Charles McCullar - A Case Re-examined — Myths vs. Facts - Locations Unknown

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness. Join
us as we dive into the deep end of the
unexplainable word and try to piece.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Together what happened.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
And you are listening to Locations Unknown.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Oo, what's up everybody?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
And welcome back to another episode of Locations Unknown. I'm
your co host, Joe You roding with me as always
as a guy who survived the September twenty third rapture
Mike Vandon boguard when that.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Was the thing?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Apparently yesterday was supposed to be a rapture. Oh I was,
according to TikTok videos, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
So busy I didn't even notice.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
No, right, hold on, wow, hold on, this could be bad, okay,
because we're still here.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, have you noticed people missing?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Nope? Mm a lot of people have been bugging me.
Oh no, only we're left. Oh no, and it's everybody
we know. Maybe we were raptured and we're in a.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
We'll cut all this out.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, no, we won't. I'm just trying to think. I'm like,
is this better? No? No, it's not just everybody we
know is stuck here too.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Wow. Anyway, anyway, Wow, that's a good way to start
this one off. Well, thank you once again to all
of the amazing listeners for tuning in. Just some announcements
before we get going. Some new Patreon shout outs to
Rachel Jones, Rebecca Ray, and Simon vox or vow thank
you so much for supporting the show.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
We also have.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Kind of an episode suggestion shout out, so thank you
to Stevie Smith for actually mentioning to us via email
that they after we recorded our original episode in April
of twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Don't you dare reveal what it is yet?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well, no, I'm going to reveal the Yeah, a whole
purpose of why we're redoing the episode.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, you can do that after we do the intro.
I moved it. Okay, all right, it's showbiz, Mike.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
We'll cut that out too. We're gonna cut out like
the first five minutes of the intro, so we're not
cutting out anything, all right. Well, well, after the intro
to pease Joe, I'll tell you why. There you go,
we're redoing the episode on Charles mccullor.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh, they just blew it again.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
We'll cut it, just cut it all. Let's just redo
it turn it off. No, but thank you to Stevie Smith.
If you want to call the show, leave a voicemail
or a text message. We actually just did a Patreon
episode with a bunch of new voicemails, so make sure
to sign up and check that out. You can call
two eight three nine six three.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
And if you're the person who I said I was
gonna call, I promise I'm going to it's literally on
a note I just didn't get.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, we are going to call you back. We are
very interested to hear about your raptors. And I was
joking with Joe when he when your voicemail came up.
I was hearing the Jurassic Park theme in my head,
So we'ren kind of raptor. Also, we have some great
podcasts on our network that you can check out, Off
the Trails, Who Runs This Park? And Crime Off the Grid.

(03:29):
You can also support us on other platforms, obviously Patreon,
YouTube memberships, premium subscriptions on Apple, and we're on all
the social media's, so just find us and if you can't,
if money's tight, just throw us alike. Anything else with you, Joe?

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Nope, all right, everybody, let's gear up and get out
to explore Locations Unknown. In twenty nineteen, Locations Unknown covered

(04:09):
a case of a young photographer and his plans to
photograph Crater Lake National Park in the winter. Many theories
were posed as to what causes disappearance, even attracting the
attention of network television show He Unexplained with William Shatner.
Join us this week as we reveal new findings related
to the disappearance of Charles mccullor.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
It's one of those days, man, it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
It's gonna be.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
I can't. I've got hot mouth. I'm just so not prepared,
like physically mentally now I'm not mentally either. So that's
all right, oh man.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
So once again, thank you to Stevie Smith. So, like
Joe said, we originally recorded this in early twenty nineteen,
it was only our sixth episode, so we were still
very green. We're actually going to play our original theories
at the end. From that episode, we sound so much
younger and more wild life and vibrant life and viber

(05:24):
But since we recorded that episode, the FBI actually released
two quite large packets of information regarding the disappearance of
Charles mccullor, and it's quite amazing. There's a lot of
details that have been filled in now that we didn't
have originally, and I feel like this case is one
of the poster childs of the telephone game. So there's

(05:49):
a lot of information on the Internet that has gone
around about this case that has turned out to be
pretty much just bogus.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Which is funny because people like to hit us on
things that sometimes it hit us some things that they're
wrong about. Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff, according
to Mike and I don't know all this information yet
that was way off, but it was the only available
information at the time when we did the show. So
we are here to formally update and post corrections to.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Our sixth episode. Yes, and I found the genesis of
some of it back to an old blog post that
referenced news articles that are no longer available. So who knows.
It could all be true, but we have official documents
from the FBI that was working in coordination with law
enforcement in the Park Service at the time. That's the

(06:36):
baseline for what's probably true about the case. Do you
think the chat Man will have us back on the
correct Well, like we talked about Joe's appearance on the show.
They kept it very high level. They cut out so much,
which actually, in hindsight, was good.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
It worked out in our favor. It worked out.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
I was explaining a lot of ways that he probably disappeared,
and like, we don't want any of that.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
It was more mysterious than what you said.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, that's probably that's why we're recovering this if you're curious.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
So we'll get into some of the location profile for
Crater Lake National Park. I was actually there this past
summer for the first time. It's absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, Charles
is dropped off near Stump Lake, which is twenty miles
from the entrance. Some other points of interest of this
story are the Bybee Creek drainage. Crater Lake is located
in Oregon. It is the deepest lake in the United

(07:26):
States at nineteen hundred and forty three feet deep, so
it's among the deepest in the world. Actually, the official
NPS handout lists greatest depth at nineteen hundred and forty
three feet and notes that it's the deepest in the
US among globally. As we said, it's filled only by
the sky. There's no stream flow in or out, so
all the water in Crater Lake has been basically put

(07:47):
there by snow or rain in melt, and there's no
rivers going in or out of it, so the only
way it loses water is evaporation in seepach to keep
its level imbalance. It was born from a volcano's collapse
seven thousand, seven hundred years ago. Crater Lake sits in
a caldera formed when twelve thousand foot Mount a Mazama
collapsed after a massive eruption. It has five hundred and

(08:10):
twenty eight inches or forty four feet of snow a
year as a long term average, so heavy snowfall is
one of the lake's main water sources. The water clarity
is extraordinary. Typical clarity is one hundred and twenty feet.
The record measured depth is one hundred and forty two
feet of clarity. So it is beautiful water. It's crazy.

(08:30):
That's incredibly clear water. And you can even see it
from the top of the crater. When you're there, it
just looks like a fake picture. It looks like you're
standing in front of a green screen. Whenwakee River clarity
is like two inches.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Lake Michigan's pretty clear.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Lake Michigan is pretty clear.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Ever since we got all those zebra muscles.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
That and Milwaukee built the deep tunnel and stepp dumping
out sewage in the lake.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
That helps too. That also helpsah, we get a lot
less cryptosporidium. Yes, so Wizard Island is a volcano. Inside
the volcano. So The cinder Cone rises seven hundred and
sixty seven feet above the lake with a three hundred
foot wide, ninety foot deep summit crater named the Witch's Cauldron.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
I'm sorry you might have caught yourself there, but you
slipped into Canadian really quick. I did the cinder Cone.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Con Oh yeah, it's from the one time I went
to BAMF. Don't you know.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I'm sorry. Joe's having a tough night.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
I'm having a really tough night. It's one of those nights.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
There are hydro thermal springs on the lake floor. Researchers
have mapped the hydrothermal events that leave iron deposits and
host of microbio communities. The Old Man of the Lake
has been bobbing here since at least nineteen or eighteen
ninety six. Is a thirty foot hemlock log that floats
completely upright and can drift all over the lake, enduring

(09:47):
oddity and enduring oddity documented for more than a century.
And we actually saw it. I got a picture of it.
We found it still there, just bobbing around, so strange. Yeah,
there's people that have taken pictures on top of it,
like golds cool. They've climbed on it and it just
bobs around. I feel like that's probably illegal.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Well it was way back.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Now it is. I think now you can't touch it.
They're like old black and white photos. Oh yeah, so
fish aren't native there, They were stocked a long time ago.
So you can fish with no license or limit, but
the gear is restricted. So non native rainbow trout and
cocaine remain from stocking. In eighteen eighty eight to nineteen
forty two, no fishing license is required in the park

(10:27):
and no size or possession limits apply. You can only
use artificial lures though, So a little bit about the climate.
Winter typically runs from October to June with deep, persistent
snow packs. Summers or July to August are warm, dry
and clear. Long term park records show forty to fifty
foot snow forty to fifty feet of snow per year

(10:47):
at HQ elevation, which is sixty four hundred feet, with
historic extremes of eight hundred and seventy nine inches in
the nineteen thirty two to thirty three season and two
hundred and fifty eight inches on the ground at once
in nineteen eighty three. So recent NPS figures note the
average has declined from fifty one feet in the thirties

(11:08):
to forty one to forty two feet in twenty twenty
and twenty twenty one. By early spring, ten to fifteen
feet of snow is commonly still on the ground. Many
roads and trails, including the Rim Drive in North Entrance,
remain closed until mid to late summer, depending on the meltout.
Typical annual range around the Rim is twenty two degrees

(11:29):
fahrenheit to eighty five degrees fahrenheit. Winters are very cold,
frequent teens to twenties. Summers are mild and warm. Local
granient matters so Bybee Creek lies below the Rim but
still in high elevations, so it's a snow dominant terrain.
Most moisture falls as winter snow in July August are
the warmest driest months, So a little bit about the

(11:51):
terrain Bybee Creek is a steep forested drainage on the
west side of the park below the Caldera Rim. The
Caldera Rim sits thousands of feet above the lake Crater
Lakes basin, is twelve hundred meters or thirty nine hundred
feet deep and five to six miles across, reflecting very
steep inner and outer slopes around the rim. Even the

(12:11):
park's only shore access, Cleetwood Cove Trail, drops seven hundred
feet in one point one miles, signaling how abrupt local
relief can be.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
It really is like just a giant.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Bowl of water. Yeah, it's pretty wild to behold in
streaming hiking there.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
No, we just drove through.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
We were going to try and hike down the Cleetwood
Cove trail because they're closing it for a few years.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Oh really, they're going to close it for like three
or four years, I.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Think, to let it like recover. Yeah, because it's the
only trail down the lake. So everyone that goes that
does hike, does the exact same one. But I figure
by the time I get back there, it'll be reopened again.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
So the landscape is built from Mount Mazama's collapse and
subsequent volcanism pumus, ash and lava form, crumbly erosion prone
walls and insized canyons on the west and north flanks.
The west side streams, which is Bybee and Copeland, cut
deep narrow ravines with down timber and uneven footing. Summer
trails in this sector lightning spring and byby creep cant

(13:07):
site traverse, multiple drainages and steep descents off trail travel
is demanding. In snow season, the rim and drainages accumulate
significant wind trap snow. The park warns of cornices and avalanches,
tree wells and other terrain traps all relevant to drainages
like beebe or bibe in winter roads close. The backcountry

(13:29):
is reached by skis snow shoes and is managed primarily
for wilderness values, with steep ascents, descents, and large vertical
exposures on many trails. So some of the types of
dangers besides the weather. There are black bear in the park,
elk mule deer, black tailed deer, mountain lion. There are coyote,
red or gray fox, bobcats, American martin fissures, weasels, striped skunks, raccoons,

(13:54):
and river otters. Bald eagles and Peregan falcons and ravens
are also present. If some of the hazard, Charles or
anyone hiking this area at that time would have encountered deep,
persistent snow and white outs. The rim and high country
terrain holds many feet of snow throughout winter storms and
wind loading and flat trail whiteouts make route finding hard,
especially off trail, so you can run into hypothermia, frostbite

(14:18):
and rapid heat loss. So cold wind, wet snow drive core.
Wet snow drives the core temperature down fast. Hypothermia is
the leading winter killer in parks. Snow bridged creeks and
hidden voys voids. They're crevasse like traps. In nineteen seventy
five conditions one hundred inches on the ground, rangers concluded
Byby Creek was likely completely snow covered. A traveler could

(14:40):
move on top of the creek and fall through into
a void. This was the park's most plausible mechanism for Charles.
Cornices and rim edges unstable overhanged slabs can break under
a person's weight, causing long falls and emphasize hazard. At
crater lakes called air rims, Let's basically like a snow
bluff essentially that's been built up over just like a cliff,

(15:02):
so you think you're on the cliff SiGe, but you're
actually on like a shelf of snow yep, and then
your body weight can.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Just go drop out off you go.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yes, steep rugged drainages and loose volcanic ground, so the
west side canyons like Byby Creek cut steep and insized
ravines in Mazama's volcanic deposits. Uneven footing down timber and
crumbly slopes increase slip and fall risks, especially under snow.
Navigation challenges and closures in winter many roads and trails

(15:31):
close travel is typically by skier snowshoe only. Getting off
known routes into drainages becomes committing and slow. Then, lastly
the remoteness which will delay the rescue. In limited colms,
Biby's west side backcountry is remote and rugged. Winter access
is slow for rescuers, increasing the consequences of any incident.

(15:51):
FBI records describe the site as a remote, rugged, mountainous area.
So some tips for hiking in this area safely at
that time of year. You want to check all the closes,
talk to rangers about the routes, recent incidents, and where
snow bridges are forming. Rim Drive in the north entrance
are usually closed. Access is typically by ski or snowshoe only.
That is like the biggest easiest thing you can do

(16:12):
is just talk to the people who work their day
in and day out.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, they know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Just ask questions, say hey, here's what I'm going what
should I look out for?

Speaker 3 (16:20):
And they'll be more than happy to give you the information.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Get the latest weather and wind hour by hour if
possible in this zone, wind direction controls where cornices and
drifts from our form. Assess avalanche hazard if you don't
have any training or gear, avoid slopes at greater than
thirty degrees and gullies. Pick conservative objects on the east
facing mornings, west facing afternoons. Pattern sun and wind attempts

(16:47):
change surface stability through the day. You want to prefer
ridge lines and benches over drainages. Avoid creek bottoms. That's
where you're going to get your hidden voids under the snow.
Stay well back from rim edge or cornices, give them
multiple body lengths.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Probe if uncertain.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
You want to use handrails and carry a map and
compass and GPS don't rely on a single device.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
And that just means use ridgelines or obvious landmarks. Yes,
as you're navigating.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Mark key decisions, so tree lines, ridge junctions on your
map or GPS. Winter train can make summer trails disappear.
Party size two to six is ideal. Assign a lead
and a sweep, keep visual contact and stop at every
junction so you're not losing sight of anybody. And you
want to leave a trip plan, so en sure somebody
knows where you're going, leave your itinerary. Carry two way

(17:35):
comms if you can be on the phone, so satellite
messenger on a PLB. It's a personal locator beacon or
preload emergency texts that you can select quickly. Skis or
snow issues matched to snow depth and polls with large baskets.
Micro Spikes are not enough.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Here, You'll just go right through.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Layering, vapor barrier, fast dry base, insulating, mid reel shell,
warm hat, neck gator, two pairs of gloves, and myths
foot system. You want to be wearing something like a waterproof,
breathable boot, gators and spare socks and a dry bag.
The key is you want to stay dry. You get wet,
you're just gonna get hypothermia. An insulation stop kit, so

(18:12):
a balat parka sit pad, emergency bivvy or space blanket.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Put it on before your cold.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Navigation lighting never doesn't see We talked about this map, compass,
GPS phone plus a power bank, a headlamp with fresh batteries,
and always bring an extra pair just in case. Lots
of hydration. People don't think this way. When you're out
in the cold, you still sweat, you still lose moisture.
You want to make sure you're getting water in your body.
And this is the time too. It doesn't matter if

(18:38):
your water's warm, it will help warm your body. Emergency
first aid, all that stuff, small parachord, knife, fire starters,
whistle you're probably gonna want like an avalanche shovel or
a probe and you want to know how to use them. Yeah,
and just spread out so when you're traversing loaded snops
or snowbridges to reduce the loading risk.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Don't have the whole.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Group in a big giant like cluster together. Spread out,
and you want to pace your temperature so event early
to avoid sweat and ad layers before stops to prevent chill.
So again, if you're moving, maybe you take him off
when you're about to stop, put him back on. Yeah,
you want to watch for signs of hypothermia and frostbite. Again,
we're talking about snowbridges, ravines and creeks. You just don't

(19:21):
trust flat white surfaces across a drainage favor of the
high ground and safe bridges and the rest of it's
kind of a repeat. So I'll get right to tell
us more about Charles.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, so we learned a lot of new information about
Charles as a person from the FBI documents. So the name.
His name is obviously Charles mccullor. Born July twentieth of
nineteen fifty five. He went He was reported missing February
first of nineteen seventy five. He was a male, age nineteen.

(19:55):
He was six foot three, one hundred and fifty pounds.
He had brown, shoulder length, curly hair. He was clean shaven.
He had blue eyes. He also had a childhood head
neck injury that had a small hair loss patch near
base of his skull and it was about one inch.
So interesting to know one of the biggest discrepancies that

(20:20):
we had from the original episode to the FBI documents
was we had said, based on our original research that
he was really unprepared to be out in this environment,
but it turns out he wasn't. He had all the
winter year you would need, and we haven't actually a
pretty good itemized list of the gear he had. So

(20:41):
we had a blue down filled jacket with hood, faded
blue jeans, white turtleneck with red brown circular yoke, hiking
boots with orange snow shields, possible green white striped ski cap.
He had an orange everest frame pack. He had the
north Face extra long dark blue down bag. He had

(21:02):
some additional hiker boots. He had all kinds of stuff.
He had a homemade pocket knife, army water bladder, boy
scout mess kit, multiple thirty five millimeter film cassettes and
uncash travelers checks, and obviously his Volkswagen key. Could this
have factored into his disappearance? Well, the conditions he was

(21:23):
facing at the time, I think even the most prepared
person probably would have had trouble in these conditions. So
we're talking severe weather. The snow depth at the time
was one hundred inches and that would be really tough
to navigate. In so even with all of the gear
that he had, it was still a very tough environment.

(21:45):
Personality wise, he was known as a responsible, reliable person.
He kept routine contact with his family. He left an
itinerary and numbers. He was an aspiring photographer and he
was on a cross country trip to get some really
cool pictures. As far as medical issues, there were none
public listed and there were none that the FBI document

(22:07):
stated experience in the wilderness, so he carried substantial cold
weather gear with him on this trip, and his family
noted that he had the knowledge to improvise snowshoes and
manage winter conditions. So I believe in our original episode
we said that he was not prepared, not very experienced,

(22:27):
but that's really not the case based on these FBI documents,
So very interesting and experience in this actual location. The
FBI documents didn't actually specify if he had been here
before or not, but the a lot of secondary accounts,
so that would be news reports, did imply this was
his first time at Crater Lake in the winter. So

(22:51):
moving right into timeline, and everything starts on January eighth
of nineteen seventy five, so this was be when he
departs from Virginia. Like I said, he was nineteen year
old aspiring photographer. He leaves Virginia on a long western trip.
He gives his family a written itinerary and contact numbers

(23:14):
before departing.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
So so far he's basically doing everything right.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah he I mean, by all accounts, he's doing this correctly.
He's leaving an itinerary, he's leaving contact numbers. So yeah,
he's doing everything right. He has all the correct gear.
It's now January sixteenth to twenty two, and for those
of you just listening, Joe will have the FBI documents
up on the screen and kind of it's hard to

(23:40):
read through him.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
I scoured through them for a while, all thirty seven pages.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, it's literally someone scanned in old documents, probably in
an FBI filing cabinet somewhere. It's yeah, and you're reading
the FOYA like, that's not part of it. If you
go down more, yeah, now you're getting.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Into the actual Yeah, there it is.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
That's what this is one of them, and they still
have a lot of retacted names and things like that,
but yeah, these are the original documents that are scanned
in this. Actually they actually put some news clippings into
this document. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
It's tough to read in spots it's just faded. And
they've got a map of kind of where.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
Why I can see it's on the west side of
the crater.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, all right. So it's now January sixteenth to the
twenty second of nineteen seventy five, so this is when
he checks in from Yuma, Arizona. He would telephone home
from you on the sixteenth and again on the twenty second.
It's now January twenty seventh of nineteen seventy five, so
he is now in Eugene, Oregon, Oregon.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Gotta say it right, You've got to say the right
or very upset.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Not Oregon, organ So he calls Eugenie and he mentions
possibly returning to Yuma for a rodeo before heading to Denver.
It's now you is there sound I'm hearing Nope?

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Oh maybe on the side of your year, but not
none in here.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Interesting. Yeah, I'll cut that. You're losing your mind. I
thought I heard people talking.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Nope, you're going insane.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Okay. January twenty ninth of nineteen seventy five, so this
would be the last time he was seen in Eugene
and he had all the intentions to hitchhike to Crater Lake,
so he left in a friend's apartment and he planned
a bus or hitch a ride to Creater Lake National
Park for a quick winter photo run and planned to

(25:35):
be backed by January thirty first. So still January twenty ninth,
it's about three fifty one pm to six thirty pm,
and records note that he got off a Greyhound bus
at Roseberg around three fifty one PM. A witness later
places a young man matching his description forty seven miles

(25:56):
east of Roseberg around six thirty pm, and this suggests
that he likely caught a ride up Oregon one thirty eight.
And later the FBI summarized a lot of the different
tips they got in and they came to the conclusion
that they believe he was hitchhiking towards Crater Lake based
on the different sightings of him, so they corroborated these statements.

(26:21):
It's now January thirtieth of nineteen seventy five. In the morning,
a lagger reported giving a young man fitting his description
a lift to within twenty miles of the Crater Lake
entrance road. So this is Stump Lake in kind of
the North Entrance corridor, and this is corroborated by family

(26:42):
documents that state the lagger dropped him off at Stump
Lake and it was a clear day. Snow depths between
Stump Lake and Crater Lake ranged from twenty four to
ninety inches, so a lot of snow, and it's even
It's a clear day and so very interesting. U thirty
first of nineteen seventy five, So we have a family

(27:03):
report that about four inches of new snow fell later
that day, and this will be the day that Charles
was supposed to start heading back to Roseberg. So obviously
he didn't. It's now February first of nineteen seventy five.
So when Charles didn't make his planned return on January
thirty first, his friends file a missing persons report the

(27:27):
Oregon State Police or OSP, which we'll just call it
that going forward, alert the media and post photos in
the bus stations south of Eugene. And it's now February
tenth to the eleventh. This would be when the family
is notified of the disappearance. So they were officially notified
on the tenth and his father arrived in the Klamath

(27:49):
Falls area on the on February eleventh to help coordinate
the search. So in early February of nineteen seventy five,
this is when the searches for him kicked off. Crater
Lake officials fly the lake and access roads. OSP flies
the Roseberg Diamond Lake Quarter, Chuck's father flies patterns and

(28:10):
canvases with photos. Sadly, no results. Later, family correspondence document
early investigative gaps, so just nothing is found. And unfortunately
they couldn't get evidence from the Greyhound because apparently the
records were destroyed after only ten days. The copies of
his travel on the Greyhound were gone by the time

(28:32):
officials were looking for him. It's now late winter to
spring nineteen seventy five. OSP is compiling witness calls along
Oregon one thirty eight, including what I mentioned about the logger,
and tips keep coming in, but there's no positive ID
and no gear surface, so they're kind of hitting a

(28:52):
dead wall and spring of nineteen seventy five. Throughout winter
and summer of nineteen seventy five, there were a lot
of intensive searches that really didn't bring in any results.
One of the FBI memos recorded one hundred inches of
snow in the park around the time of his disappearance.
Cascade Rescue and Crater Lake National Park teams conduct repeated

(29:13):
sweeps of snowmobile, ski, aircraft, and on foot, but they
didn't find any sign of Charles or his equipment, and
OSP continues to mail out circulars to eighty six dime
in Lake Lodge registrants, but there were no leads. So
they conducted a pretty massive search. But with that much

(29:33):
snow on the ground, you're not gonna find much. The
family would go on to describe in their correspondence of
multi season searches aircraft, infred snowmobiles, skiers, large ground teams,
but nothing was found, and they kept arguing that exposure
alone was not just the sole cause of his disappearance,

(29:55):
just because of the gear and skills he had. So
that was the family throughout this whole ordeal, kept saying
that it wasn't just exposure that got him, there was
something else going on. It's July nineteen seventy five now,
so after three plus weeks of personal searching and reviewing
reports and maps, the family shifts from a weather exposure

(30:16):
hypothesis to foul play. Is likelier, and like I said,
this was given the gearless and the multi season negative
searches that were conducted, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Excited to hear old theories. I'm like going back in
my head. I recall one about like logging roads and stuff.
I won't get into it yet, but yeah, no, I'm
remembering some of it.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, it was a long time ago. It was. It
was a long time ago. So it's March to June
of nineteen seventy six now, so the family is obviously
getting more and more frustrated that law enforcement is still
treating this as just a basic exposure, lost and exposure case,
so they petition Senator Harry Bird, Senator William Scott, and

(31:00):
Unative Joseph Fisher. FBI Director Clarence Kelly explains the Bureau
has no statutory authority for general missing person cases absent
of federal crime. You would need kidnapping extortion, and they're
trying to help find Charles at this point, but once
full identifiers arrive, the FBI place is a missing person's

(31:22):
notice in its identification division, so they are getting involved
a little bit with this. It's now now there's some
conflicting information with the when the backpack was reportedly turned
into Park headquarters. News reports originally stated it was October

(31:42):
thirteenth of nineteen seventy six. So two hikers often described
as Texans on the PCT take a wrong spur towards
Spegnum Bog they find a ripped and torn backpack, So
this is conflicting. A lot of articles on the internet
went with this October thirteenth, nineteen seventy six date for

(32:03):
the backpack, but the FBI records specifically state October eighteenth
or nineteenth of nineteen seventy six, so not a huge discrepancy,
but still slightly off October fourteenth of nineteen seventy six.
So during HQ inventory, rangers who were commonly named in
news articles Larry Smith and Mary and Jack find a

(32:25):
Volkswagen key in the pack and match it to a
xerox key in the mccullor file. A horse patrol led
by Mary and Jack and Dave Lange rides to the
site at one thirty PM. A radio call reports remains
down a steep bank in the Biby Creek drainage, which
is about four miles from Lightning Springs. Just a side

(32:45):
note here, none of these specifics ever appeared in the
FBI documents, so all of that information comes from secondary
news sources, which is interesting. So it's now October eighteen,
of nineteen seventy six. Chief park ranger notifies that hikers
found a badly weathered camp found badly weather camping gear

(33:08):
and keys near byby creek, and like I said, one
of the keys matches an item Charles carried, and rangers
began searching for remains at this point, and this is
the like I said. The FBI states that this happened
on the eighteenth. Some news articles state that it happened
on the thirteenth. Again, not a big discrepancy, but just

(33:29):
I'm going to lean towards the eighteenth being the correct
date since that came from the original law enforcement documents,
and an FBI memologues that his remains or what they
call body, was discovered two to three hundred yards from
the crest of the hill near byby creek within Crater
Lake National Park. Rangers and investigators recover camping gear, a skull,

(33:50):
a mandible, and other bones on October nineteenth of nineteen
seventy six. We're now getting pathologist reports, so embedded clippings
in one of the FBI documents quotes doctor George Nicholson,
a Klamath County pathologist, who said no skull or fracture trauma,

(34:10):
and the dental comparisons to charts is certain. So basically
what he's saying is they had enough, you know, they
had teeth that they could compare to Charles's dental records,
which is how they were able to identify the remains
as being his. Chief ranger Dan Shaley says the area
is seldom visited in winter, typically only by cross country

(34:32):
skis or snowshoes, and the logical assumption is exposure. You know,
it's a five or six feet of snow time at
the time of the disappearance, and that without skis or
snowshoes it would not be possible to get there. And
we do have confirmation from one of the news clippings
in the FBI document that rangers David Lange and Mary

(34:53):
and Jack were the two that found the body. And
this actually lines up with a lot of the news
articles that I had read. Very interesting. We have a
lot of theories here from the FBI in the files,
and I'm just reading through here. I don't want to
give anything away, But there's a lot of the telephone

(35:13):
game going on with this case, especially with dates so
between nineteen seventy six and nineteen seventy seven, the FBI
reiterates to congressional offices and the family that they have
no federal jurisdiction absent of a crime, and the administrative
MP notice remains in place, and the bureau does stay
open for new leads. They keep reiterating that they don't

(35:36):
believe there was any indication of foul play. And you
notice how in the original.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
It seems like they're getting annoyed at being yeah implicated.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, I mean there I pulled up right here.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Please be advised, there's no new evidence regarding the death
of redacted. In fact, as you know, there has never
been a shred of evidence to indicate faul play was involved.
If there was, let me assure you that this office
would spare no efforts to identify the personal response.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, the family doesn't want to believe that it was
just exposure. They want they think something more serious happened,
And the FBI is adamant. And I assume this is
coming from the FBI, Yeah, yeah, that there was no crime.
They can't investigate it further without a crime, and there's
no indication that it was foul play.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
So, however, is pointed out in previous correspondence to you,
based on evidence, excuse me, based on advice of officials
of Crater Lake National Park, it appears that redacted simply
became lost and died from exposure to the elements. Also,
it seems completely illogical to us that had someone abducted
your son, he would have been taking to such an

(36:42):
extremely remote spot since his abductor would have also faced
severe snow conditions. You will also refer to the files
in this case as being closed. While it may seem
to be a matter of semantics, let me assure you
that neither our files nor our minds are closed in
this matter. We simply have not seen any facts to
warrant an investigation. However, if at any time anything comes

(37:03):
to our attention to indicate that an investigation is warranted,
then it will be vigorously pursued. And they go on
and on. It was Special Agent in charge Arthur G.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Barger.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, so we had a local pathologist in late October
nineteen seventy six tell the FBI that the teeth and
skull and mandible match mcculury stental chart perfectly, and he
saw no skull damage other than environmental, and no signs
suggesting foul play. So you have a local pathologist backing
up what the FBI is telling people, and we have

(37:36):
an FBI airtel messages that summarize the rangers most plausibly
written theory. Chuck was lost in deep snow, traveling from
the north entrance towards HQ Byby Creek was snowbridged. He
fell into a crevass void and perished when the snow
melting animal activity scattered remains. An osp crime lab investigator

(37:57):
at the scene found decomposing hair clothing in small bones,
concluding exposure with no indication of foul play. All right,
everyone's probably thinking sweet, case closed, all right, Joe, let's
wrap the episode up. Yeah, we did, we did, But
that's not how this would be told throughout the years

(38:18):
after the case. We have all of these different documents
that Joe's been showing from the FBI that explicitly state
that it's not foul play. The family continues nineteen seventy seven,
nineteen seventy eight, there's correspondence showing that family letters argue
that searchers, searches, equipment, and weather windows make exposure unlikely,

(38:40):
and they request federal help and criticize osp follow through.
And we do know that also they checked on August
thirtieth of nineteen seventy eight, So through a liaison with
Bank of America, the FBI confirmed the three listed travelers
checks were never presented and were filed under deceased claims.
So they're still following several years later, still following up

(39:03):
on the case. And before we play our original theories,
Joe and I leaned heavy into conspiracies at the original episode. Yes,
we did, and I just wanted to cover After we
looked through the FBI documents, there was some kind of
glaring discrepancies that we had in our original episode, which
we had researched from other articles at the time, mainly

(39:28):
read it.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
No, I'm just kidding, yeh.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
It well, And the funny thing is Reddit is usually
also from the articles. People will post the articles in there.
So we originally said he was not prepared for winter survival,
but the FBI file repeatedly documented substantial cold weather gear,
downrated bags for very low tempts, down jacket, hood plastic

(39:52):
sheeting matches, and that he had knowledge to improvise snowshoes,
totally contradicting what we had said, what a lot of
articles had said. And another thing that a lot of
articles at the time and we got wrong was we
implied the FBI was much more involved in the investigation

(40:12):
than they actually were.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, it seems like they kind of came in, got
word from the park.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
We're like, all right, Yeah, we originally had said that
the FBI evidence recovery team collected bones at the scene,
and the FBI records state that park rangers searched the
area and they were the ones that located the remains
and collected them. The FBI actually attributes the initial on

(40:36):
site recovery to park rangers, not an FBI evidence team.
So again that's pretty big fact of a case that
through our initial research we got wrong, and a lot
of these news articles and it just shows you how
one article can state something and then everyone just parrots that,

(40:57):
you know, throughout the decades. And now this is the
really big one that we leaned on heavy in our theories.
It's the scene narrative and paradoxical undressing. So a number
of articles and forums claimed the scene included empty jens,
unzipped and unsnapped, with shin bones in the legs and

(41:20):
footbones in the socks, and missing boots, shirts coat, and
none of these details are anywhere in the FBI documents.
So you would think that if searchers came up to
the scene and found shins sticking out of pant legs

(41:40):
like someone's broken off shins, and even in our original
episode we said that there was blood on the tips
of the broken shin bones, you would think that if
you came up to that scene and you saw all
of this, it would make its way into the FBI documents. Yeah,
you think so, You would think that's I mean, we
base our entire theory of you know, we were leaning

(42:02):
towards the conspiracy route because that just was such a
crazy scene to come across. And versions of this story
asserting empty plant, empty pants, and missing boots came from
later interviews and tertiary write ups. There was actually a
detailed blog that pushed back that calls the pants with

(42:23):
shinboones story unconfirmed and speculative. And I did find the
genesis at least of more modern articles of where this
all came from I won't list names, but it came
from a blog post back in twenty thirteen that referenced
a book on search and rescue in national parks from

(42:43):
two thousand and five. And then there was a two
thousand and seven online news article and a nineteen seventy
six newspaper article that are no longer available. So none
of this information was in the FBI documents. I don't
know if you have the second FBI document that I
had found pulled up.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
I think, well, which the long one or the shorter one.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
One is like version three? And then I don't know
it either way. They're both two FBI documents that have.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
A different versions three. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, so that's one of them, and then the other
one has the news clipping in it. Yes, but yeah,
the one Joe's looking at thirty some pages long.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, it even has letters written to and from senators
and congressmen.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, one of them.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
It's funny because, well not necessarily funny, but they're talking
about how the Jimmy Hoffa case was going off at
the same time. Oh yeah, so here I'll read this one,
dear mister Fisher. I think this is to Senator byrd
I'll skip some of the original part, but he said
when Charles was initially reported as a missing person to
all law enforcement agencies and Eugene, Oregon on the first
of February nineteen seventy five, the Oregon State Police, assisted

(43:52):
by other agencies and groups, initiated an investigation which to
date has revealed no information which would indicate what has
happened and Charles. The Federal Bureau of Investigation on two
occasions has indicated that it has no authority to enter
cases of missing persons. You can imagine my surprise. While
an Oregon searching for clues redacted, I picked up a

(44:13):
newspaper and read that the FBI, as well as other
federal agencies were engaged in the search for a missing person,
James Hoffa. My first reaction to the situation was a
feeling of indignation. However, after returning home to Virginia and
giving much thought to the situation, the indignation turned a
determination when I decided that the mccullor family would pursue

(44:34):
all avenues available to receive the same magnitude of federal
assistance as was afforded the Haffa family. Realizing, of course,
that I do not have the knowledge of federal statutes
or intra workings of the federal government. I decided to
ask our elected officials to help in the serious matter.
So you've the family pissed off that they're all looking
for Jimmy Hoffa, which was infinitely more famous of a

(44:56):
missing persons than this one, and they were happening at
the exact same time.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
And you understand why that was tied up with the mob.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Absolutely Obviously they didn't know that at the time. No,
I just like, the guy isn't going after this missing person?
Why not our son?

Speaker 2 (45:09):
And maybe the FBI probably knew that, and I'm sure
they did. That's why they were investigating Jimmy Hoffa because
it was tied to the mob and obviously crime, lots
of crimes around that. But yeah, it's very interesting reading.
It's I love reading documents like this, kind of getting
it behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Well, it's like, what was I've always heard of Jimmy Hoffa. Yeah,
and it's just like, oh, this is happening at the
same time.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
I know.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
And it's kind of like Squeaky Wheel gets the grease.
It's like everyone's attentions that way.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, a lot of these cases. We never see these documents. Yeah, absolutely,
it's it's fascinating to finally get a glimpse behind the
curtain on the inner workings of what was going on,
and you get to read the frustrations of the family.
Is no one's finding anything, and they think it's file playing.
Everyone thinks it's exposure, And.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
All right, do we want to do our theories from
back in the day.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, so everyone listening, we're gonna play. I don't it's
seven minutes. I don't know. We'll play the whole thing.
But this was our it was even longer. Our theorious
in the first episode went for twenty two minutes, so
I tried to trim it down to just the good stuff,
all right, but this was from is that a quote?

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Air quotes good stuff? Yeah, because it's so old.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
April of twenty nineteen, and yeah, take it away, Joe
to move into official theories and then kind of our theory.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
So, yeah, we have law enforcements. That's death by natural causes,
which more and more I think is just BS. I don't,
I don't. I don't think natural causes here. I think
that situation attributed to it. But there's something else going on.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, some of the media theories we already touched on.
One of them was the snowmobile path. I, like I
said earlier, I don't think that's a plausible explanation either.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, and snowmobiles don't pat the snow down enough to
be you know, you're not walking like it's a sidewalk.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
It's still deep snow. No, and Mari Marian knows heer
and you know, if he says that that part the
park is off limits to snowbiles and he's never really
seen him back in there, I really don't think that's
gonna be a plausible explanation, especially if it's one hundred
and five inches of new snow. Yeah, I mean, it's
not like it's gonna snow that much, and then the

(47:14):
snowbiles are gonna be out the next second, you know,
tooling through the park.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, if there's that much snow, they're not hankering to
get out. They can be out there all the time.
You think about like Wisconsin, everyone just chopping at the
bit for a good snowfall and then it's just overcrowded.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
So one of the urban legend theories that some of
the locals have now this one's interesting. I'll read it through.
So there's a potential explanation that a weirdo backwoodsman attacked
Charles in the Crater Lake National Park area and stole
his Cameron cash, then in the dead of winter, dragged

(47:51):
his body into this remote part of Crater Lake, took
his shirt and boots off, and set him up on
a log and left him, reasoning that the animals would
destroy the evidence by spring. The question remains, you know,
twelve miles through two point six meters of fresh snow.
Someone's gonna drag somebody that far.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, Like I believe the first part of that, which
seems to be a report coming from you know, a
lady in a muomo, some weirdo backwoodsman. So I actually
kind of like this theory though the first part.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
The second part, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
They drag the body there now, because then where's the
rest of the body.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
But I could see with him missing his things, you
get some like they said, backwoods off the beaten path,
hermit yep, that gets into a confrontation with Charles, or
sees them and sees the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And I think, if you want to go the conspiracy
rout a little bit. I think this ties into so
let's back the train up here. So, like we mentioned earlier,
the National Park Service law I'm doing air quotes his
case file. So what if at this time in Crater
Lake National Park there is some crazy guy that's living

(49:10):
out in the woods, almost like a serial killer type,
that's killing hikers. The National Park Service maybe they don't
know who's doing it, but they kind of getting a
you know, they kind of know something like this is happening,
and they don't want the publicity. They're aware of the killers.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Now, yeah, it's still in the earlier times where there's
no social media. There's no social media, so they can
kind of keep it under wraps to if they're worried
about people not coming to the park, if they think
there's a serial killer there.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Yeah, and I mean, now that's a crazy theory. It's
who knows, and we don't know when the case at
least you said.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
It was a crazy Yeah, exactly, National Park Service covering
up a serial killer hidden Crater Lake.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Oh you're just like kicking camera. That's all right, all right,
check it out. I'm all good. Just like a little earthquake,
all right, let's keep going a little bit. Let me
get back in there.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Case files went missing. They could have they could have
disposed of the case files last year or you know,
back in nineteen seventy six we destruction of evidence the
details of when those case files went missing. But it's
just odd that the local law enforcement deemed the death
binatural causes and then the park Service coincidentally loses the

(50:25):
case file. And then when you factor in all of
the strange circumstances of the scene where his remains were found,
you know, I could see easily see something weird going
out of the park some you know, somebody out there
killing people. And the park Service doesn't want that kind
of attention. They don't want to, you know, lose the attendants.
They don't want the headache of knowing there's a killer

(50:48):
out in the woods. So it's easier just to you know,
make it go away.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah, and it's like, now I want to do a
whole show on this bb Bokowski, Right, I was, I know,
I'm looking ahead it just kind of real briefly to
see if there's any weird things around there. And yeah,
there's a couple there's a couple of reports of like
in nineteen seventy a human skull was found near Crater
Lake National Park.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Well, you know, in Crater Lake does have a history
of strange disappearances. I know, the Missing four one one
books cover a lot of different disappearances in Crater Lake,
and they a lot of them have the same things
going on, like strange storms and you know, things like that.

(51:34):
So it you know, if you tend to lean more
on the parent armal or the conspiracy theory stuff, there
is ample fodder for you at Crater Lake. Yeah, but
I I think I think that's one of the main
explanations for me at least, I think at least I

(51:57):
don't think death by animal is going to happen at
that time the winter. I mean, bears hibernate, They're not
going to be out in the park in January. A
lynx isn't going to kill you. There's no there's no
other predators in the park.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
You're getting into like a serial killer, but that's like
a sick, sick type of individual. Maybe like tortured him
or something like broke his leg and like had him
stand out in the snow or so.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
I don't know, it'd be.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Great to get keep going from the pathologist to see
if they analyzed that broken leg bone to see if
they could tell if it was did he break it
from you know, falling off something or somebody you hit him?

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yeah, just there's twenty minutes of that.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Oh, I can't believe people still listen to our show.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Okay, in our own defense, we were going off the
assumption that, like again, we thought that they were broken
leg bones sticking out of pants just at the scene
it is.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
I mean, that's why the Unexplained was interested in the case. Yeah,
wild case with the information that was available.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
At the time.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, and now that information could still be true. But
it's kind of suspicious that the official FBI documents that
Joe's been showing everyone here makes no mention of They
mentioned that there's no signs of foul play and the
remains other than just natural weathering. I would say that

(53:23):
if they found two broken tibias sticking out of pant
legs with blood on the tips of them.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Yeah, that would be worth mentioning.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Would be worth mentioning. And I don't know why how
that story really. I'm assuming somebody interviewed somebody that saw
that or claimed they saw it. How does something like
that just get fabricated?

Speaker 1 (53:46):
That was my lady to Moomoo comment, because you always
have that person when the news goes out and they
just talk to like the dumbest individual that's on the scene.
They just is just happy to be on TV and
making crap up. That's like what I attributed it to.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
I can go. I want to go back, just briefly
here and look at our original show notes and try
to get an understanding of where that original scene came from,
because I want to say that it was the Rangers
allegedly that saw that. And let's see here skimming through

(54:24):
it timeline.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
I feel like I remember so, yeah, it's right here,
So I feel like I remember also them saying he
wasn't equipped for the weather. Yeah, And in the f
BA report it said he had excellent equipment downfield, sleeping bays, comfortable,
had excellent knowledge of hiking and camping and hot and
cold weather, was an avid hire camper and scire. I
vaguely remember that, Like in my head, the visual I

(54:48):
had was he took this van, yeah, out to this road.
They just dropped him off and he had just his
camera with him. Yeah, and it was like, what the
heck was this guy doing? And apparently he.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
He was very well equipped and knew what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah, and like, here is some of the old notes
we had when we researched this, so we said, now
this is from the original show. While the rangers were
searching the area, they came across a pair of pants
in a small canyon, which Marian described as if someone
were standing straight up and melted straight down into their pants.
Another odd thing about the scene was that the belt
buckle and pants snap were undone. Reaching down into the pants,

(55:26):
he found one broken tibia or aphibula in the right
leg of the pants. It was broken in the middle
and had blood on each end. There were no other
bones in the pants. In the area, they also found
elastic from the underwear and a belt in relatively good
condition Under the pants. They also found socks with small
bones inside, but no boots, even though he would have

(55:47):
been wearing boots at the time. About five feet away
from the pants, on the other side of the fallen tree,
Marian found a skull upside down and a lower jawbone.
The area also had scattered was scattered with very small
bone fragments.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah, I'm skimming through the documents that are explaining like everything,
and I haven't seen anything to indicate.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Any of that.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
It's searchable, so I actually scanned it in and made
it searchable so you can search for text in it
and search for like I search for Tibia Fhibi the blood. Yeah.
Our old notes state that one of the rangers, Marion,
supposedly described the scene that way. So whether that's true

(56:27):
or not, it never made it into the FBI document Yeah,
just as.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Park rangers search the area byby Creek and located the
camping gear, a human skull, a lower job own, and
several other bones.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, just several other bones. Yeah. I would think that
the scene that Marian described in our original notes would
have been in the FBI documents because that's strange enough
that it would be noted. And it never was in
the documents. Yeah, And we have other people online that
have tested it and said it's kind of bs. So

(57:03):
we really don't know the genesis of where that came from.
It's kind of lore, you know. It's this is an
old enough case that we're.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Here to dispel all of it. That's our job.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
It's an old enough case where people are relying off
of information before these FBI documents really released. People are
relying off It's the telephone game. Yep. We're relying off
of blogs that relied off of blogs that relied off
of blogs that sourced news articles that are no longer available.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Somebody heard something and then yeah, they so tell somebody else,
and then they tell somebody else and then boom.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
So real quick, I know we're probably running along on
this episode. We're right there, so we'll get into new theories.
I'll go through the new theories real quickly. Here the
most supported theory, and I agree with this after reading
the FBI documents. So it's the exposure in deep winter
after a snowbridge crevassfall. So the idea states Charles tried

(58:01):
the traverse towards park headquarters in very deep snow across
byby creek on a snowbridge, fell into a crevass or void,
died of exposure. Animals later scattered remains after the thaw.
This is directly supported by an FBI memo that records
the ranger's most plausible theory, Like I said, was lost
in snow from the north entrance towards the headquarter Biby

(58:23):
Creek covered with snow. He fell in at to a
crevice where he perished. Animals likely consumed the remains after
the melt. The scene assessment the OSP crime lab exama
are found decomposing hair, clothing, and small bones at the
spot of and opine death from exposure with no indication
of foul play. We have a medical statement from the

(58:45):
Klamath County pathologist, doctor George Nicholson, who matched dental records.
There was no skull fracture or trauma and no indication
of foul plan any of the remains. We have the
winter access context, so Chief Ranger Dan Shalley told press
their five to six feet of snow on the ground
at the time of his disappearance, and without skeezer snowshoes

(59:06):
it would be it would not be possible to get
into the area. And he called exposure the logical assumption. Now,
if we were read that FBI document and they had
the same scene in there with the melting pants and stuff, Okay,
probably exposure, but maybe something weirder, But I think it's
what they said. He fell into one of those voids

(59:26):
or crevasses trying to traverse a Snowbridge. Yeah, some less
likely theories, homicide, foul play. The family is adamant that's
what happened. He was harmed by someone in the park.
The family pushed this theory, though there was disagreement with
the state. Everyone in law forcement said this was natural causes,
you know, exposure, and there was no evidence of foul play.

(59:49):
And the biggest thing was now that we have that
we didn't have before is really FBI documents from pathologists
showing that they analyzed the remains and didn't find any
other and so a fout plays. So I think you
can rule that out. The paradoxical undressing, empty pants, missing
boots lower the theory goes Charles removed clothing. It's a

(01:00:10):
known hypothermia behavior, leaving empty genes with lower leg bones
in them and the boots missing. This appeared numerous times
in news articles and blogs. They repeated this, but some
say a ranger used the phrase melting man. This contradicts
the FBI files. The FBI packets do not contain these details,

(01:00:32):
and the medical scene write ups and press focus on
exposure and lack of trauma, not paradoxical undressing and not
and do not inventory the dramatic clothing arrangement quoted online,
and a lot of online researchers have gone on to
explicitly label the empty pants narrative is unverified and made up.
And then you have just other misadventure variants, falls, avalanche,

(01:00:56):
terrain accident, and then a voluntary disappearance.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
But I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I think he just succumbed to the elements. It's because
it was just more rough out there than he intended. Yeah,
I think that's like the simple Occham's razor version of
what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah, and I think not a weirdo yeah in the woods,
weirdo in the woods, or melted into the planet. Yeah,
it very It would be very interesting to know if
the Unexplained would have still covered this case with the
new information we have.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Maybe maybe, I mean they cut out everything.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Yeah, that's why if you watch a show, it doesn't
seem like I'm wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yeah, but they really focus.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
On like lore and the unexplained part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
So yeah, no, and it makes you really wonder about
a lot of the other cases. If we ever could
get the real detailed law enforcement documents, how we would
change our minds. I'm always I only did this one
because it was one of our early episodes. I really
I like kind of redoing the It's been long enough

(01:01:56):
where I feel like we probably added a lot more
to the case. Oh sure, And now we have these
FBI documents and I think it changes everything about the case. Absolutely.
After the first episode we did, I was very unsure
about what happened.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Oh, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
I think I'm like ninety five percent confident that it was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
I would say ninety eight to ninety nine. I'm like,
I'm with you man on that one. So all right, Well,
thanks again for tuning into the show. We appreciate you
all for listening and sharing locations unknown with your friends
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(01:02:36):
our website in Facebook store to buy some sweet swag.
You can also subscribe to her patron account, YouTube, Apple
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to get access to additional shows and special events as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
It's your med zand your true Crime.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Absolutely, and lastly, when enjoying the beauty of nature. Whether backpacking, camping,
or simply taking a walk, always remember to leave no trace.
Thanks and we will see you all next time.

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Charles McCullar - A Case Re-examined — Myths vs. Facts

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Charles McCullar - A Case Re-examined — Myths vs. Facts