):
real naughty boy whoopsie.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
And he also after leaving the Navy, he had a
lot of financial problems. He kept tempting to create businesses
that would fall into disrepute. He had a lot of
debts that he found very challenging. When you're looking at
people's credibility, sometimes you do have to look at their finances.
(47:45):
So critics of Gray's book will say that.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Titcomb is sorry.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
We'll say that Titcomb is out to make a quick
buck off of off of this tragic disappearance, and that
no matter what you believe happened to Harold Holt, this
book itself is not going to be It should not
be your prime source for information. The idea is, okay,
(48:16):
there are multiple claims in here that can be proven
factually inaccurate. The pitch is that the story begins in
nineteen twenty nine. Holt is at the He's a student,
right as we said, He's at the University of Melbourne,
and one of his research papers comes to the attention
(48:37):
of the Chinese government for some reason, and then he
gets recruited by the Melbourne Chinese consulate to write pro
Chinese articles. Were a trade publication, That's what they're saying.
And Ronald, I'm just going to call Ronald. You get
it in my head with Titcom Ronald is Ronald is
(49:01):
saying that he discovered this story after a civil servant
from a rock tipped him off, and then he gradually
pieced it together after meeting with different Chinese government officials
who for some reason told him the story that's the
other question.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
What I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like, okay,
so to the question you have, Matt, about what we're
talking about.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Working during the Chinese Communist Revolution, which side do you choose?
Apparently he becomes a sleeper agent, which meant he would
just continue along his bureaucratic political path for a while,
and then they would tell him when he needed to
send a memo right or needed to link some info,
(49:54):
leak some info. But he was too valuable, he was
too good, so they reactive because of the chaos happening
in China, and the Taiwan East side paid him in
nineteen fifty two, but then in fifty four he said, no,
I'm a communist sympathizer, so he switched the party to them.
(50:16):
Like the whole the whole story is the allegation of
him hopping back and forth across the lines of conflict
there and ultimately he gets to escape. He gets to
escape in a submarine. I just I don't know, I
don't see it happening. And I got a little too
(50:38):
weird with this, Like what was submarine technology like at
the time? How many subs did they have? You know,
do they have the wherewithal to just go pick up
this one guy who may have already expended his use.
Because one thing governments are not great at in tradecraft
is keeping their word.
Speaker 5 (50:56):
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
There you go, there you go. You know, this is
making me think about something I haven't really considered in
this case, and that is the JFK Lyndon Johnson of
it all. I go on, yeah, well, just this concept
of the power vacuum that remains when a prime minister
(51:19):
or president or somebody just departs suddenly like that we're
no longer in that seat. I wonder about the other
powers that would fill in, right, like who becomes prime
minister after Holt exits? And you know what is what
is that infighting like between you know, even inside the
(51:40):
same party, right and then also the other parties like arguing, well,
now this is a whole change. What do we do now?
Who gets to decide? Do we have an election? Do
we do this? What do we do? I just found
something on the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
It's from the Nine network in nineteen sixty seven, and
it's talking about Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen mce e
(52:04):
w E n Yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Becomes the caretaker prime minister.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah, he's like the he's kind of the Linda Johnson
who's like, well, next in line, Okay, you step in.
You're now going to act at least in this position
for a couple of weeks. I think it's only two
or three weeks that he actually did that. But then
there's also a treasurer named William McMahon m c m
A h O N. And they were kind of fighting
back and forth about who is actually going to get
(52:30):
the power and why and I'm gonna leave if you
get in there. Oh you're you're not ready for this
and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
And they're there.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
Their political anatomy is not as simple as the sort
of two party system we have in the US coalitions,
right and all that, Right, right, mc ewen is the
leader of what they call the Country Party. As he said,
he's the caretaker prime minister, sort of the substitute prime
minister from December nineteenth till I guess January ninth, like
(53:07):
you said, just a few weeks and the Liberal Party
has a leadership election, it gets a whole thing that's
frankly a little bit complicated for us Yankees because we
only have the two parties well, yeah, that are allowed
to run or succeed.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I honestly don't even understand how you put those pieces
together and say, well, who's actually benefiting from any of this?
Or you know, if you were looking at potential suspects
for foul play any and that kind of stuff, you
need to know why, right, who's the person who benefits?
So it just I don't know enough about this. I've
only I've literally looked at it for a few seconds.
But it doesn't seem like enough change occurred or enough
(53:53):
I don't know. It didn't seem like anybody benefited enough
to point a finger, at least in my eyes.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah, Greg Gorton becomes the nineteenth Prime Minister after a series.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Of intense what Corporate America would call healthy conversations.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, but then didn't McMahon also get in there.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
I believe that's correct. It's something that we would have
to look into, I think, further in depth.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
But that is excellent.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
The most important part of that question, I think is
it shows us how many stakeholders there were, how many
people would have been required to sustain a conspiracy if
such existed, and it does look as though. It does
look as though, because of the extraordinary nature of this tragedy,
(54:46):
people will continue to re examine it. If we go
to the report by the Commonwealth in Victoria Police from
January of nineteen sixty eight, we see the following there's
been no indication that the disappearance of the late mister
Holt was anything other than accidental, and then in two
thousand and five a later in quest finds the same thing.
(55:06):
It's it really does feel like this is a tragic
example of man versus nature rather than man versus man.
Speaker 3 (55:16):
I don't know, what do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Guys?
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah, yeah, to me, that's at least that's what I've seen.
After everything we've looked at, it does appear that somebody
underestimated what he was getting into. He took a little dip,
went out a little further. There's a mention in the
Canberra Times back in sixty eight where they talk about
his sand shoes that he was wearing didn't have laces
(55:39):
on him, and everybody thought that was a bit weird, like,
why would you go out there in sand shoes without
laces if you're going to actually take a dip in
the water.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
Also, what are sand shoes.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Laces?
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, don't know any of these things.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
What are shoes?
Speaker 4 (55:55):
No, it's it's true though, but it shows us people
were scrambling for any of lead, right, any sort of
break in the case. This is a tremendous tragedy and remains.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
So if you want to go deeper in this whole thing,
you can find on the National Archives of Australia a
PDF file of the contents of mister Holt's briefcase at
the time of his disappearance, which is a really fascinating
thing to go through. So it's all of the papers,
all of the official documentation pertaining to both his work
(56:27):
as Prime Minister and the human being mister Holt that
are hanging out in his briefcase when he does and
it's officially on record, and you know, see if there's
any rabbit holes you can find in there.
Speaker 4 (56:41):
And we'd again like to thank T. R. Frame, the
author of the Life and Death of Harold Holt. If
you'd like to learn more, this is one of the
best places to start, So thank you mister Frame for
your tireless scholarship on this tragedy.
Speaker 3 (56:57):
We want to hear from you folks.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
We want to hear your take, especially Australian conspiracy realists.
But you don't have to be Aussies. We just want
your thoughts. Is there anything you feel the investigations have missed?
What do you make of these alternative theories?
Speaker 3 (57:12):
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 5 (57:15):
That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy
stuff where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group.
Here's where it gets crazy. Join in on the conversation,
have a ball, make some new friends in the conspiracy
realist community. You can also find us that handle on
x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube. We have video content
color for your perusing enjoyment on Instagram and TikTok. However,
(57:37):
where conspiracy Stuff show and there's.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
More, you can give us a call. Our number is
one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know within
the message if we can use your name and message
on the air. If you'd like to instead send us
an email, you can.
Speaker 4 (57:55):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware that un afraid, sometimes the
void writes back.
Speaker 3 (58:03):
As a matter of fact, we're catching up with a
few of you this very evening. What do we mean?
Is it true? Do we actually write back? There's one
way to find out.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Join us here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:36):
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Stuff You Should Know
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com