Ep. 156 It Was Murder!!!???: Volume 2

Join us as we look back on several more mysterious deaths that continue to confuse and confound detectives. Was it murder? Accident? Suicide? The clues often point several different ways, and the only thing we can say for sure is that they are strange. Let's take a look.....

• Detectives
• Confounding clues
• Strange circumstances
• True crime
• Investigation
• Cold cases
• Suspicious deaths
• Crime podcast
• Unexplained
• Evidence analysis

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, join us as we delve into our favorite
dark tales and paranormal mysteries.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Venture with us beyond the safe places that exist in daylight.
As we go Beyond the Shadows, true crime, paranormal hauntings, UFOs,
cryptids and unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, past lives, reincarnation and
all the like are.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Just a few of the topics that we will tackle.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
If it haunts your fucking dreams, then it will be
on our show.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Do you know what the most in the world is?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
On the shuttles where you found me at you can't
see me in the deepest blacks from your heart Starbus
and then you see their cracks, all these creepy things
that you why at track well, the demens be where
the actions at. So list enough you want it, UFOs,
all them ghosts. We got everything that you want.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
It won't do you know what the thing in the
world is? Hey, everybody, welcome back to episode one fix
Beyond the Shadows.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Welcome back Shadow family.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
All right, so off the get go. We got some
good ratings and reviews this.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, you guys, we're busy lately and we appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, we got some from a nie an a niece.
Come on, come on Ryan, help me out.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
An, I would say thank you one of those three
of time it was probably right and.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Goop and Pucky I love the name. And then also
one from Papa Joe. That is Joe from over At Tales,
Trails and Taverns. Check out his podcast. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Thank you everybody, and.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, we appreciate those again another rating on Spotify too,
So wish we could thank whoever that is, but thank
you whoever you were.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
You know who you are.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, so that's all we got for housekeeping. What's in
the new spell?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So this week we've got another one of those really
random world records. David Rush of Idaho took ninety six
wet sponges to the face on August twenty eighth to
become a world record holder. He shattered the previous record
of probably zero. I didn't look it up because it's
fucking stupid. No one else has ever thought to do

(02:22):
it before. Wet sponges to the face in a minute
ninety six.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I think we can beat this. We're not gonna, but you.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Can think of something so random and blake, I can
set a record because nobody's fucking done it before. I think,
I let's make it interesting. Maybe they're like medical sponges
or contracept sponges that it might be entertaining to watch,
but otherwise.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Dude, I watched. I think it was Rob Deirdre. He
called Guinness and had him come and he broke like
a hundred fucking Guinness records. Yeah, you know, it's just
one right after another. I think it was like on
Fantasy Factory or something. But yeah, I mean there's so
many that just I think you've just got to go
through the book, find something and be like, oh, one
hundred fucking march meallows in your mouth. I can beat that.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
I can pull that off. A teacher in Germany has
been calling in sick to work a lot lately, as
in every single day since two thousand and nine, and
she has drawn her full salary during that duration. German
laws classify teachers as bempty or public servants, and they
enjoy a special health plan, higher pension, and much better

(03:29):
job security than most folks. The woman hasn't been named
due to Germany's privacy laws, but when the employer requested
proof of her illness, that required sixteen years of sick leave.
She refused to provide one, and why would you. She
then sued the employer for even asking, but her case
was the judge rejected it and ruled that her situation

(03:54):
was quote truly incomprehensible and that her employer can indeed
ask for proof of her illness. Now, she's not going
to be required to pay any of this back if
she goes to a doctor and they're like, no, she's
not sick.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
They got some different rules in Germany than we do,
don't they?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, a little bit. Wow, she's now obligated to undergo
a health exam just to keep collecting her salary. But
to my know, and she won't be facing any indist she.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Have to call in every day. I guess that's guess
I'm not going to be there. You don't say I
thought i'd be better by today. Oh my god, today
was the day I could turn for the worst. It's
not looking good for tomorrow either. In fact, just scratch
me for twenty twenty five, you know, to get serious

(04:37):
for a second. It just reminded me in Germany they
have elections coming up. I don't know if you follow
any of this stuff, but seven different candidates for one
of their parties. I don't know the parties in Germany.
I'm sure someone from Germany can set me straight. But
it's one of the parties. It's the far right party.
Seven different candidates that are running for running for you know,

(05:02):
a seat, have ended up dead. Seven of them is
statistically impossible. Someone's knocking them off. Seven different They might
be up to eight.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Now, maybe it's this lady there. They're poor, sick, they're
pushing to end this shit. Yes, crazy, So she's actually
at this point, during this sixteen years, she's collected well
over a million dollars in salary and never worked a
day in that something crazy shit.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Emily Martinez, a self advertised smile makeover expert from Florida,
advertised extremely cheap full mouth veneer treatments. At most clinics,
a single tooth can run upwards of nine hundred to
fifteen hundred dollars, but Martinez could do your whole mouth
for only only twenty five hundred. Unfortunately, people were so

(05:54):
blown away by her low prices that they didn't bother
to check her credentials, and if they had, they would
find out that she didn't.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
It's just a mouth full of chick lits.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
She has no licensing in dentistry or anything else. She
literally attached fake veneers to people's teeth using crazy glue.
Oh wow, crazy glue. Dentist say in the mouth is
extremely dangerous, which you can assume, but I guess it
builds up like heat, so it can literally cook your
tooth and it'll just destroy the nerves and then you

(06:26):
don't have to worry about any toothbait exactly. So essentially
she does fix the tooth.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
They look awesome too.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Which obviously so that leads to root canals, serious teeth damage.
Now people are facing huge dens. They couldn't tell.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
They couldn't tell. You know it in your mouth? Fucking
what is that? Why is that built out of legos?
It'll be fine, it'll be fine. It's got gorilla glue.
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
She's giving them night just even though they don't need it,
just so they don't notice what she's doing, exactly, paid
no attention to the gloom.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
That'll be fine, So I glued my fingers together again.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
She now faces a long list of charges, but was
set free on bond pending trio. She immediately violated the
terms of her bond, and she's now being held in
Penelas County Jail.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Meaning she went and did more teeth, probably lose some more.
But prices are so good. I mean, it's still had.
I just couldn't say. I'm not gonna lie. If I
needed teeth, I would probably take a look. Twenty five
is a pretty good deal.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
She ran a scam in the past, but she's learned
her lesson. She's legit now now you can trust her. Lastly,
parents and kids at a Chuck E Cheese and Tallahassee
recently got a glimpse of something you don't see every day,
Chucky getting busted.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Police entered the location and asked an employee where they
could find forty one year old Jamel Jones. He's the
one in the mouse suit, they were told. So they
found the mouse and the business is Arcade section and
attempted to take him into custody. We're gonna detain the mouse,
one of the officers can be heard saying into the
body can. A mom could be heard asking for a

(08:18):
picture with Chucky literally during the arrest. This cam footage
is out there now so you can check it out.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
One of the officers tells hers, Chucky's a little busy man.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
I think they should have given him the picture. That's
a classic Gon' understand it. Chucky's off tough, gonna frown.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
On the These kids are gonna need a lifetime of
therapy now. Jones then resists, he doesn't go quietly in
full view with the parents and kids. The cops can
be heard Chuck a pleading Chucky, come on, we meet Chucky's.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
So.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
It turns out a woman who had attended a birthday
party at the business about a week earlier reported her
credit card missing. She was alerted to the card being used,
and when showed footage of the man using her stolen card,
the perpetrator was identified as Jermale Jones.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Six hundred dollars worth of cheddar cheese.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, it was just random shit, just cheese. I think
a lot of it was food and just random shit
a card. He denied having taken her card, but when
they arrested him, it was literally.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
In his pockets in the suit.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
But he's like, no, I just found it today and
I was going to return it. Yeah, just happens in
his other pocket.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Was weird. Yeah, you do like Chucky to smell nice.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Chuckie's going to be going away for a little while.
This arrest actually happened in the end of July, so
you guys have probably heard about it. To my knowledge.
The body camp footage just became available this week, which
is kind of why it's a breaking story now, even
though it didn't just happen.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
But yep, I had sent this one to you a
while back.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, why didn't use it? Or maybe I did?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
No, you didn't, No, we didn't use it?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Was the footage out at that point? No, I didn't.
I didn't notice it. But uh, yeah, it's it's all
over the place now. You can't miss it. But the
footage isn't isn't hilarious, But the cops comments are pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, I know. And they called him they call him Chucky.
Oh yeah, they go him by his name, Chucky.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
They didn't want to ruin it for the kids. What
do you mean that's not really really chucky. As I
was watching that, I'm like, they know where he is.
Couldn't they have just waited until he got off work
instead of traumatizing.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
That never comes into considering.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
They probably talked about it in the parking lot like.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Nah, let's do it now. We're gonna make the news.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
My kid's not here.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's fine, So all right, Powall, what do you got
for us this week?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
So I'm gonna do a sequel to an episode I
did about a year ago Cold It was murder, and
those are the ones, some of those cases where you're
not quite sure what happened. It could have been murder, suicide, accident.
It's just you know, could have done anyway.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
So awesome, looking forward to it. All right, guys, we'll
catch over with.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Do you know what the world is? All right? So
first up, we're going to talk about the case of
the Eight Day Bride. Christina Cecilia Moconn was born to
parents Casmir and Mary Moconn on August seventh, nineteen twenty five,

(11:26):
in Toronto, Canada. Her parents had emigrated from Poland, and
they would devout Roman Catholics. In her late teens, she
met and fell in love with a man named John
Ray Kettlewell, also known as Jack. She lived in Mimico, Ontario,
and worked in the local bank. Jack had been born
in nineteen twenty one in Ontario. He was a World

(11:49):
War Two veteran who was now stationed in the dental corps.
His best friend was twenty eight year old Ronald Berry,
a professional ballroom dancer who had recently moved to Canada
from his homeland of Italy, but but by now had
been unemployed for quite some time. He tried to establish
himself in both the construction and insurance games, but had

(12:10):
failed in both. Ronald and Jack were exceptionally close and
did almost everything together. Christina's parents didn't approve of a
relationship with Jack, mostly because he wasn't Catholic, but also
because of his weird relationship with friend Ronald.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
How can a professional ballroom dancer be an actual job matter?

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, he wasn't working, So.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
A professional bowroom dancing.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
A professional actually makes money from what they're doing, and
this guy isn't making it.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Could be like a professional square dancing. Didn't they make
us learn square dancing when we were in elementary school?

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Well you were a different generation than me.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah you well, yeah, you're older than meh yeah right,
it's like I'm a professional take ninety six sponges in
the face, guy, I don't get to get paid for
but it's.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Kind of think red at it. So Ronald creeped her
family out bad and Christina's sister Helen stated that the
family believed Ronnie was in love with Christina. He was
said to spend all his time and attention on her,
a notion that was thought by some to be a

(13:20):
reciprocal so she might have been into it, It differs
on who was speaking. At the very least, Ronnie was
said to have never allowed the couple time together, as
he always third wheeled along with them. In late April
of nineteen forty seven, Christina disappeared from her family home
for about two weeks, a disappearance which culminated in her

(13:41):
secret marriage with Jack on May twelfth, nineteen forty seven.
Despite the fact Jack had recently converted, Christina's family was
not at all on board with the marriage. Following their elopement,
the couple spent a few days at an apartment on
Tindall Avenue in Toronto. Strange Ronald was with them for

(14:01):
this trip. Even stranger was the fact that he joined
them five days later on May seventeenth, when they journeyed
by boat to Ronald's extremely remote cottage and Severn's Falls,
about forty kilometers north of Rilia, Ontario.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
There's a professional third wheel man.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
And ballroom dancer. So this is their honeymoon. You've got
this random dude bringing along.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's you.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
It's creepy. No matter what the guy's function is or like,
who's close to who, It's really pretty strange. So Severn's
Falls was really isolated. It was located between two rivers,
couldn't be accessed by anything other than boat. The cottage
lie right up against the shore of one of the
two rivers. Christina was said to have begun acting out

(14:49):
of character as soon as they arrived at the cabin.
She was dazed and incoherent most of the day, and
would then begin breaking down in fits of tears at night.
She was said to have told Ronnie that she didn't
believe Jack had ever loved her. On May twentieth, Christina
had disappeared from the cottage. Reportedly, before she did so,
Ronald had gone down to the beach to do some sunbathing.

(15:12):
While down on the beach, he noticed smoke coming from
the cottage and rushed back to find a disoriented Jack,
bleeding profusely from a wound on his forehead. He was
lying on the living room floor. Rodny said he searched,
but he could find no sign of Christina, and so
he grabbed Jack and headed by boat back to where
he could reach the nearest hospital. The cottage burned down

(15:35):
in less than an hour. The hospital discovered the strong
opio opioid codine and Jack's system right at about the
same time the police were being called out to check
the cottage. Jack had no memory of the entire incident.
The same night the call came in, a local man
named Neville Street found a body only about one hundred

(15:56):
and fifty feet away from the cottage, lying in only
nine inches of water. Her body showed neither any signs
of violence, bruising, or any signs of a fire. She
also had codine in her system, but ultimately her death
was ruled to be a result of drowning. Major Lawrence

(16:17):
Scuttlefield had been one of the men who attempted to
put out the fire hours earlier, and he stated that
there had not been a body down at the river
when he went down there to fetch water earlier. When
police questioned Ronald, he too had no idea what had
happened to Christina. He had only returned to the cottage
when he found it on fire, and at that point,

(16:38):
Christina was already missing. On June nineteenth, nineteen forty seven,
a judicial inquest was held to try and figure out
what had happened to Christina. This was not a trial,
and no one had been accused of a crime. They
were just trying to figure out a foul play had
been involved in her death. Every day's proceedings were splashed

(16:59):
across the front and every day the public packed the
courthouse and the grounds outside. Both Ronald and John were
now famous, and women showed up daily hoping for attention, notes,
autographs and flirted with both men.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
People.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's so weird big time. The Crown zeroed in on
Barry's shady past right from the beginning. Special Crown Council
at the inquest CP Hope described Barry as quote a
liar of the most blatant kind, whose sinister figure permeates
the whole of this strategy tragedy, but whose purpose and

(17:35):
designs are shrouded in mystery. It turns out Barry was
the named beneficiary on two separate life insurance policies that
had been taken out on both Jack and Christina before
they eloped. Huh, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Weird, right, that's what a coincidence.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
These policies also carried a double indemnity clause, meaning two
times the policy's amount would be paid out to the
beneficiary in the case of an accidental death. The two
policies and today's dollars would have paid out about two
hundred and sixty thousand.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
It's like gambling with these fucking old you know. It's
like they double down on this.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
If it goes this way, you get twice as much.
You know, the.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Investigation techniques are so rudimentary, though, you've got like you've
got a solid chance of getting.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Away with the pride bag.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, oh for sure. So the beneficiary beneficiary area was
none other than Ronald Berry. There was also a policy
on the cottage in the amount of five thousand dollars,
which would pay about seventy five thousand dollars today, and
since that was his cottage, he was also the one
to go to collect on that.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
I'm just amazed at how back then you could just
throw in the I think you can do it today too.
But you can put a policy on anybody. Oh yeah,
what sense does that make. I'm just randomly put one
on you, And who do you suppose it would be
that killed Ryan. It's probably Scott put a policy on him. Yeah,
the day before, Yeah, like just the other day.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
A lot of times they're not even smart about it.
They'll put it in a place and like three days
later the person turns up dead.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, you can do it. On the precidents.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
There was a couple of ladies years ago putting on
like a homeless man and then bringing him to their house,
and like a year later, they'd turn up dead. This
happen again and again and again. These two old ladies
were killing homeless man. Uh wait, they waited long enough
where the suspicion would be off. But you know, just
random homeless guys. Why would you have a policy on
just a random homeless guy. Well, he's residing with us,

(19:31):
So most landlords don't put insurance policies on their tenants.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
It's exactly.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Anyway. So Jack had told authorities during their investigation of
the case that he had been gifting his wartime gratuities
to Ronald, money that was normally given to spouses. He
told investigators that he and Ronald had been having an
intimate relationship for quite some time. He would later state, however,
that the police had coerced the statement from him, and

(19:59):
that it simply wasn't tr Christina's wedding ring was not
found on her corpse, and it has never turned up,
but it's been speculated that it might have been quite valuable.
Ronald's story changed several times, and one version had Christina
still inside the house when he came in rushing came
rushing in after seeing it on fire, and this version

(20:19):
she was just standing there looking lost with tears in
her eyes while he dragged Jack outside, but when he returned,
she was gone. He hadn't seen any sign of a
crime or any possible murder weapon. So much evidence obviously
points to Ronald's guilt right, but there was some other
evidence involved. Some of it pointed to the possibility that

(20:42):
Christina had killed herself. During the inquest into her death,
investigators discovered several suicide notes she'd written in recent months.
One of them had been written to Ronald not long
before her engagement with Jack. She had stated that poisoning
about poisoning, that this will be the best way out,
as I cannot bear the thought of another girl having him.

(21:05):
Jack stated that he had no knowledge of any depression
or any suicidal thoughts on his bride's part. A separate
note she'd written not long after the first had also
been written to Ronald, and this time she stated that
she not only wished to hurt herself but Jack as well.
When you love someone, you really love him. And I
know there is no one for me but Jack, and

(21:27):
if I cannot have him, I don't intend anyone else to.
As you might say, I waited in the hope that
Jack would ask me to marry him, but I now
realized that this might just be a passing fancy. But
if that's her goal, he just married you. Yeah, so
this was written before the marriage. But why would she
carry out this threat if that's exactly what it was

(21:48):
after he had in fact marriage.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, that don't make sense. But why would she write
these in the first place.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's another very good question. And why they are written
to Rob?

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
One last note had been handwritten to Christina's former landlady,
a missus Thomas. It said, quote, Ronnie's in the boat
outside somewhere. By the time he gets back, everything will
be over with. He must be afraid something would happen
because he's staying an extra day to make sure that
we go back to Toronto with him. Jack claimed he

(22:22):
had no knowledge that these letters ever existed until Ronald
mentioned them during the inquisition. They showed no signs of
fire damage at all, which is odd if they had
been inside the burning cabin. In his haste to get
Jack to the hospital and still not knowing where Christina was,
Ronald must have taken the time to go grab the letters, right,

(22:42):
They couldn't have been in his pocket the whole time,
so he had to have rescued the letters, which is
really weird. A handwriting expert did believe that they were
written in Christina's handwriting. In the end, neither man was
implicated in Christina's death due to a lack of evidence.
John married excuse me, remarried three years later, and even

(23:05):
briefly lived with his new bride in the same house
he and Christina had once shared. He never spoke of
the incident to his dying day in nineteen ninety eight.
His son and daughter in law literally only learned of
the incident themselves when they saw in random article in
a library years later. They had no idea what so
they claim this incident had ever happened. Ronald moved to

(23:26):
New York City. In nineteen fifty six, he gifted his
last known possession, his pet dog, to Jack's son, before
then disappearing into history, never to be heard from again.
To this day, what happened to Christina Kettlewell on May twentieth,
nineteen forty seven remains a mystery.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, no it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
What do you think thated he killed her?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
He didn't care which.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
He uh, Jack, her husband or Ronald ron.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Ronald? Why was Ronald there? Why would Ronald have these
on her? Why would Ronald run the house to save
letters that he obviously had somebody else write.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, that's what I can't prove that, but he had
to have if. I mean, he wouldn't have had the
letters on his person already, so now I had gone
to the house to get them.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
I only say that someone else write, because women write
very different than men.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, and it was a single handwriting expert that said
Christina wrote him right. And they're wrong all the time.
Even today they'll be like, I don't I think they did.
I can't.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
So he have somebody else write those letters? If he?
I don't know, it seemed like he was the one.
Everything points to him.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
I would agree the question is whether the husband was
involved or not. I mean, at the very least the
husband was a coward or a wom Why would you
have this dude along with you? Man?

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Maybe maybe let's go out there on the limb. Maybe
she was involved and her and Ronald had something planned
and Jack didn't die and she'd and she did you know,
maybe she was you know, maybe he double crossed her
or maybe uh, you know, maybe she did write those letters,
but he was She was supposed to survive.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
And there there are definitely people, especially back then, that
believed Christina and Ronald did have something going. Most people
say he was into her, but there were some that
believed it was reciprocal. It wasn't like a one way
you know, I have to love triangle. What the hell
is going on here? I do not believe it was suicide. Now,
she was murdered and Ronald almost certainly had a hand

(25:22):
in it. Whether Jack was involved, it's hard to say,
but it was murder.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Guys, let us know what you think. Post it on
Spotify or send it to us on our socials.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
All right, we'll be right back with the next one.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Do you know what the most in the.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
World is on April fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, at Sunset
Cliff in San Diego, California, twenty year old surfer David
Korea saw what looked like seagulls standing on top of
the ocean. Knowing this was very un usual, he called

(26:00):
out to another surfer who was closer, William Dostall, paddled
over to look, then yelled out and quickly paddled into shore.
What had scared him so badly was that the seagulls
had been perched on a dead body, a body that
had suffered a great deal of gruesome injuries. The call
came to the Lifeguard communications at three eighteen pm, and

(26:23):
a rescue boat was dispatched. A few hundred yards off shore.
In the kelp beds, they found the lifeless body of
a woman. She was floating face down in the surf,
and other than a bracelet and a few rings, the
woman was naked. She had brown hair and a butterfly tattoo.
Responder Bruce Robinson and Joe Wade guessed that she was

(26:44):
in her early twenties. The body showed clear signs of trauma,
so the medical examiner took charge of the body and
it was examined by Robert Engel. His report noted that
the body had a large tearing type wound with missing tears,
and most of her right leg was gone.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
You know what I'm blaming for this? Uh have you
have you ever seen a body that's been floating in
the ocean forever?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (27:11):
They blow, they blow, they blow right up. Ah. A
friend of mine in high school was a lobster man,
and he found a body when they were out lobstering. Yeah,
they found a guy floating. It was someone who had
got He was just a drowning and they'd been looking
for him and they happened to find him on their boat.
And he said it didn't even look like a person.

(27:32):
They were just so bloated.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
And it's got to be disturbing as well.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
So the official autopsy took place two days later, on
April sixteenth, nineteen ninety four, and it was done by
medical examiner Brian Blackbourne. This showed the true horror that
must have taken place during Jane Doe's final moments. Her
face had scrapes, bruises, and contusions. Her neck was broken,
her right leg was missing, sheared off with the thigh,

(28:02):
her buttocks had been shredded down to the bone, and
her arms in a remaining leg showed similar trauma. She
had broken ribs and a broken pelvis that appeared to
have been pulled apart by brute force. Her mouth, throat,
and stomach all contained large amounts of sand, and the
report stated that she would have been alive when the
majority of these injuries were inflicted fucking sharks. She would

(28:25):
have had to have taken a very large gulp for
so much sand to have made its way down inside
of her. She had died from internal bleeding and drowning.
Blackburn determined her death to be accidental. She had likely
gone for a late night swim and had been attacked
by a great white shark. The shark had killed them
all sorry. The shark had bitten off her leg and

(28:50):
dragged her to the bottom, where she broke her neck
and gulped in the water and sand. She died from
the massive blood loss as well as drowning. Role Marine
biologists agreed with Blackbourne's assessment, but none of them had
actually viewed the body, and Blackborne himself had never seen
a shark attack victim, but nonetheless, a probable shark attack

(29:12):
was accepted.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Do you think that you would need to have seen
one before to know what a shark attack looked.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Like once where the story keeps going, Yes, yeah, I
think you do. The The story of the unidentified woman
found in the ocean with the butterfly tattoo ran on
the ten o'clock News on Saturday, April sixteenth, nineteen ninety four.
Denise Knox owned a stationery and office supply store on
Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, and she was watching that night.

(29:42):
She had an employee employee who fit that description, and
she hadn't been to work in the last few days.
The woman in the ocean was identified as twenty five
year old Michelle von Emster. Michelle's friend and roommate is
the last known person to have seen her alive. She
and Michelle had plans to see Pink Lloyd at Jack
Murphy Stadium on their Division Bell tour, but the ladies

(30:04):
were turned away as they didn't have the correct tickets
to that show. As Coco, I didn't say that in
the Coco was the name of the friend. I thought
I wrote that, but I didn't. As she drove them
back to their two bedroom house, Michelle asked to be
dropped off at the pier at about six blocks away.
Coco said it was about eight pm when Michelle got

(30:25):
out of the car, and she was wearing a green
trench coat. What her plans were at this point we
don't know, but Michelle did have a deep love of
the ocean and spent a lot of time walking the beach, swimming,
and by some accounts, surfing, although surfers denied they had
ever seen her surfing. She had recently beaten leukemia and
that was one of the reasons she had come to

(30:46):
San Diego in the first place, to be close to
the ocean that she loved so much. Coco had not
found it strange that she wanted to go to the
beach that night. Perhaps she just wanted to take a
walk and clear her head. But had she really gone
skinny dipping in the dark and sixty degree April ocean waters.
The air temperature that night had only been fifty seven degrees.

(31:07):
Oh shit, man, And where were her clothes and purse?

Speaker 1 (31:10):
You've been to the beach when it's fifty seven degrees
it's cold as shit on the water.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. I've always a lot of people I think are
under the assumptions. California is such a big like you know, surf,
you know sunshine. The water in California is not warm
at all.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Ocean water isn't warm.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Well in some places it is like, yeah, I've been
down like Mexico and that it's really warm in the Caribbean.
But California water is not that warm. And this is April,
So is it possible she was skinny dipping yet, but
it's not likely it was April. The air temperature was
fifty seven degrees sixty degree ocean water. It's not warm,
not at all.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
If you're doing that here, the water's cold all the time.
Oh yeah, year round. That water's freaking cold.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
It's as warm as it gets in August and its
ice fucking cool.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
And if she had been skinny dipping, where were her
clothes in her purse? Police scoured the beach and they
could not locate them. They later turned up a half
mile away on a heavily traffic section of beach. The
clothes were still neatly folded, and the purse contained her
car keys and twenty seven dollars in cash. Strangely, her
final paycheck was not found, and it was never cashed.

(32:20):
Many police thought it stretches credibility that these items had
been there for any length of time and hadn't been
stolen or rifled through this She lived.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
In a pretty How long did you say they were there?

Speaker 2 (32:29):
I think it was about thirty six hours, but it
was a really heavily traffic section of beach, and she
wasn't in the nicest neighborhood. Ah, maybe they'd been placed
there after the fact, is what a lot of cops thought.
Ralph Collier is an expert in Pacific Coast white shark
behavior in ecology. When he saw pictures of Michelle's injuries,

(32:51):
he cast serious doubts on the shark attack theory. He stated,
when a white shark breaks off part of a limb,
the break is clean, almost like you would put it
on a table. Saw or remained of Michelle's femur was anything,
but it looked like what happens when you get a
piece of bamboo and widow it down to a point
with a knife. I've looked at close to one hundred

(33:11):
photos of cases over the years, and I have never
seen any bones that come to a point. He also
questioned the presence of sand in her stomach. Had it
been a shark attack, the damage would have severed her
for moral artery, and she would have bled to death quickly.
But for her to have sand in her stomach, she
had to have been taking big, gulping breath as she
made contact with the sand. He finishes, there are just

(33:35):
too many things in this case that are not consistent
with white shark behavior. Richard Rosenblatt was the chairman for
the Script's Institute of Oceanology at the time of the attack,
and upon seeing the measurement of the wounds on Michelle's body,
he stated that none of them matched a great white attack.
The body also didn't show any puncture wounds that appear

(33:56):
in shark attacks, nor were there any teeth left behind
at his very common in great white attacks. Only a
great white could have taken off her leg in one
swipe like that, he said, And this had not been
a great white attack, which meant it hadn't been a
shark attack at all. This is in his opinion. So
if a shark hadn't killed her, then what had One

(34:19):
theory states, excuse me. One theory stays with her skinny
dipping scenario, but in this version it isn't a shark
that killed her, but a boat. Maybe she had swum
out so far she had been hit by a Nobody
would have expected to see her out there. A propeller
could have done that damage. An ocean going boat they
have big propellers. They wouldn't have expected to see somebody there.

(34:41):
I don't think this is what happened, but it's plausible. Yeah,
and then after that a great white No, but smaller
sharks could have nibbled.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
There's a lot of shit in the water.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
But then after people die, they'll nibble on you until
the body is found. That could have explained somebody.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
But to have you're right, I mean, if you're a
attacked by a shark, what's the odds you're sucking in sand.
The shark usually is going to attack you on the surface.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Heyt track you on the surface and you drown on
the surface. That's the way it goes.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
And so you're not going to be taking the breath in.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
And it's not an alligator.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
You're not going to drag you to the bottom.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Sharks don't drag you to the bottom like an alligator.
They don't do the death roll. That hole. She got
dragged at the bottom and gulped and sand. That doesn't
make a lot of sense to me, and it didn't
make sense to these guys either.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
I want to blame the great way, but I'm.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Gonna I'm gonna stick with the guy from the institute
that said it was. He wasn't like hesitant. He's flat
out saying it ain't a great way to tack. And
he also insists that the only shark in that region
that was powerful enough to take off her leg and
once wipe the way it had happened was a great way.
I mean, it was not a great.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
What about a tiger shark or something like that.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Ain't a shark?

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Come on, all shots should die?

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Excuse me. It has also been suggested that perhaps she
had fallen from Sunset Cliffs. Medical examiner stated that the neck,
hell of us and rib fractures were quite consistent with
the fall, but that the severed leg was not. You
don't just fall an your leg pops off. And if
that had happened, where was the leg the part that
was gone.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
She could have fallen and broken all those bones and
then something ate the leg after. I mean, what if
she had an open wound? Possible? You know, she fell
off the cliff and had a broken leg, and then
something came by when she'd floating all.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
My main question in that scenario, though, is why would
she take off her clothes and then walk a half
mile to the top of the cliffs naked.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
You didn't get her clothes wet, dude.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
That part's a little weird.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, that is.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Again, her friends and family said she was flying high
in life. She had recently beaten leukemia, so she was
excited about life, had a new zest for life, so
an accidental fall was plausible. Again, I don't think she
would have stripped down and walked up their naked, and
the suicide theory doesn't make a lot of sense. For
those reasons.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
The file play just seems like, I don't know, it
doesn't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Nothing in this case makes a lot of sense. That's
a weird thing. She wasn't known to be interested in
material things, but she loved nature, art, and freedom. The
house she rented was in a rough neighborhood referred to
as the war zone. It was known for drugs and crime,
which resulted in the cheap rent that she was paying,
So perhaps foul play was involved when Michelle had applied

(37:21):
at the stationery store she worked. She told the owner,
Denise Knox At one of the reasons she had left
her previous job at Rumor's Coffee Shop was that she
had a stalker. She felt it was much safer to
work during daytime hours. She didn't know her stalker's name,
only that he drove a motorcycle. After Michelle's death, a
man Knox didn't know came into the shop and he

(37:42):
asked her to make copies of Michelle's autopsy report. He
severely creeped her out, and he rode away on a motorcycle.
One other suspect that drew attention over the years was
bartender Edwin Decker. He worked at a bar located right
next to the coffee shop that Michelle worked in. The
business shared an owner. Excuse me, the businesses shared an

(38:04):
owner as well as a door, and Decker said he'd
been going to the coffee shop for weeks and he
and Michelle had flirted a lot. On April thirteenth, he
claimed she finally agreed to have drinks with him at Winston's,
the bar he worked at. Afterwards, they grabbed a twelve
pack and walked over to his apartment on Lotus and
they drank until dawn. A coworker from his job ended

(38:26):
up crashing at his house and a drunken stupor that night,
but he and Michelle had spent the night making out
on the couch and doing quote second base stuff. The
next morning, they exchanged numbers and she took a cab
home at about five am. This was the morning of
her final day. After a few days, he became upset
she hadn't contacted him, But he ended up seeing the

(38:48):
same news report about the unidentified body with the tattoo,
and he suspected it might be Michelle, but he didn't
contact the police to help identify her. Instead, he wrote
a bizarre poem called Shark Attack. In it, he said,
the report said there was a tattoo a butterfly on
her shoulder, which I remembered that night on my couch

(39:12):
when I liked the shark chewed on her lips and
took off her shirt.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
The creepy kind the poem is that it's.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Not it's not a poem, it's and it's just fucking creepy.
It was later published in a book of his poetry
called Barzilla and Other psalms h. Now he's only a
suspect because he puts himself on the radar. Nobody knows
this guy exists in her life. Nobody knows they want
on a date or that they had any contact. Please
never seriously consider him a suspect. He's creepy as shit. Obviously.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
The whole thing about that night, she wasn't where she
should have been. She went to a concert, so if
someone was stalking her or following her, they wouldn't expect
her to be back at the time that she came back.
She got dropped off. How far from her house?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Six snow six blocks?

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Six blocks all right, six blocks from her house, So
she's not at home, she's not back at the time
she should have been back. Yeah, and you know she
was on the beach. So yeah, it would have to
be a rando.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
When if it was a Starker, they got lucky in
terms of.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Fun, right, if it was one of these two, they
got really lucky. What year was this, ninety four? So
yeah there was there was cell phones, but nobody had
them back in ninety four.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
I don't remember anybody happened to No, I know they existed,
they had when they.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Were there were bagphones you had to carry around.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
They weren't They weren't wide used by any.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Actually, they started off being in people's cars.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
But she lived in a boy they called the war zone.
They wouldn't have had them in a low income neighborhood
like the Uh. I think, I think this guy is
creepy as should obviously to write a poem like that
rather than call the cops, if you really knew it
was her, why would you not contact anybody? Instead you
write a poem like that. But uh, it almost seems
like he's just trying to insert himself in the story.
Nobody even knows that this date even happened. He just

(40:58):
he put himself in the store. I think he's just
a creeper. Her death, as far as the shark attack
has been so severely discredited by shark experts that it
no longer appears in shark attack statistics at all. They
don't believe it was. It's been removed. So what really
happened to Michelle Vaughan Amster that night? We do not know.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
That's yeah, I'm clueless what happened to her?

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah, it's an affusing one, it really is. Everything sort
of makes sense like, the shark attack theory sounds very plausible,
but the experts disagree with it, and the reasons they
disagree with it, You're like, Okay, that makes sense. The
suicide theory doesn't make a whole shitload of sense. The
murder theory doesn't make a hold ton of sense either.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
I honestly still think that some type of shark attack
is the most logical thing that happened.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
I think it's likely that sharks chewed on her body.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, at least I do. But I mean someone could
have killed her and dump her in the water. Yeah,
you know, but and maybe that and then they she
did get chewed on by just about everything in the ocean.
I guess that's plausible too. But for it to be
that Stocker he'd had got lucky that night to know
that she was.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
There, I don't think it was him. No, I wouldn't
be surprised if he never even had a date with her.
I think he's just making that up. He probably all
go to her every day at the coffee show up
and just wished he laterwards, he's like, oh, put myself
in the middle of this story that happens all the time,
where people insert themselves in it.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
People are we People are weird? Man? Is that the
end of that one? Guys? If let us know on
Spotify or our socials, let us know what you think.
All right, guys, we got one last story. We'll be
right back with it, do you know what.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
So lastly, we're going to look at the strange case
of the Isdell Woman. On November twenty ninth, nineteen seventy
two young girls were hiking with their dad in the
Isdelin Valley outside of Bergen, Norway, when they came upon
a horrible site. There in front of them was the
body of a woman lying on her back and severely burned.

(43:14):
The area they were hiking was known as the Ice
Valley sometimes Death Valley, due to the amount of hiking
accidents in the area and for being the site of
numerous suicides dating back to the Middle Ages. When authorities
were notified, a small party was sent out to the scene.
Her arms were stretched out in what's known as the
fencer's position. They were out in front of the upper

(43:36):
body nearby the body they found in a I guess
that's normal in burning cases for the people's arms to
be stretched out in the position hers.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Were so it was typical for a burning yes.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Nearby the body. They found some of the woman's charred belongings,
pieces of clothing, an umbrella, two melted plastic bottles, a
plastic cover for a passport without the past, a half
full bottle of liquor, a watch, and some jewelry, and
it was she wasn't wearing the watch and jewelry. It
was described as being spread out around her body in

(44:10):
a deliberate and ritualistic manner. There were also signs of
a campfire having been nearby. They scoured the scene but
couldn't find any indicator of the woman's identity, and this
seems to have been very deliberate. All identifying marks and
labels had been removed from her clothing and oliver items.
Police believed that she stood about five foot four to

(44:32):
five foot five. She was between twenty five and forty
years of age. She had brown eyes, a small round face,
and brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail.
At her autopsy, it was determined that she had died
by a combination of being incapacitated by finobarbital in by
poisoning from carbon monoxide. The soot found in her Lungs

(44:56):
told police that she had been alive while she burned,
so she had a lethal dose of sleeping pills in
her system and she had burned a death. Had she
accidentally stumbled into her campfire, had she committed suicide, or
had she been murdered. Three days later, two suitcases were
found abandoned at the Bergen railway station luggage department. When

(45:18):
they looked inside, the mystery only got deeper. Inside the bags,
they found a pair of non prescription glasses which held
a fingerprint. It matched their unidentified body, so they knew
for certain they had found the woman's things. They also
found clothing, wigs, combs, hair brushes, cosmetics, tea spoons, eggs

(45:41):
of a cream and currency from Germany, England, Norway, Belgium
and Sweden. Inside of her stuff currencies from all those
places yep, just as were the items found with their body.
All labels and identifying marks had been removed from oliver items.
Police tried to see if any made such retailers could
identify her clothing as belonging to them, but they were unsuccessful.

(46:05):
The eggs of a cream tube was prescription, but the
woman's information had been deliberately scratched off. Inside her belongings,
they found a note, seemingly in her own handwriting, it's
tough to say because we don't know what her handwriting
looked like, which contained a coded message. Eventually the code
was cracked and police believed it was a list of

(46:26):
hotels she had stayed in and when she had stayed there.
They also found a plastic bag from a shoe store
and stavinger. When they spoke to the owner's son, he
was able to recall that he had sold the boots
to a very well dressed, nice looking woman with dark
hair who took a very long time choosing her boots.
They believed that they were the same boots that she

(46:48):
was wearing at the scene of her death. Eventually they
were able to track her to a nearby hotel, but
she had checked in using a fake name, Fanella Lorch.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
She's a spy. This woman has to be a spy.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
As they pieced together what clues they could find, they
tracked her to several other Norwegian hotels, but she had
always checked in using a fake name, and always a
different fake name. At that she had been Genevieve Lancier,
Claudia Tilt Claudia Nielsen, Vira Jarrel and Alexia zarn Merchez,
amongst many others. She checked in using fake passports, and

(47:25):
she often requested to switch rooms frequently after a day
or two. She spoke English with an accent and frequently
used a German phrases. A waitress at one of the
hotels the woman had stayed at remembered her vividly and
told the BBC, MY first impression of her was one
of elegance and self assuredness. In fact, I remember her

(47:46):
winking at me. From my perspective, it felt though I
had been staring at her a bit too much. On
one occasion, she added, while I was serving her, she
was in the dining hall, sitting right next to, but
not interacting with, two German Navy personnel, one of which
was an officer. A different witness recalled seeing a woman

(48:08):
hiking through the valley where she was later found, seemingly
pursued by two men, and said that none of them
appeared to be dressed for the weather or the terrain.
The case was hastily closed only a month or so
after it began, with a woman's identity still unknown. Her
death was ruled a suicide. She was buried in nineteen

(48:28):
seventy one and given a Catholic funeral attended only by
police officers. Many in the police force and press didn't
believe the ruling of a suicide back then, and they
still don't today. There might be a few clues from
her autops The additional clues her neck was bruised, possibly

(48:48):
from a fall. She was otherwise healthy except for the burning. Obviously,
she was not pregnant and had never given birth. The
pills were only partially dissolved in her stomach, so much
of it had not been absorbed in her bloodstream, so
that kind of gives you a timeline between when she
took the pills and when she died. What you can
get from that is, you know, I say, gasoline had

(49:11):
definitely been involved in setting the fire, but there was
not a gas can at the scene. As of today,
investigators do have a full DNA profile on the woman,
but they have not found a match. But they can
save a certain that she was of European descent. Since
her death occurred in the middle of the Cold War,
coupled with her thorough attempts to hide her identity and

(49:32):
cover her tracks, it has been suggested that she was
a spy, just as you said. Who she was spying
on or four has never been revealed. But to me,
this is definitely the most likely explanation on who she was.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
It really sounds like it. Yeah, I mean, all the
different currencies, the uh, I don't know the way that
she died, she went a suicide.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, well, she went through extreme attempts to hide in
her identity. She cut the clothing labels out of her clothes.
I'm scratching all the labels and I mean everything. Wait,
everything she had had no label, a.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
List that had to be decoded. They had to break
the code to find out what hotel she was.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Staying, checking in on her fake names, changing rooms frequently.
Even the winking at the waitress. The waitress flat out said,
you know, she winked at me because I was staring
at her too much. She was letting a waitress. Now,
so I'm looking at me politely. I know you're staring
at me. Stop. Yeah. So, so if she was a spy,

(50:31):
then the most likely cause of death was murder.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
You know, it sounds like a murder.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, it definitely does. But I mean, she was still
taking painstaking steps to hide her identity right up to
the end, So if it was a suicide, she wouldn't
have fucking cared. I mean, they don't care. She didn't
care if they were going to catch her at that point.
She was going to kill herself anyway, but she was
still aiding her identity, So that that really points towards
murder to me. Oh, what year was this, nineteen seventy.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
What would be going on then?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Hmm, year after Woodstock.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I'm just trying to think for spying, who would do?
What country? It was very much Cold War time. Yeah,
Russian she spoke with. She said German phrases and stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
She was with a German officer.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Could be Masade, it could be Russia, it could be Ukrainian,
could be anybody.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Everybody was spying on everybody. They still are today. Yeah.
Oh yeah, So this one's it's a really strange case.
You go in a lot of different directions with I
think spy is the most obvious, but it's far from certain,
you know.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
What I mean.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
But I think that's what was going on.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Crime reporter Newt Havoc may have put it best when
he said, personally, I am totally convinced that this was
a murder. She had various identities, she operated with codes,
she wore wigs, she traveled from town to town, and
she switched hotels after only a few days. This is
what the police call conspiraciest spiratory behavior. And I agree

(52:02):
with everything he just said. So the Isdel woman was
only meant to be a temporary placeholder, like Jane Doe
here in America. They just called her that because that's
where she was found, in the Isdel region, And unfortunately
for her today, fifty five years later, that's still what
she's known as because they do not know who.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I wonder if they've rerun her DNA nowadays.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
No, they only developed the profile recently. They just they've
they've had no matches. It's like in the system, you know,
so if a family member of a turns up but.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Running through twenty three and meter that actually went bankrupt,
ancestry DNA or something they're selling. All that DNA information
is being sold to a drug company.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
That doesn't surprise me at all.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yep, I saw a congressional thing about it. All that
information that wasn't supposed to be sold is being sold
to a drug company.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
All that DNA always unreal awesome story anymore. As with
the other two cases, guys, right in, let us know
what you think happened to the ISDEL woman, who she was,
or what she might have been doing. We'd love to
hear from you.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, go ahead and oh put that on Spotify if
you can, or just send the messages to us.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
We did have a poll on Spotify last week, and
it looks like all of you think that we could
beat boys, and.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Which was the correct answer, So you guys got it right.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Just go to one hundred this week. Thank you, guys,
thank you for taking the time. We appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yes, definitely, and great stories, man, I liked those a lot.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
I appreciate that, but.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I know that I think the first one. I don't know.
The first one was definitely that I think is that dude? Yeah,
the second one, I want to blame a shark because
I hate sharks so much, but it's really that's tough, man.
This lady I think was a.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Spy, probably a spy. The creative that they were never
able to identify you enough for all these years is strange,
and uh, yeah, I think I think it was likely murder.
But she took those took so many steps to hide
her identity. She she was obviously good today's technology. Fifty
five years later, they still don't know who she is.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, anybody for another reason that makes me think it
was a spine.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Anybody protecting her is dead now, you know what I mean,
just the circle that the cloak. They're all dead now.
So but you'd think it would have come out after
all these years, but they still don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Who she is still nothing.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
So obviously very good at what she did.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
All right, great job, Bud, And uh, we're gonna end
that there, and we're gonna head on over to the firepit.
We'll catch over there. I guess you know what time
it is. I can't tie to that. Fine. All right, guys,
before I get started here, if you have any stories

(54:40):
that you want to send in to us, we would
appreciate it. Be on the Shadows two o seven at
gmail dot com. All right, this one comes to us
from Adrian. Had this one for a little while. I've
been pushing off a little bit because it was real
long and I wanted I wanted to be able to
fit it in. But this will be a little bit
longer episode. So this one comes from Adrian. Hey guys,

(55:03):
I love your podcast and I'm a huge fan. I'm
pretty reluctant to tell this story because I was, and
still am to an extent, a pretty skeptical person when
it comes to supernatural and I still try to rationalize
what I experienced in this house to this day. Me
and my wife had been married about a year and

(55:25):
were living in a small, noisy apartment complex. While the
constant banging, ceiling stomping, and party noises every single night
from the people above and next to us, along with
being right next to the main stairwell, the wife wasn't
able to get decent sleep because during the day and
needed I'm sorry, fuck that up. The wife wasn't able

(55:48):
to get the decent sleep during the day that she
needed because she worked a twelve hour shift at night.
Because of this, I decided to buy a house. After
seeing a bunch of houses of our realtor. We decided
on a nice, older brick home built in nineteen seventy.
It was in a very quiet neighborhood with older homeowners

(56:09):
and really large pine trees. The best part and what
sold it for me, was the large inground pool in
the backyard. What I noticed to be strange during the
home showing were the motion detection lights around the home,
which was quite unusual. Out of the dozen or so

(56:30):
homes we had looked at, this was the only one
that had them, and that wasn't a common thing back then.
The realtor told us that the owner had them installed
for his wife's safety because she had a person that
kept coming to the house bothering her. But that was
no longer a problem. That's something you want to be
a little afraid of when you buy a house. Yeah,

(56:53):
I want that person showing up for you a red flag,
right That should have been my first red flag. The
other thing I noticed was that even in the middle
of the day, with the bright sun and a cloudless sky,
the majority of the house was pretty dark, even with
the windows open and with one hundred watt light bulbs

(57:16):
the owner had in their light fixtures. But I made
nothing of it. One room had a very small window
and the walls were painted a dark green that could
have been mistaken for black with the lights off. After
buying the house, I painted that room mint green and
that helped a little. I put six hundred watt bulbs
in two standard lamps, and the room was still dark.

(57:39):
Soon after we moved in, I noticed other odd things, like,
no matter how clean I kept the house or how
much bug barrier spray I put down, there are always
a lot of little black beetles that would find everywhere.
They were mostly dead or dying, and in small piles.
We had the pest control people over many many times

(57:59):
and could and would still find these beetles everywhere. Also,
the wooden door that closed off the hallway that led
to the bedrooms at the opposite end of the house
had a wood grain pattern that looked like the devil's head,
complete with pointy horns and a pointed beard. With a
paint roller and a bucket of paint primer mix, it

(58:22):
took me around five or six coats to completely cover it.
It kept bleeding through and was fairly visible with the
previous thin coats. I also decided to permanently nail all
the wooden windows shut, except for the bathroom windows for
obvious reason, because of what the realtor said, in whom

(58:44):
was probably the former owner's wife's stalker. One night, I
walked into the spare bedroom to get something and I
noticed the smell of magnolia flowers, and then when I
walked into my son's bedroom, it smelled like burning tar,
even though all the windows in the house were completely
nailed shut and sealed off. Late at night, when my

(59:08):
wife was at work and I was and I and
my small son were home, I would often hear footsteps
in our attic. I tried to dismiss it as maybe
a small animal that had gotten in there, but there
were no signs of entry. When I climbed up and
looked around the inside and outside of the attic, the
footsteps also sounded like an adult and definitely not like

(59:32):
a small animal. Several friends who spent the night over
and housemates also heard the footsteps. At the time, my
son was under five years old. He had a lot
of toys in his room, along with a small TV.
If I was studying late at night, I would sometimes
passed by his room and his led Thomas the train
blanket would light up and start flashing red, or his

(59:56):
TV would flicker on, or a battery powered toy which
start moving on its own. That creeped me out, but
I dismissed it as electrical problems or possibly battery issues.
I also set up a baby monitor system in his
bedroom because it was a good distance being on the
opposite side of the house. I once heard someone whisper

(01:00:17):
over the monitor it's under the rock. I immediately ran
to his room, and no one was there. What was
disturbing was that we had a large fake rock in
our backyard that hid the old broken pool salt system.
I never looked under it. On another occasion, I heard
him screaming at the top of his lungs and I ran,

(01:00:37):
only to find him peacefully asleep under his covers. Another time,
I heard children's laughter over the monitor in the dead
of night, around two AM. I walked over to a
window and looked out into our pitch black backyard to
see if there were any any kids actually playing. There
were none. All of these things occurred around midnight, four

(01:01:00):
or five am. My wife never believed any of the
weird things I told her were happening in the house
until one night, as we were watching a movie in
our living room, we heard something or someone banging loudly
on a door in our adjacent kitchen. I grabbed a
Machetecho's not playing. It's happened to have a machete.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
I'd have one ready to blame them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
I got guns ah I had nearby, and we both
slowly went into the kitchen. We were both surprised to
hear the loud banging was coming from underneath the sink cabinet.
We slowly approached it, and I whispered to my wife
to open it quickly and I'll run in the other room. No,
open it quickly, and I will chop up anything that

(01:01:49):
comes out from underneath there with my machete. She quickly
opened it and there was nothing. I tried searching online
about our home's history and found it had a bunch
of previous owners that kept the house for between two
and four years each before they would sell it. I
even went to my local library and went through their
microfish film and couldn't find any other information on the house.

(01:02:15):
We had the home blest had a priest come and
bless it, and another priest my brother in law, held
an actual mass inside the house, but strange things kept
happening at dusk. The house would give you a serious
case of the hebegbis. Back in the day, Sumter was
small and an underdeveloped city. Everything was shut down at

(01:02:37):
nine pm, even our local walmart would close at nine pm.
Before the twenty four hour super Walmart was built, Anyone
walking around outside after nine pm was considered suspicious. At
seven pm or whenever it got dark, I would lock
the house doors with multiple dead bolts that I installed.

(01:02:58):
Anytime you were alone in that house house, you would
get the feeling that someone or something was watching you.
It would make the hairs stand up on the back
of your neck and on your arms. After five years
of this, I was able to get a job in
a different part of the state and we moved into
a new home. But I wasn't able to sell the
old house because the housing market was pretty weak at

(01:03:20):
the time, so I had to rent it out. After
several years of shitty tenants that kept destroying my house,
I decided to give up on renting and put it
on the market. I would drive the three hour round
trip after my eight to twelve hour work shift to
do repairs on the house before putting it up for sale.

(01:03:42):
There was one time that I had to watch my
son and couldn't make the trip, so I asked my
buddy to do some painting for me. When we met
up later, he told me that the house had given
him the creeps as he painted late into the night,
and that the hares would stand up on the back
of his neck. He said it felt like something was
watching him. The final straw that the house gave me

(01:04:04):
started on a Friday after work. I had decided that
I would drive to my old house do some repairs,
sleep over, and knock out the final repairs over the
weekend in one go. I loaded all my tools, equipment,
and supplies into the mini van and drove the hour
and a half and quickly got to work. As the
sun slowly set, it quickly got dark. I decided to

(01:04:28):
get some takeout before it was too late. By the
time I got back and parked in the driveway, it
had already gotten pitch black. I unlocked the side door
and went in. I closed and locked a series of
doors behind me that led all the way to the
bedroom hallway, including the hallway door that had the devil
in the wood grain that I painted over. I went

(01:04:50):
to the bedroom, locked the door behind me, ate my food,
brushed my teeth, unrolled my sleeping bag, and finally fell
asleep after a long while. The next thing I remember
was waking up in a weird haze. Early the next morning,
around five am, with barely any sunlight, and hearing multiple
male voices talking in the hallway outside the bedroom.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Fuck man, that's creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
They were mumbling to each other about robbing and killing me.
I quietly grabbed my cellphone and called my wife. I
didn't call nine one one because the house had an
automatic security alarm in the past, and the police had
shown up several times for false alarms, and I didn't
want this to be another one of those. My wife

(01:05:34):
picked up the phone and I whispered to her to
call my friend and have him slowly drive by the
house to see if anyone had parked in our driveway
or yard. It took several minutes, and he eventually passed
by and told her that he saw nothing. I decided
right there and then that if I was going to die,
I wasn't going to die. Cowering in fear and hiding,

(01:05:56):
I grabbed my machete I used to trim the tree
with me, and I slowly unlocked the bedroom door, flung
it wide open, jumped out, screaming, get the fuck out
of my house right now. Nothing. No one was there.
There was nothing except the echo of my screams reverberating

(01:06:17):
through the empty house. I promised myself to never sleep
in that house again, and I didn't any additional work
on it. I made sure to drive there during the day,
finish the repairs, and pack up all my equipment before dusk,
and drive the hour and a half back to my
new home. I had some of the worst nightmares of

(01:06:37):
my life in that house, nightmares I wouldn't wish on
my worst enemy. Almost every night, I'd dream of demons
chasing me and my small son. I'd be running away,
carrying him with me. I would get to a point
where I would run out of breath and couldn't outrun
them anymore, and I would resort to hiding him where
the demons couldn't find him. The demons would find me instead.

(01:06:58):
They would slowly tear me apart, piece by piece. Sometimes
it would throw me off a cliff hundreds of feet
in the air, and I would hit the ground and
I would wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes with
unexplained bruises. Other times they would slice me up in
my dreams, and I could see and feel the blood
leaving my body. But just before the moment that I

(01:07:20):
was supposed to die. I would wake up. I would
feel a heavy sadness and or emptiness in me as
I put on my military uniform and headed to work
on base, which wasn't much better. I know that feeling.
I worked on the house in ninety nine percent by
myself from August until April of the next year, until

(01:07:41):
it finally sold. I would drive almost every day after
work to fix it up. I wound up taking a
fifteen thousand dollars loss on it, but it was worth
it to me, as I felt a heavy weight lifted
off my shoulders. Even though all this, I still remained
pretty skeptical. Recently, I passed by the house when I

(01:08:03):
was in the city, and it would always be overcast
with no sunshine, and the house looked kind of gray.
To me, the house actually looked and seemed like it
was feeling sad. A small part of me missed that
house and the good memories made in it, and a
very large part of me does not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
That's a badass story.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
That's it's a great story.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
It's well written, very well written and detailed.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Yeah, and this this could have been our story. I
could have done this as a story, you know. Yeah,
there's a lot of this stuff is typical and un
a haunted house, but it sounds it seems demonic.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Come on, it does. That's what I was thinking when,
especially when he was in the bedroom with the voices
outside the door with ghost is. I mean, he was
either hearing something that had happened, which sounds really unlikely,
the two ghosts talking about robbing the guy, right, like
one of those loop hauntings were talking about Yeah, or
it was demonic. Ghosts don't stand outside and and you know,
make shit up like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Right, A lot of a lot of ghost are not
they don't even know you're there, or the ones that do.
You know that they're not going to talk about robbing you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
I mean, that's the tough conversation to scare him. He
was either hearing something that happened in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Its residual. Yeah, it could be residual, but yeah, I
mean with the dreams and stuff like that, it makes
it sound like it was demonic for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
That's a creepy fucking story.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Yeah, it really is. This creepy house. Good thing you
sold it pal for poor people who I'm guessing he
didn't disclose. You know what you feel bad? You know
you gotta sell it, you gotta you gotta get rid
of it. You don't want to tell the people who
are buying it, but at the same time you kind
of want them, but you're like, I can't. You know,
it's ain't the demon.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
We're taking him with.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
It's part of the family now, he's one of us,
well know of us. That great, great story, Adrian. Sorry
took us so long to get to that one. I
needed that episode I could fit it in on. But
thank you very much. And you guys, if you have
your stories, get them in be on the Shadows two
o seven at gmail dot com and we will catch

(01:10:06):
you in the next one letter.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Guys,