Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Man, welcome back to George Noori with David Politis. David
not counting these missing military men and the women, perhaps
how many people have disappeared in the state of Washington.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Well, you got to be careful here because it's it's
not just people who have disappeared, it's people that just
fit this profile that we're looking at. And we're approaching
one hundred. With the book that I put out, I
like to put out a driving map as well, and
there's a full driving map with the book with all
the disappearances that I've researched in Washington plotted on the map.
(00:40):
And the largest cluster of missing people in Washington is
not Rainier. There's I don't like to write about missing
climbers technical climbers because that can always kind of be
explained away. And I'm want to go into a whole
lot of detail about the fifteen. But there is one
(01:01):
case that I wanted to talk about that happened on Rainier,
and it was the disappearance of two guys named Chris
Hartonis and Raymond Vakili. Chris was forty years old Aikili
was forty eight. They went missing November fifth, nineteen ninety nine,
and they were at a place called Camp Mrror on
Mount Rainier, on the Mure Snowfield. It's on the south
(01:23):
side of Rainier and the route to that area of
the hut, and they were going to stay it starts
at a place called Paradise at the bottom of the mountain.
And Paradise used to be a golf course in the
nineteen thirties and then in the seventies it was a
ski resort. They took that all away and now it's
an area to start a climb. But MPs stated in
(01:45):
their research that Hartonis was the most experienced person, traveling
to the Mure Hut over one hundred times in seasons
of all types of weather. It was an FAA engineer
living in Seattle, and the Kiwi was a friend of
Hardtonis's and he had an equal amount of experience. And
(02:05):
then there was one other guy that started the trip
with these two and they had summitted dozens and dozens
of times. Well, this group of three left on November fifth.
The third person in the party was kind of dragging
behind an old sweat of his in the snow got
tired real quick and he decided, Hey, I'm just going
to go back to the car and meet you guys
(02:25):
later when you're done. And again that's that point of
separation I told you about earlier. Exactly Well, the pair
Artonas and Bikili were seeing ascending a location called Panorama
Point by one of their friends. That's the last time
they were ever seeing. Now, a lot of people would
just sign this off and say eye, you know, they
(02:46):
have no big deal. It's just a couple of guys.
But the statements that NPS made National Park Service is
what really keyped me on this case. Now, the pair
didn't return and the National Park Service got involved, and
it was a November tenth article that had this statement
from the spokesman for the National Park Service, Mark Morgan quote,
(03:07):
Hartonis is probably one of the most experienced people in
the world on the mere snowfield. And then after that quote,
he said, bad weather hamper the search while the Army
sent helicopters and canines were used in this ten day
search looking for these two. After that initial ten day search,
(03:27):
and you got to remember the dragon sleds that had
their stuff on it, nothing was found and Mark Gautier
from the National Park Service made this statement, and this
is pretty sobering. This is the fourth serious incident on
the Mirror snowfield in nineteen ninety nine. It's difficult to
(03:47):
speculate what exactly happened to the men. It's perplexing when
two experienced, cautious and mature climbers just disappear. They were
well equipped in our tonas was very familiar with the area.
Both men have a history of good decision making in
the mountains, and neither had a reputation of pushing it.
(04:09):
Efforts to locate them will resume this summer when the
winter snowfalls begin to melt. It is hoped that clues
will be revealed. Well, there was a second search that summer.
Nothing was found, and to this day nothing has ever
been found of Chris Artonis and Raymond Vikieley.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh bizarre. And they were prepared for the elements too,
weren't they, Like.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The National Parks of said George, They were some of
the most experienced men in the world on that part
of the mountain. And when the Park Service comes out
and says things just like that, I've never heard him
say anything like that before. So I pay attention, and
it's so unusual to have two people disappear. And these
(04:54):
sleds they're dragging are probably five feet long. They're not
going to go away. These things are huge. I can't
believe it.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
As long as you have snow that it's not too
difficult to pull right. Exactly exactly do they have weapons? David?
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Well, you know, climbers don't usually carry weapons. They're heavy,
and you know, they're bulky, and there's really no reason
at those altitudes in their mind to be carrying anything
like that. So I've never known a climber to carry one.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
What are their family members?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Say? That's a very good question. And they never came
forward and said anything to the press, And I've never
heard anything more about this since it happened.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
What does your gut tell you?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
You know, when you think about well, first of all,
there's other things that have happened high up on that
mountain that are very strange that are in the book.
But the man when the Mark Park Service says these
people just disappeared, those were his words, Those weren't mine.
What did they disappear too? And they bring canines and
(06:07):
the canines can't track where they went to. And we're
talking about twenty five years from the time this happened.
There's been significant loss of snow and ice on the mountain.
Where did they go?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I mean, if their bodies are there, the canines would
have found it right exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And they rolled cadaver dogs through there, so cadavergart could
pick up a cadaver doog could pick up a cent
five miles away.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's unbelievable. I know you're hesitant to take a position
on any of this, but you've got to have ruled
some things in and out in your in your own
personal mind.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And that's a good angle. I'm glad you brought that up.
So one of the things that we go through in
picking a case to do research on is we have
to eliminate number one, animal predation on the side of
rain ear up that high. No, there's not there's something
that's going to eat these guys up. Now, if you're
in the North Cascades National Park, yeah, maybe there's going
(07:17):
to be a grizzly there or a mountain lion that
could take you out. So when search and Rescue goes
in there, we read the reports and we see if
there's any evidence of animal predation. If there is, we
won't read the report. We're done reading it. You're done now.
The other thing is some people want to disappear, and
(07:38):
it's not against the law to disappear. If you don't
want to be found, so be it. So if that's
a choice, and they the Park Service or the search
and rescue teams believe it is, that's another one that
we'll just pass on. But in the grand scheme of
things and national parks are research and rescue people and
(08:01):
the private search and rescue teams that work away from
the park. They're well attuned to what they're looking for
and they'll write it down on their reports. So when
we start looking at a case, first thing I'm looking
for is how did the canines react when they were
put on the scent.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
It's dramatic, David. And it's all over the country, isn't it.
It's not just Washington.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Well, we put out a map of the United States
in southern Canada and there's sixty four clusters of missing
people throughout the United States. Now there's a swath down
the middle of the US north to south where on
that map there's hardly anybody missing, and in Missing full
(08:48):
One won the UFO connection. In the documentary we did.
I got a call one time from a guy who
worked for the government. He said, Dave, please look at this.
Look at the Ogalla aquifer and you're going to see
that the aquifer almost lays perfectly over your area. And
(09:13):
I did, and son of a gun, it does. And
one of the things that we work on when we're
working these missing persons cases is to keep an eye
on water, because in almost every one of these cases,
water plays into it somehow. And in the UFO connection,
there's a story in there in the movie about a
guy in with Wyoming. He was a farmer and he
(09:37):
was dying out there because he didn't have any water,
and he had a couple of people come out and
try to drill for him, and he couldn't find any
And he said that some UFOs flew over his land
and landed there. Two aliens walk over to him and
pointed to a place in the ground and told him
to drill there. Geez, this is a truth, that's right.
(10:00):
A lot of people won't believe this, but when I
came out with this story, a guy from Los Angeles
who was part of a film crew for the local
news went there, and he has footage when they were
there interviewing this guy of UFOs in the sky above
the property when they were there by a long story
(10:22):
short Georgia. The guy wants land, tries to get some
people to come out and drill, and they said, hey,
there's no water there, We've already drilled once. We're not
going to steal your money and drill again. He buys
an old army tank and he does this makeshift drill
and he drills on the spot and he hits a
huge gush room. Nobody can believe it. Now, here's the
(10:44):
thing that even the person who told me about the
Oglalla aquifer did not know. That guy hit an arm
of the aquifer going into Wyoming.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
So aquifers have these arms that come off of underground.
One of these arms from the aquifer extended into Wyoming,
you mean like extensions. Yeah, and this guy hit an
arm of the Ogolalla aquifer. And how strange is that?
Why would aliens want him to drill there and even
(11:19):
have access to the water for themselves?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Maybe I don't.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Know, but that swath of land down the middle of
the US is where the aquifer is at, and we
don't have any missing people from there, hardly any. I
mean there's there's a couple, but nothing really of.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The missing people, David. How many have UFO reports surrounding
these stories?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Almost none, okay, almost none. But we've done research on
databanks to see if there's a history in that area.
And in that in the movie The UFO Connection, we
did a big segment on the area around Cheyenne, Wyoming
and where this guy hit Discussure and there's a series
(12:05):
of hunters we highlighted in the movie that are missing
from this area north west of Cheyenne, and all of
the hunters in that area were all German.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
That's peculiar, I'd say, So do you put all this
into a computer base?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, we've worked it three ways to Sunday.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And are you getting any common denominators for five points? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
German another one part of that list. I didn't get
to the final ones. But there's a series of intellectuals, George,
that have disappeared, and what I mean by that physicians physicists.
In my books, I've written about six physicists who have disappeared,
who have never been found, and they're all German. I
(13:00):
could not find anyone a physicist who wasn't German that disappeared.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
What is the significance of that. It's bizarre.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I've had a lot of I'm not proposing this, it's true,
but I've had a lot of people write to me
and say, well, Dave, you know, there's a whole Antarctica
connection with the Germans, and they're supposedly still up there,
and maybe they're taking people to work this project. I
don't know. It's odd that they're all German.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That is weird.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And then there's a whole series of physicians who have
disappeared that's also.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Odd, like they may be needed someplace.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
And you know what, oddly, Georgia, your comment is interesting
because all of these physicians were described as the nicest,
most easy going, the type of people that could live
with anyone. And they were never described as a hard
nos difficult to get along with. No, it's just the opposite.
The nicest people.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Would you want to be plucked up and then just
taken somewhere so I never returned.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
You know, when you do these conferences in front of
a hundreds of people, you do them, you do them
all the time, and you come up with some weird
questions and things, and they said, wow, we've heard this
story about a guy who was taken and he was
given the option of going to live on a spaceship
forever forever or coming back to Earth, and this guy
chose to go on and otherwise they wipe your mind
(14:36):
cleaning and they put you back on Earth. Well, on
my YouTube channel about a month ago, I did a
series on people who disappeared and were later found with amnesia.
And the interesting part about this, this was predominantly in
the late thirties to early fifties, and then it almost
(14:56):
seemed to stop, and there were a series of people.
I did videos on ten of them, and they would
disappear in one part of the country and disappear and
be found hundreds and hundreds of miles away in another
part of the country, with no means of transportation from
point to point and.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
No recollection of how they got there.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Gid up.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
This is still, David, one of the weirdest stories I
have ever ever come across. Strangers.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Well, it causes me to stay up night
Speaker 1 (15:32):
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