May 18, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode, we explore the eerie history of Palmyra Atoll, a remote island steeped in tales of shipwrecks, pirate legends, and unexplained disappearances. After touching on the island's geological features, we dig into the story of the pirate ship La Esperanza and the island's dark reputation, as well as a series of mysterious murders and the so-called 'Palmyra Curse'.
All in all, this is the prologue that sets the tone for our deeper investigation into the 1974 Sea Breeze murders.
ALL OUR LINKS:
Link Tree: https://bcr.link/s
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/BlackCatReport
SOURCES:
Best darn resource for info and facts about Palmyra Atoll: https://palmyraarchive.org/
Legend of La Esperanza: https://palmyraarchive.org/exhibits/legend-of-the-esperanza/
Journey of La Esperanza: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?femb=1&ll=-16.16239675036577%2C-163.82009516551835&mid=19xttceTvJmysBkPCAK9IUSZIlpY&z=2
WWII Footage of Palmyra being Worked on by USMC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQZwZezzx9M
The Curse of Palmyra Island By Curt Rowlett: http://www.strangemag.com/palmyra.html
TAGS:
#palmyra #cursed #truecrime #paranormal #island #pirate #treasure #coldcase #ghoststories #bermudatriangle #phenomena
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction and Live Setup
00:01 Setting the Stage for Palmyra Atoll
02:11 First Sighting and Discovery of Palmyra Atoll
05:43 Geology and Geography of Palmyra Atoll
08:16 The Legend of La Esperanza
10:31 Pirates Stranded on Palmyra Atoll
11:40 The Curse of Palmyra
17:09 Mysterious Events on Palmyra
17:16 USS Angel 1870 - Brutally Murdered
17:56 The Mysterious Island of Palmyra
21:29 Palmyra During WWII
24:56 Hal Horton - Mysterious Phenomenon on Palmyra During WWII
26:33 Strange Disappearances and the Palmyra Curse
27:44 Loveable Banter
29:45 1987 and 1989 Palmyra Mysteries
33:38 Clean Up Efforts Around Palmyra Atoll
35:20 Tom Wolfe - The Palmyra Atoll Murders
38:52 Community Engagement and Future Episodes
MUSIC CREDITS:
Outro Music: Lounge Jungle by Curt S D Macdonald
https://download.audiohero.com/track/41504269
Music Licensing Agreements: https://blackcat.report/music-licensing-agreement
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello, everyone and welcome to SODA 131 of the Black Cat
Report. My name is GAIL and joining me
here today Culpepper, Virginia'snine time sailboat waxing
champion, Joey Lee. Joey.
Thank you. Honestly, it's they did, like I
was telling you earlier when youknow, we talked offline, they
(00:21):
gave me one trophy for nine years.
They actually cancelled the 10thyear, not because I kept winning
it, but just because they ran out of wax.
I heard there were some allegations that there wasn't
actually a championship and you were just waxing people's boats.
Do you have anything to say about?
That that was a championship. I won, I won.
(00:43):
OK, self-proclaimed. Well before we go any further, I
need to give a very special thanks and shout out friend of
the show Max who inadvertently inspired this series.
Now Max, when you get a chance check your e-mail.
Joey and I will be sending over a thank you message for being so
(01:05):
God damn awesome. Now this episode marks the start
of a deep dive. We'll be taking into a cursed
island, double homicide, cold case, prison escape, and last
but not least, a conviction involving the man who put
Charles Manson behind bars. In Part 1, we'll be setting the
(01:27):
tone for the dread that follows,A prologue for the dark
pressures. They'll be praying on the
protagonists in parts two and three, and maybe even 4.
Now, without further ado, let's raise the sails, scribble down
our best schoolboy jokes, and set off for Palmyra.
(01:47):
It's whole. I didn't see you there.
It all started early. This morning from hunting ghosts
to Bigfoot UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I. Always wanted to see AUFO.
Oh, I was. I was researching for your
entertainment. That's Bigfoot's cat.
He basically wrote the book on Monaco.
We aren't really comedians. What if Buddha did cocaine?
The Addams family on meth. This is.
(02:09):
The Black Hat report. See you on the other side.
After waking up three times in arow, Captain Edmund Fanning
could no longer ignore the suffocating feeling of a dark
omen settling in and radiating through his every nerve and
thought. As the blanket of night toyed
with his fears, this anxiety built until he was finally
(02:33):
compelled to leave his cabin andwalk out onto the deck.
The American ship Betsy on June 13th, 1798.
All of the gut instinct premonition or dismiss it as
just plain old luck. Captain Fanning ordered the ship
to stop and pitch black waters and sit still for the night,
(02:56):
telling the crew men to scan their surroundings for danger.
Keep the ship in place until thelight of the morning would clear
up his fears. Sure enough, shortly after
Daybreak, with the aid of an eyeglass, a member of the crew
saw an unknown island just one mile away that the Betsy had
been heading straight towards. Surrounded by a massive expanse
(03:18):
of jagged reefs and swarmed by an innumerable amount of black
tip sharks, they had only narrowly avoided what would have
been a death sentence for the ship and its crew.
Well, the location and description of the island was
documented in that captain's log.
It was never officially reported.
(03:39):
If it had been, the fate of the next ship four years later may
have been a little different. November 7th 18 O 2.
Captain Cornelius Solly crashed the USS Palmyra straight into
the islands reefs as a result. Captain Solly became the first
(04:00):
known European to step foot ontoits shores.
Just how he and his crew made itoff the remote island seems to
have been forgotten to time. But having lost a vessel and
gained an unwanted vacation, it was his ship smashing into the
shore like a bottle of champagnethat officially christened the
island and gave it its name, Palmyra Atoll.
(04:23):
I'll have a way to name an island, and honestly, if you're
superstitious, a hell of a way to ingrain a really bad vibe
into an Irish, sure. Yeah, they definitely paid a
toll to get there. At least the first captain of
the Betsy could see. You know, if it would be
(04:43):
terrible if his ship was called the Bet Nazi and they just
didn't see the island and crashed into it.
And they were just about 80 years too early.
It's a fun fact here, just in case there's any Palmyra nerds
out there, which there are dedicated Palmyra nerds, I've
discovered them seem like awesome folks, depending on the
(05:08):
source you read. And I'm calling out here at
the.gov website that's dedicatedto Palmyra Atoll.
It is AUS territory. They say that Captain Sowley
sought shelter on the island andthat he didn't crash into it and
seek shelter just like yes and the distinguished captain sought
(05:32):
shelter on the island and discovered it.
A little fun fact, if you look up the USS Palmyra in the early
1800s, nearly every source mentions the fact that that the
ship crashed into the reefs. So while his history, his
history as a part of the US Navytotally spotless, look at the
(05:55):
ship he was captaining. It's he crashed into it.
They just kind of gloss over it.They're like he sought shelter.
You know we. You know, we came back and was
just like, my ship's fine. Can't you see it over there?
And it's just like a raft made out of barrels.
Pretty much. But that, that is something, if
you're looking up the very limited history, the very
(06:17):
cleaned up history around Palmyra, there's discrepancies.
And yeah, that eventually that was the point that I came to
where I was like, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna look him
up. I'm gonna look up his ship.
And I'm like, bingo. Every record says that it's
smashed right into it. So yeah, he's the 1st.
Person to start a smash burger, you know his smashed ship.
(06:39):
And then he was like, what wouldbe really awesome, we had
burgers that smashed. Some asburgers in paradise.
Now to get a better picture of Palmyra, we have to address a
little bit of its geology and geography.
First off, well, Palmyra is often called an island.
It's technically an atoll, whichis a collection of small islets
(07:03):
or small islands formed on top of reefs, in this case along the
mouth of an ancient volcano thatis sunk into the sea.
In total, Palmyra was originallycomposed of about 52 small
islands, mostly separated by a few feet of water, though later,
as a result of military construction projects during
(07:25):
World War 2, a lot of these small islands were combined.
Right, So these little islets, basically they destroyed a bunch
of coral, blew it up and startedconnecting all these little
islets together to make more land out in the ocean.
These islets form a horseshoe shaped swath of islands
(07:45):
totalling about 4.6 square miles, the likes of which are
surrounded underwater by an expansive reefs reaching out
from the shore into the deep blue, working almost like a
jagged crown of danger for ships.
All the while nestled in the center breasts 2 beautiful
lagoons like Azure gems just teeming with poisonous fish.
(08:12):
Beautiful, beautiful. All that said, Palmyra is the
quintessential island you're likely to picture when thinking
of a deserted tropical paradise in the ocean.
The the type of location the movie Castaway would be based
on, right? Like, it is exactly that island
with like the massive palm treeshanging over with coconuts,
(08:35):
beautiful white sand beaches, a lagoon in the center, tons of
sharks swimming around. It is perfect.
The typical island As for the location, Palmyra sits roughly
1000 miles southwest of Honolulu, HI, almost perfectly
dead center in the middle of thePacific Ocean, resting between
(08:58):
North America, South America, Asia and Australia, leaving at
just 352 miles north of the equator.
It is almost perfectly dead center between all these
continents, right? Say it's one of the most remote
places on the planet would honestly be a huge
understatement. It is up there.
(09:19):
If there's going to be a list of10 spots and the person making
the list knows about Palmera, it's probably number two or
three, right? Well, combined with its location
and near impossible accessibility, this makes it the
perfect place for buried treasure.
And this brings us to the tail of the pirate ship La Esperanza.
(09:43):
While it's often considered justan urban legend or a literary
trope that pirates bother to bury their treasure on remote
deserted islands, Palmyra may bethe exception or even the
inspiration behind the popular myth.
January 1st, 1816 pirates set off from Cayo Harbor and Peru
(10:05):
with their ship Esperanza, loaded up with gold, jewels and
artifacts from plundered Incan temples.
Very essence of every good pirate legend.
They set sail for what would be considered a pirate friendly
region of China, Macau, which ifit's current nicknames as the
(10:26):
Monte Carlo of the Orient and the Las Vegas of the East do any
justice to reflect it's more nefarious history, and it's safe
to assume that these pirates knew they'd be welcomed with
open arms and warm beds. Unfortunately though, fate was
waiting to weave a year long tale of doom and despair, which
began soon after La Esperanza hit the high seas.
(10:49):
And on January 5th, just five days after setting off from
Peru, La Esperanza was ravaged by an intense storm that snapped
their mainmast, leaving them floating at the will of the
tides in the middle of the ocean.
With no wind, they were easy prey for the likes of any
(11:09):
passing ship, fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you
look at it. And they didn't have to wait
very long, because shortly aftertheir mainsail was broken,
another pirate ship appeared andbegan blasting La Esperanza.
The battle was over before it started, and the crew, as well
as the treasure were both quickly captured.
(11:32):
Captives now on an enemy vessel.The sailors of Lasperanto would
remain jailed on this unnamed ship until February 13th, a full
43 days after originally taking off for China.
So they're just stuck cruising around as captives on the ship
like. Come on, we've been on the sea
long enough. We're trying to go home.
(11:52):
Like this sucks, this sucks for them that were like a promised
out of South America. They actually had them and
they're like, dude, we are set for life.
And it's like, and we're captured.
What sucks is that they already had their their treasures
because notoriously like you said, they don't really.
Pirates don't really bury their treasure because everybody
splits up the treasure evenly depending on their They're like
(12:16):
signed contract. And the captain would get his,
the boat Swain would get theirs.But they're on their way to the
Chinese pirate queen Zhengyi Sao, which we did an episode on
Exactly. Yeah.
They were going to her. This was like pirate Mecca.
Yep, Macau Mecca. At the time, like, yeah, the
(12:37):
Chinese pirate queen, she had set up like a safe haven in
China for them to go to. And that place still, it's
considered one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Fun fact about that it's it's seriously, it looks like Las
Vegas, but in China it is. It's, it's honest to its pirate
roots still to this day probably.
(12:58):
Still have pirates over there. Casino pirates guess what
happened? There was another freak storm
that came through, lasting this ship into coral reefs that were
nestled up against an island, busting its mainsail and
damaging it to the point of taking on water.
(13:19):
The sailors, all of them from both crews, worked for four days
and nights, trying frantically to repair the ruptured vessel
and free it from the razor sharpcoral it had become stuck on.
In the end they were ultimately successful ish and managed to
bandage up the ship just enough to hobble over to a nearby
island they had seen resting across the shark infested waters
(13:43):
about a mile away. The island was, of course,
Palmyra Toll. It was now February 17th when
the pirate crews made landfall in Palmyra again.
They started on January 1st. Yeah, it's a.
Long trip, long boy. So it was now February 17th when
(14:04):
the pirate crews made landfall in Palmyra.
Realizing the severity of their situation, they didn't hesitate
to bring the treasure ashore andbury their most precious cargo
before beginning the long process of scrapping their
damaged ship in an attempt to build a new vessel so they could
escape and call for rescue. After 120 days, 80 of the 90
(14:31):
total survivors were finally ready to set sail, each carrying
a small piece of gold with them as they took off from shore and
into the middle of the ocean. They were never heard from
again. Freak storm.
Good freak. Another freak storm.
They're just like, oh, come on, come on.
(14:52):
Another hurricane. When you see the location of
Palmyra Atoll on a map and you realize that like that's what
you're setting off into on a raft.
Yeah, No, dude. It's it's enough to give like,
geography anxiety, honestly. Like looking at that, it's like,
(15:13):
aw, hell yeah. You, you don't know if you might
get somehow crazily lucky and goto like American Samoa, which is
1000 something miles away, or goto Hawaii, or end up in
Antarctica, end up in Australia,end up in South America, end up
in North America, end up in Asia, like just anywhere you
(15:37):
were in the middle of the God damn ocean.
Yeah, and they use dead reckoning on their raft,
literally. Yeah.
They're just like, I mean, they have sex tents, you know,
they're they're measuring where they're going with their sex
tent and their tools and the map.
But like, dead reckoning is like, man, you get off by like a
little degree. You're probably you're the
(15:57):
difference between being in Hawaii on the beaches and being
in the belly of a shark with your boat in the bottom of the
sea is very close. And fun fact, I'm glad you
brought that up. We're gonna we're gonna cover
that and the, the murder series that's coming up on pull my
roads hole dead reckoning changes based on where you are
(16:18):
in accordance with the equator. Yeah.
So the math completely changes whether or not you're north or
South of the equator, being 350 something miles north of the
equator. Which way you're going, bud.
Yeah, you have to figure that out, which is just like man to
even fly a plane too. Like before that we had GPSS.
(16:42):
In the meantime, the 10 men remaining on Palmyra waited a
full year before finally giving up hope that the crew who had
left would ever return, at whichpoint they began working to
build their own rescue craft, a project that would come to
occupy every moment of their waking life for the next three
(17:03):
months. Forgot about those 10, thank
you. And on September 16th, 1817,
their preparations were finally complete and the 10 men drew
straws. In the end, 6 would leave on the
homemade wrath in a desperate attempt to brave the sea, while
four would stay behind to protect the looted treasure.
(17:27):
These six men drifted aimlessly in the ocean for 13 days before
a storm finally slowed before a storm finally swept through and
pulled four of their souls into the ocean depths.
Miraculously though, shortly after the deadly storm had
cleared, the 2 remaining piratesstill clinging to the now
(17:50):
shattered wrath of dear life were rescued by AUS whaler that
happened to be passing through the area.
But even still, the curse of Palmyra refused to let them go.
Of the two men rescued, one of them soon passed due to illness,
leaving only one man alive. This man, whose name was either
(18:13):
James Hines or James Edwards, would make it back to shore, but
was doomed to spend the next 30 days dying in the hospital.
It was during this time that he eventually passed along the
story of the wreck and the treasure to his bedside
attendant, a young man named Derry Connor.
(18:35):
Years would pass, and the story of pirates in buried treasure
would eventually make its way into the newspapers with
sensational headlines and calls for adventure, which ultimately
helped to fuel the tales of pirates burying their treasure
on deserted tropical islands. X marks the spot, baby.
This is one of the two examples in History of pirates actually
(18:58):
doing this that created the whole trope.
Yeah. Because it's.
Yeah, yeah, That's awesome. You know what would be really
funny, though? As if he was just like, you
know, he's dying in his bed and he's like, man, I've got to get
somebody else stuck on this curse, too.
And so he's just like, hey, I buried treasure there.
Didn't bear any treasure, just made them go get it.
I thought also you said you weregoing to say that the whaling
(19:21):
vessel was like, and it got hit by a storm and it's like.
And it got hit by a freak, a free coral reef storm that just
started flying. Start throwing coral reef out.
It's like, oh Jesus Christ, the guy's just.
And the four people, the four people, they're still alive.
They lived a good life, probably.
No clue what the fuck happened to them.
(19:41):
They I'm assuming so there was like a long chain of custody of
the story and how it got the people at the Palmyra archive,
which one of the main sources for, for this episode.
They did an excellent job with like a timeline of breaking down
who heard the story when they heard it, the locations, the
(20:03):
names. I'll be throwing up in the the
final cut for this episode. The actual newspaper articles,
like scans of the news, like multiple newspaper articles from
around the country where they were like pirates buried
treasure and it's like a cartoonof pirates burying the treasure.
There were calls, like literal calls for adventure where it's
like, we need 7 men to go out tosea to look for this.
(20:26):
Like it was a whole thing in theearly 1900s.
But this is where that that mythbasically came from, or at least
one of the main sources behind it, which is funny because,
well, it got so much coverage atthe time.
Like, so you had Treasure Island, which really popularized
the myth, right? But yeah.
(20:47):
And what's wild is like, even ifyou look up, like I Googled it,
just I was like, is it a myth that pirates bury treasure?
It only comes up with, like, oneexample.
It totally ignores this one. But this was one of the most
popular ones that was actually in the news at the time.
So always check the sources thatyou don't know exist.
(21:09):
That's what I never say. Yeah.
I think of it, I think of the idea of it is like, it's like a
savings account, right? And man, pirates don't have
savings accounts. Pirates are notoriously do not
have savings accounts. It's a save our ass account
basically, because it was. It's like, hey, here's enough
(21:30):
money to do whatever the hell you can do to come back to get
this treasure. They weren't going to assume
that of those like 80 people that went out, they were just
going to be like, yeah, we got to get back there.
We have treasure. It was like, no, no, we're going
to send you off with a bunch of money.
Y'all get a ship and stuff together, come back, get the
rest of it. We'll make sure that it's safe
and we stay here because it'd beway too risky to go off on this
(21:50):
like homemade little rinky dink ship with like all of the
massive amounts of treasure thatthey had.
So it was a very practical solution at the time.
It made sense in this example, yes, that they.
Very specific case, yeah. And it's not like they they
left. They kept sailors there to watch
it, you know, because and to remember where it is.
(22:11):
So it makes sense. Yeah.
And, well, what happened to the Pirates of La Esperanza can be
chalked up to bad luck. The mysteries surrounding
Palmyra's hole dig much deeper than simple tales of misfortune
or freak storms. Take for instance, what happened
on the island 63 years later in 1870 to the crew of the US ship
(22:32):
The Angel, who, crashing into the island's reefs, somehow
managed to cross the shark infested waters and make it
ashore, only to be found later by a rescue team, each one
violently murdered, their bodiestorn apart and scattered across
the island. What the hell happened?
(22:55):
What? Yeah.
What? Yeah, 'cause it sure as hell
wasn't these pirates from, you know. 60 years or 10 years?
Earlier they would have had. To be about like they would have
been about like 80 or 90. I guess most most pirates being
like 20 in early 20s, it was just one guy went crazy on the
ship. He just was like, all right,
(23:15):
time to go. Yeah, but then he would have had
to have, like, stabbed himself and everything to like it.
Was it? The way it was described was
just random spots all around theisland.
Like people had been getting chased.
They were stabbed together. There were bodies decomposing.
It was just everywhere. I mean you're, you're picturing
(23:37):
607080 people, like 80 somethingbodies scattered across a four
mile island just all over the place dead. 1870 right 1870
trying to think if there was anymaybe a a certain tribe that
just was, you know, who knows, you know, land this.
Island was completely uninhabited, yeah.
(23:57):
Well, like. That that people who are
constantly ending up there permanently and intentionally
inhabited. This island is uninhabited,
right? Or although there's some
conflicting stories around that,but for the most part, consider
this an uninhabited island again, unless there's a freak
storm or any ship travelling nearby.
(24:19):
Well, to quote now from those who've interviewed, some of the
many who've been stranded on theisland quote.
The survivors claim that the forests were home to shadowy
beasts that watched from the cover of trees, and the trees
themselves seem to whisper and creak in unsettling ways.
(24:40):
The sea and lagoon of the islandwere no less unpleasant and
unwelcoming. The sea life is said to be
poisonous to eat and there was astaggering number of highly
aggressive sharks prowling the waters there.
Many who survived the wrecks of their ships were ravaged by
sharks before they could make itto land, and it was said that it
(25:01):
was unsafe to so much as Wade and the lagoons.
That makes sense. Everything on this island is
trying to kill you. It's Australia, it's a, it's,
it's a mini Australia. You know, everything is trying
to kill you. You can't get anywhere.
And, you know, black tip sharks are notoriously, I, I won't say
(25:21):
mean, but they're aggressive, you know, and territorial.
And me and Gil, you talked, we talked about this offline and I
vehemently said that sharks are not bad, you know, they bite
you, but that that's how they, that's how they understand what
you are. That's how they sense you, you
know, And yeah, they're, they're, you know, black tip
sharks are very territorial and aggressive.
(25:43):
So if you're going in their areaand you might lose an arm, you
never know. Well.
With with that said, some sharkslike to nibble more than others,
and black tips are notorious forliking to nibble like they love
to nibble. They rarely will bite to the
point of like actually killing people.
They'll just take off an arm, you know, And while one's taken
(26:06):
off an arm and other one's takenoff a foot, the other one's
taken off a lake because they don't do the solitary kind of
thing. They kind of swim in large,
massive groups like this. So if one's getting curious,
there's another 20 behind them getting curious, and they're all
just hopping in and taking bites.
This is bad. This is really bad.
(26:27):
Yeah. That's what we'll call serial
killer snow. And they're just curious, you
know, just. Yeah.
Just curious. Yeah.
Chomp. Curious.
Yeah. Well.
It's no exaggeration to say thatover the past couple of
centuries, A countless number ofships would face their demise on
the uninviting shoreline of Palmyra its whole, with some
(26:48):
crews spending days, others years, and still others
disappearing completely. But the curse of Palmyra isn't
limited to just bad weather and dangerous waters.
During the early stages of WorldWar 2, Palmera Toll played a key
role as a refueling station for US aircraft on their way to the
(27:09):
South Pacific, a perfect middle point between Pearl Harbor and
Japan. With large lagoons in the center
and thick rings of jagged reef stretching out from its
shoreline, Palmero was a naturally protected fortress in
the middle of the ocean and as soon as the war started the US
(27:30):
military made it a key base of operations.
Along with building landing strips, a few roads and military
barracks. They use dynamite to blast out a
narrow channel in the coral, resulting in a lane that was
just wide enough to fit mid sizevessels and submarines.
Quick side note, this precariousman made channel feature that's
(27:53):
still present today obviously will become comically relevant
to our story about the double murder later on, so keep keep
that in mind now. Noted.
Like I said this, this was the perfect base to have in the
middle of the ocean. The Navy could easily bring
ships into the lagoon and protect them with land.
(28:14):
They had underwater mines scattered all over the place and
along the shores. There was a quarter mile
outstretch of natural razor wirein the form of reefs stretching
out from the shores. Right?
So. And that's not even to mention
all the cannons and guns placed along the perimeter.
You could not get a better island, a forward operating base
(28:37):
for things like this, right? Just picture picture how Harpers
normally look. They're they're facing out to
the ocean. They're facing out to the sea.
They're completely vulnerable tolong distance like straight
shots. And it's, this is literally
protected by land all the way around it.
(28:57):
And these trees, I think that the average height of the trees
on the island, even though the island itself is on average
about 5 to 6 feet above sea level, the height of the trees
is 75 to 90 feet. So you're completely obscured
and you have one narrow channel which is basically like a one
way St. for submarines and shipsto come straight into the center
(29:20):
of this lagoon. Now these defenses and I, I
think this is funny, but these defenses were so good and the
island was so remote and franklyhard to find that it was only
attacked one time almost comically when a Japanese
subsurface started firing at thebase then ran away after being
(29:43):
shot at one time. The crew basically saw what they
were dealing with. It just took the fuck.
Yeah, it's like, don't come back, you know?
What? Fuck this place.
Don't come back to this place. You have not to mention the
countless shipwrecks, which are debris and stuff all over the
water. And we'll get to that in a
second with like how many freaking shipwrecks there are
(30:03):
there. But you also have coral that's
just formed like crazy all over the place.
Then you have mines in the water.
Yeah. And then you can't even see what
the hell you're shooting at because of the trees.
So everybody's water level for the most part, right?
And they're just like, I don't that literally we can't even get
(30:24):
close to this. Fucking yeah.
There's nowhere to attack. Yeah.
And then as the sub was going away, it unfortunately was lost
in a freak storm. Freak underwater storm broke.
Yeah, freak underwater storm. No, so this really was the hell
(30:45):
of a place to to defend and to kind of like have like,
lockdown. Like, this is, yeah, this
island. It cannot be more of the the
trope or the archetype of a cursed island, right?
Like, it's just like if Doctor Evil needed to buy a new piece
of real estate to put, like, hisheadquarters on, it's this
island. This is the perfect fucking
island. Literally, the water's filled
(31:06):
with sharks and poisonous fish. I mean, come.
On dude even better based. On top of an old volcano, you
know, shipwrecks everywhere. All he needs is laser beams to
attach to the sharks heads and he'd be perfect.
Freaking lasers. Yeah.
All that said, the strange activities surrounding Palmyra
didn't let up when the Navy came.
Quoting now from Hal Horton, whowas a Navy officer stationed on
(31:30):
Palmyra from 1942 to 1944. Quote Once one of our patrol
planes went down near the island.
We searched and searched, but didn't find so much as a bolt or
piece of metal. It was weird, like they dropped
off the edge of the earth. Another time, a plane took off
(31:51):
from the runway, climbed to a couple 100 feet and turned in
the wrong direction. They were supposed to go north
and they went S instead. It was broad daylight.
We couldn't figure it out. There were two men aboard that
plane and we never saw them again.
(32:11):
We had some very bad luck on that island.
Old salts in the Pacific called it the Palmyra Curse.
The island is very small, you could fly over it at 10,000 feet
and not see it if there were a few clouds in the sky.
Once we heard a plane overhead trying to find us, but he
crashed in the drink before he could find the runway.
(32:36):
We didn't get to the poor guy fast enough.
Sharks found him first. Damn.
So now and this, this goes on too.
I didn't include it here in the script, but even up into like
the 70s and in the 80s, because there's a small runway that was
(32:57):
built there by the Navy, it was all built out of crushed coral
and everything. Planes were still wrecking
there. Like this is still a constant
place for for planes just crashing.
And sometimes it makes no fucking sense.
It's it's like the case of the plane takes off from the runway,
totally fine, gets up in the sky.
It's a crystal clear day, not a cloud anywhere.
And they're like, all right, we need to head north, turn hard to
(33:19):
the right and they just start going South and just
disappeared. It's like.
Damn, what the? Fuck is going and it's like all
different types. It's military planes, charter
planes, private, just like whatever.
People are just their navigation's all screwed up.
Yeah, yeah. So not just freak storms and not
just water and coral like planesare getting messed up here too.
(33:40):
It gives a whole new meaning to dead reckoning.
You know all the planes are wrecking as they come off the.
Runway dead wrecking. Dead wrecking.
Yeah, Tom Cruise will be sad about that.
He'll probably see them. Well, as World War 2 progressed
and the US made headway in the Pacific theater, more and more
islands that were much closer toJapan were captured and this
(34:04):
quickly led to a deprioritizing of Palmyra's military base until
eventually it was abandoned by the military all together.
Meaning this beautiful creepy island also has military ruins
now overgrown by jungle. Definitely not helping the
Creek. Even better, even.
(34:25):
Better. This is getting up there with
like basically the set for lost at this point.
It's just like, oh. Yeah, that would be interesting
if that was like a idea that wasbased off of, you know, maybe
they took some of the ideas fromthat island of the atoll.
You know, Palma, I told them, you're like, maybe this is good
for the Lost show. I would not be surprised in the
(34:45):
least. Like this is the most
stereotypical deserted island that you could possibly imagine
where it's just like, Oh no, I'mI'm trapped on this island, this
crazy deserted island. I barely made it here after
sharks after swimming through shipwrecks and there's giant
crabs and massive coconuts everywhere and there's military
barracks and I know there's a plane crashed here.
(35:08):
It's just like what the fuck is happening on this damn island?
And fun fact, I didn't include Ithink the largest, if not up
there in the top largest varietyof coconut in the world grows
there. So there's literally comically
large coconuts also growing. On them I'm good, then I'm good
living there. And coconut crabs, which get
(35:32):
massive. These coconut crabs have never
developed any sort of fear or whatsoever of humans, so going
and getting dinner is as easy aswalking up to a crab and it's
grabbing the motherfucker. You know, you know, there's some
scary you unlocked like a deep rooted fear in me because I
don't know if you've ever read the Dark Tower series.
It's so good. They made a movie.
I think I talked about this before.
(35:53):
Maybe it was terrible, but in itone of the realms that the
gunslinger goes to. Roland.
He ends up on the shore and it'sthese fucking monster crabs and
they're like just biting him andtrying to kill him.
It's like that. It's such a deep seated fear now
that just be like, oh, there's monster crabs.
I mean, these are like those crabs are like the high crabs.
(36:17):
Military hat and they're just coming after me.
Yeah, they're like kind of like lobster.
Boy, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Coughing on you. Take that.
Well, we're gonna skip ahead a few decades to two more tales.
Not the last two, but two more tales, both of which were
researched and documented by Kurt Rowlett in his article
(36:40):
titled The Curse of Palmyra Island, which I'll have a link
to in the show notes quote. In 1987, after acting on a tip
from a fishing vessel, a Coast Guard C130 aircraft sighted A
sailboat just southeast of Palmyra.
An aerial inspection revealed nosigns of life on board the
(37:02):
drifting sailboat, and Coast Guard personnel noted that the
mast was broken off and that thesails were torn and shredded.
Freaks down a. Week after the siding, the
vessel was boarded by Coast Guardsmen who found the skeletal
remains of owner Manning Edward on board.
(37:24):
The cause of death was undetermined, but prior to
leaving on his extended three-year voyage through the
Pacific, Manning had spoken excitedly about his plan to
visit an uninhabited island called Palmyra.
God of. Course, now we have ships with
(37:45):
literal skeleton captains floating around.
Trying to go, I mean what? The fuck?
Do you know how scary that wouldbe?
You like get on a ship and you're like, hey, is there
anybody here and just like. That's horrifying though, yeah.
Dude, how so? How?
Sucks for that dude. He's not on land, so you got to
(38:06):
consider that and I'm assuming, you know, if it's a large enough
boat. I mean even like mid size, I can
almost guarantee you there's rats.
I mean rats everywhere, especially at sea they will get
into shit. So he had to have been floating
long enough for the rats and theflies to literally eat all of
the flesh from his body. Yeah, maybe some breaths too, if
(38:29):
he was inside, if he was outside, you know, unless he was
like, he probably had like a, you know, probably had like a
little underneath place where hecould sleep, Yeah, you know, So
I wonder if he was in there, if he was like up by The Who knows.
Still has his pornhub. Like just playing on repeat.
This is the most embarrassing way to get discovered.
I'm all bone well. Continuing on quote 1989,
(38:58):
another sailboat named the Sea Dreamer, in transit from San
Diego to Hawaii, caught a storm that pushed her far off course
to the South and onto Palmyra Island.
After a brief stay on the island, the boat again departed
for Hawaii and then disappeared.An extensive search by the Coast
(39:19):
Guard between Palmyra and Hawaiiand even along the coast of the
United States failed to turn up any trace of the Sea Dreamer and
the four members of the Graham Hughes family that were her
crew. So it was really sad if it's the
one that I'm thinking of becauseagain, there's laundry list of
these accounts. It was like a father and his
(39:40):
three daughters on like a fun sailing exponition and they just
goes to and we also have to consider this is 1989.
This is not the 1800s. Yeah, yeah, there's GPS, not the
semi, semi GPS. There's GPS, there's radar,
there's radio. Maybe not, maybe not SAT phones
at this time, but there's there's a radio system.
(40:02):
This is these waters are gettinga lot more sailed right at the
time. You have cargo ships and stuff
like that going through these waters still just straight up
disappearing, right? Yeah.
I mean, even even sea liners nowadays.
Guy was researching to you for acouple episodes.
We're doing later. 2015 cargo ship completely missing, sunk.
They know that it sunk and the people died 'cause they have the
(40:25):
transcripts of the the radio, you know, the radio signals, the
emergency, the Maydays. But they, yeah, they never found
the cargo ship. So think how big those things
are, like football field size. And they're also gone.
Just the water is just so volatile, you never know.
It's like it's untamed, you know?
It's just Palmyra, is told. Just Going around and
(40:46):
assassinating. Different.
It's moving. Yeah, it's moving.
It's like I did not know. That was there.
Crashes and wrecks are such a thing around Palmyra that I had
to look this up here. It's fascinating to me.
In the year 2000, the US government's Nature Conservancy,
(41:09):
which now pretty much runs Palmyra, had spent roughly $5.5
million just clearing shipwrecksout of the water around the
island. Damn dude.
You know, these, these awesome science nerds, 90% of the work
that they're doing is just volunteering.
(41:30):
They're not getting paid. If they're spending that much
money doing it, it's not becausethey're getting paid well
hourly. They're working their ass off to
to try to recoup. Like the natural habitats to
help with the coral reefs do this and that.
There are so many fucking shipwrecks around this goddamn
island. Imagine the archaeological finds
(41:51):
too, of like ships from the 1800s.
From the 1700s, it's fifteens, probably sixteens.
Speaking of Speaking of archaeological, if you want to
feel shocked and old, $5.5 million in the year 2000
adjusted for inflation today comes out to a little more than
$9.2 million. Oh.
(42:18):
Oh, so does that make? You feel a little old yet a.
Little bit. So it's 4 million more dollars,
4 million more dollars than yeah, for just twenty.
Well, technically it's a quarterof a decade, buddy.
It's quarter of a it's quarter of a century.
We're 1/4 of a century. In there.
But you know, normally when we talk inflation, it's like, oh,
(42:39):
adjusted for inflation, a day is1917 money or some shit.
Yeah, I was like, how much does that really?
And I was like, God damn, this is also the week of my 35th
birthday, so I was like, I really need to feel older.
Yeah. A just for inflation.
That's something an old timer would say.
Yeah. Well.
Yeah, Yeah, I believe so. I believe so.
(42:59):
Finally, before we wrap up with the prologue for upcoming series
on the Palmyra Atoll murders, I wanted to touch on the incident
that set off my personal quest to look into the creepy history
of the island. His centers around a band named
Tom Wolfe, who would eventually go on to testify in the murder
trials and provide key information about the events
(43:21):
that took place on Palmyra. Early one morning, just a month
before he was set to take the witness stand, Tom was walking
along the coast of the Puget Sound in Washington state when
only 40 feet from his front door.
Floating along the shoreline, henoticed what could be described
as a poster tube lightly knocking against the rocks.
(43:47):
He walked up to it and opened it.
Inside were three detailed charts of Palmyra Atoll, the
island still calling to him fromover 3000 miles away.
And that, my friend, is the unsettling setting for the 1974
(44:11):
double murder. We'll be starting next week.
And in the meantime, drop a comment on this episode wherever
you're listening, but especiallyif it's on Podcast Attic.
That's right. Podcast Attic listeners, we love
you too. Are you addicted to know the
names of any other cursed or haunted islands that you've
(44:31):
heard of? And if you'd be down to spend
the night there, because I wouldtotally go to, Omar Told Now and
Joey. Yes.
Before we can start this series on Meowder, we gotta take a
moment to thank all the people making the impossible amounts of
murder mystery and mayhem here at Black Cat Report possible.
(44:54):
We do. Our very lovely Patreon members.
Hit it. Bud, Don Thomas, Little Mystery,
Bobby Betsbe, Lucas, Tim D Max. You're getting a shout out soon.
Ian Morgan, Dragon Paw from the Star Blood Chronicles podcast
(45:14):
Tim Miller from Millers Monsters.
Marissa Gavin, the Fearless leader of the chicken called
Rochelle, Eve, Jaden, Jackie, Yellow Bear, Dwayne AKA
Snatched. Watch Alyssa, Bree, Michael,
Extreme, Kristen from the Paranormal Girl podcast James,
(45:34):
and most unsinkably, our sexiestproducer, Poppy Kitty.
Coppy Kitty. Joey, any other shout outs?
Any other things? Yes, please, if you get the
chance, hop into our patreonpatreon.com/blackcat
(45:54):
report. Yeah, you can get all the cool
things we got cup of Joey. We've got monthly game nights
that we've been doing which by the way, thank you copy Kitty
for sending us new games. And if you were out there,
please, if you want to see me and Gil play games and we
haven't released last week's, last month's, and we never will
(46:16):
because game night. But if you want to see us do
Game Night Live, let us know. Tell us a game, Send us a game.
You can find. You can find you can get our
address somewhere. I don't know, just message us
and tell us you want to send ouraddress.
We'll send you something. We'll send you something cool
for doing it again. Follow us at
patreon.com/blackcat Report. Follow us, get a lot of cool
(46:41):
stuff. Also, B3 Beer, booze and
Boogeyman, which is happening inabout DOS weeks on June the 7th
at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. The topic first responder.
So if you're a first responder, you know somebody that's our
(47:02):
first responder, get them to call in and tell us a story.
Anything paranormal, we want to hear it.
Thank you all for tuning into this week's episode.
Right back to you, Gil, if you got anything else.
We love y'all. We'll see you next week.
We do bye.
Hello, everyone and welcome to SODA 131 of the Black Cat
Report. My name is GAIL and joining me
here today Culpepper, Virginia'snine time sailboat waxing
champion, Joey Lee. Joey.
Thank you. Honestly, it's they did, like I
was telling you earlier when youknow, we talked offline, they
(00:21):
gave me one trophy for nine years.
They actually cancelled the 10thyear, not because I kept winning
it, but just because they ran out of wax.
I heard there were some allegations that there wasn't
actually a championship and you were just waxing people's boats.
Do you have anything to say about?
That that was a championship. I won, I won.
(00:43):
OK, self-proclaimed. Well before we go any further, I
need to give a very special thanks and shout out friend of
the show Max who inadvertently inspired this series.
Now Max, when you get a chance check your e-mail.
Joey and I will be sending over a thank you message for being so
(01:05):
God damn awesome. Now this episode marks the start
of a deep dive. We'll be taking into a cursed
island, double homicide, cold case, prison escape, and last
but not least, a conviction involving the man who put
Charles Manson behind bars. In Part 1, we'll be setting the
(01:27):
tone for the dread that follows,A prologue for the dark
pressures. They'll be praying on the
protagonists in parts two and three, and maybe even 4.
Now, without further ado, let's raise the sails, scribble down
our best schoolboy jokes, and set off for Palmyra.
(01:47):
It's whole. I didn't see you there.
It all started early. This morning from hunting ghosts
to Bigfoot UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I. Always wanted to see AUFO.
Oh, I was. I was researching for your
entertainment. That's Bigfoot's cat.
He basically wrote the book on Monaco.
We aren't really comedians. What if Buddha did cocaine?
The Addams family on meth. This is.
(02:09):
The Black Hat report. See you on the other side.
After waking up three times in arow, Captain Edmund Fanning
could no longer ignore the suffocating feeling of a dark
omen settling in and radiating through his every nerve and
thought. As the blanket of night toyed
with his fears, this anxiety built until he was finally
(02:33):
compelled to leave his cabin andwalk out onto the deck.
The American ship Betsy on June 13th, 1798.
All of the gut instinct premonition or dismiss it as
just plain old luck. Captain Fanning ordered the ship
to stop and pitch black waters and sit still for the night,
(02:56):
telling the crew men to scan their surroundings for danger.
Keep the ship in place until thelight of the morning would clear
up his fears. Sure enough, shortly after
Daybreak, with the aid of an eyeglass, a member of the crew
saw an unknown island just one mile away that the Betsy had
been heading straight towards. Surrounded by a massive expanse
(03:18):
of jagged reefs and swarmed by an innumerable amount of black
tip sharks, they had only narrowly avoided what would have
been a death sentence for the ship and its crew.
Well, the location and description of the island was
documented in that captain's log.
It was never officially reported.
(03:39):
If it had been, the fate of the next ship four years later may
have been a little different. November 7th 18 O 2.
Captain Cornelius Solly crashed the USS Palmyra straight into
the islands reefs as a result. Captain Solly became the first
(04:00):
known European to step foot ontoits shores.
Just how he and his crew made itoff the remote island seems to
have been forgotten to time. But having lost a vessel and
gained an unwanted vacation, it was his ship smashing into the
shore like a bottle of champagnethat officially christened the
island and gave it its name, Palmyra Atoll.
(04:23):
I'll have a way to name an island, and honestly, if you're
superstitious, a hell of a way to ingrain a really bad vibe
into an Irish, sure. Yeah, they definitely paid a
toll to get there. At least the first captain of
the Betsy could see. You know, if it would be
(04:43):
terrible if his ship was called the Bet Nazi and they just
didn't see the island and crashed into it.
And they were just about 80 years too early.
It's a fun fact here, just in case there's any Palmyra nerds
out there, which there are dedicated Palmyra nerds, I've
discovered them seem like awesome folks, depending on the
(05:08):
source you read. And I'm calling out here at
the.gov website that's dedicatedto Palmyra Atoll.
It is AUS territory. They say that Captain Sowley
sought shelter on the island andthat he didn't crash into it and
seek shelter just like yes and the distinguished captain sought
(05:32):
shelter on the island and discovered it.
A little fun fact, if you look up the USS Palmyra in the early
1800s, nearly every source mentions the fact that that the
ship crashed into the reefs. So while his history, his
history as a part of the US Navytotally spotless, look at the
(05:55):
ship he was captaining. It's he crashed into it.
They just kind of gloss over it.They're like he sought shelter.
You know we. You know, we came back and was
just like, my ship's fine. Can't you see it over there?
And it's just like a raft made out of barrels.
Pretty much. But that, that is something, if
you're looking up the very limited history, the very
(06:17):
cleaned up history around Palmyra, there's discrepancies.
And yeah, that eventually that was the point that I came to
where I was like, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna look him
up. I'm gonna look up his ship.
And I'm like, bingo. Every record says that it's
smashed right into it. So yeah, he's the 1st.
Person to start a smash burger, you know his smashed ship.
(06:39):
And then he was like, what wouldbe really awesome, we had
burgers that smashed. Some asburgers in paradise.
Now to get a better picture of Palmyra, we have to address a
little bit of its geology and geography.
First off, well, Palmyra is often called an island.
It's technically an atoll, whichis a collection of small islets
(07:03):
or small islands formed on top of reefs, in this case along the
mouth of an ancient volcano thatis sunk into the sea.
In total, Palmyra was originallycomposed of about 52 small
islands, mostly separated by a few feet of water, though later,
as a result of military construction projects during
(07:25):
World War 2, a lot of these small islands were combined.
Right, So these little islets, basically they destroyed a bunch
of coral, blew it up and startedconnecting all these little
islets together to make more land out in the ocean.
These islets form a horseshoe shaped swath of islands
(07:45):
totalling about 4.6 square miles, the likes of which are
surrounded underwater by an expansive reefs reaching out
from the shore into the deep blue, working almost like a
jagged crown of danger for ships.
All the while nestled in the center breasts 2 beautiful
lagoons like Azure gems just teeming with poisonous fish.
(08:12):
Beautiful, beautiful. All that said, Palmyra is the
quintessential island you're likely to picture when thinking
of a deserted tropical paradise in the ocean.
The the type of location the movie Castaway would be based
on, right? Like, it is exactly that island
with like the massive palm treeshanging over with coconuts,
(08:35):
beautiful white sand beaches, a lagoon in the center, tons of
sharks swimming around. It is perfect.
The typical island As for the location, Palmyra sits roughly
1000 miles southwest of Honolulu, HI, almost perfectly
dead center in the middle of thePacific Ocean, resting between
(08:58):
North America, South America, Asia and Australia, leaving at
just 352 miles north of the equator.
It is almost perfectly dead center between all these
continents, right? Say it's one of the most remote
places on the planet would honestly be a huge
understatement. It is up there.
(09:19):
If there's going to be a list of10 spots and the person making
the list knows about Palmera, it's probably number two or
three, right? Well, combined with its location
and near impossible accessibility, this makes it the
perfect place for buried treasure.
And this brings us to the tail of the pirate ship La Esperanza.
(09:43):
While it's often considered justan urban legend or a literary
trope that pirates bother to bury their treasure on remote
deserted islands, Palmyra may bethe exception or even the
inspiration behind the popular myth.
January 1st, 1816 pirates set off from Cayo Harbor and Peru
(10:05):
with their ship Esperanza, loaded up with gold, jewels and
artifacts from plundered Incan temples.
Very essence of every good pirate legend.
They set sail for what would be considered a pirate friendly
region of China, Macau, which ifit's current nicknames as the
(10:26):
Monte Carlo of the Orient and the Las Vegas of the East do any
justice to reflect it's more nefarious history, and it's safe
to assume that these pirates knew they'd be welcomed with
open arms and warm beds. Unfortunately though, fate was
waiting to weave a year long tale of doom and despair, which
began soon after La Esperanza hit the high seas.
(10:49):
And on January 5th, just five days after setting off from
Peru, La Esperanza was ravaged by an intense storm that snapped
their mainmast, leaving them floating at the will of the
tides in the middle of the ocean.
With no wind, they were easy prey for the likes of any
(11:09):
passing ship, fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you
look at it. And they didn't have to wait
very long, because shortly aftertheir mainsail was broken,
another pirate ship appeared andbegan blasting La Esperanza.
The battle was over before it started, and the crew, as well
as the treasure were both quickly captured.
(11:32):
Captives now on an enemy vessel.The sailors of Lasperanto would
remain jailed on this unnamed ship until February 13th, a full
43 days after originally taking off for China.
So they're just stuck cruising around as captives on the ship
like. Come on, we've been on the sea
long enough. We're trying to go home.
(11:52):
Like this sucks, this sucks for them that were like a promised
out of South America. They actually had them and
they're like, dude, we are set for life.
And it's like, and we're captured.
What sucks is that they already had their their treasures
because notoriously like you said, they don't really.
Pirates don't really bury their treasure because everybody
splits up the treasure evenly depending on their They're like
(12:16):
signed contract. And the captain would get his,
the boat Swain would get theirs.But they're on their way to the
Chinese pirate queen Zhengyi Sao, which we did an episode on
Exactly. Yeah.
They were going to her. This was like pirate Mecca.
Yep, Macau Mecca. At the time, like, yeah, the
(12:37):
Chinese pirate queen, she had set up like a safe haven in
China for them to go to. And that place still, it's
considered one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Fun fact about that it's it's seriously, it looks like Las
Vegas, but in China it is. It's, it's honest to its pirate
roots still to this day probably.
(12:58):
Still have pirates over there. Casino pirates guess what
happened? There was another freak storm
that came through, lasting this ship into coral reefs that were
nestled up against an island, busting its mainsail and
damaging it to the point of taking on water.
(13:19):
The sailors, all of them from both crews, worked for four days
and nights, trying frantically to repair the ruptured vessel
and free it from the razor sharpcoral it had become stuck on.
In the end they were ultimately successful ish and managed to
bandage up the ship just enough to hobble over to a nearby
island they had seen resting across the shark infested waters
(13:43):
about a mile away. The island was, of course,
Palmyra Toll. It was now February 17th when
the pirate crews made landfall in Palmyra again.
They started on January 1st. Yeah, it's a.
Long trip, long boy. So it was now February 17th when
(14:04):
the pirate crews made landfall in Palmyra.
Realizing the severity of their situation, they didn't hesitate
to bring the treasure ashore andbury their most precious cargo
before beginning the long process of scrapping their
damaged ship in an attempt to build a new vessel so they could
escape and call for rescue. After 120 days, 80 of the 90
(14:31):
total survivors were finally ready to set sail, each carrying
a small piece of gold with them as they took off from shore and
into the middle of the ocean. They were never heard from
again. Freak storm.
Good freak. Another freak storm.
They're just like, oh, come on, come on.
(14:52):
Another hurricane. When you see the location of
Palmyra Atoll on a map and you realize that like that's what
you're setting off into on a raft.
Yeah, No, dude. It's it's enough to give like,
geography anxiety, honestly. Like looking at that, it's like,
(15:13):
aw, hell yeah. You, you don't know if you might
get somehow crazily lucky and goto like American Samoa, which is
1000 something miles away, or goto Hawaii, or end up in
Antarctica, end up in Australia,end up in South America, end up
in North America, end up in Asia, like just anywhere you
(15:37):
were in the middle of the God damn ocean.
Yeah, and they use dead reckoning on their raft,
literally. Yeah.
They're just like, I mean, they have sex tents, you know,
they're they're measuring where they're going with their sex
tent and their tools and the map.
But like, dead reckoning is like, man, you get off by like a
little degree. You're probably you're the
(15:57):
difference between being in Hawaii on the beaches and being
in the belly of a shark with your boat in the bottom of the
sea is very close. And fun fact, I'm glad you
brought that up. We're gonna we're gonna cover
that and the, the murder series that's coming up on pull my
roads hole dead reckoning changes based on where you are
(16:18):
in accordance with the equator. Yeah.
So the math completely changes whether or not you're north or
South of the equator, being 350 something miles north of the
equator. Which way you're going, bud.
Yeah, you have to figure that out, which is just like man to
even fly a plane too. Like before that we had GPSS.
(16:42):
In the meantime, the 10 men remaining on Palmyra waited a
full year before finally giving up hope that the crew who had
left would ever return, at whichpoint they began working to
build their own rescue craft, a project that would come to
occupy every moment of their waking life for the next three
(17:03):
months. Forgot about those 10, thank
you. And on September 16th, 1817,
their preparations were finally complete and the 10 men drew
straws. In the end, 6 would leave on the
homemade wrath in a desperate attempt to brave the sea, while
four would stay behind to protect the looted treasure.
(17:27):
These six men drifted aimlessly in the ocean for 13 days before
a storm finally slowed before a storm finally swept through and
pulled four of their souls into the ocean depths.
Miraculously though, shortly after the deadly storm had
cleared, the 2 remaining piratesstill clinging to the now
(17:50):
shattered wrath of dear life were rescued by AUS whaler that
happened to be passing through the area.
But even still, the curse of Palmyra refused to let them go.
Of the two men rescued, one of them soon passed due to illness,
leaving only one man alive. This man, whose name was either
(18:13):
James Hines or James Edwards, would make it back to shore, but
was doomed to spend the next 30 days dying in the hospital.
It was during this time that he eventually passed along the
story of the wreck and the treasure to his bedside
attendant, a young man named Derry Connor.
(18:35):
Years would pass, and the story of pirates in buried treasure
would eventually make its way into the newspapers with
sensational headlines and calls for adventure, which ultimately
helped to fuel the tales of pirates burying their treasure
on deserted tropical islands. X marks the spot, baby.
This is one of the two examples in History of pirates actually
(18:58):
doing this that created the whole trope.
Yeah. Because it's.
Yeah, yeah, That's awesome. You know what would be really
funny, though? As if he was just like, you
know, he's dying in his bed and he's like, man, I've got to get
somebody else stuck on this curse, too.
And so he's just like, hey, I buried treasure there.
Didn't bear any treasure, just made them go get it.
I thought also you said you weregoing to say that the whaling
(19:21):
vessel was like, and it got hit by a storm and it's like.
And it got hit by a freak, a free coral reef storm that just
started flying. Start throwing coral reef out.
It's like, oh Jesus Christ, the guy's just.
And the four people, the four people, they're still alive.
They lived a good life, probably.
No clue what the fuck happened to them.
(19:41):
They I'm assuming so there was like a long chain of custody of
the story and how it got the people at the Palmyra archive,
which one of the main sources for, for this episode.
They did an excellent job with like a timeline of breaking down
who heard the story when they heard it, the locations, the
(20:03):
names. I'll be throwing up in the the
final cut for this episode. The actual newspaper articles,
like scans of the news, like multiple newspaper articles from
around the country where they were like pirates buried
treasure and it's like a cartoonof pirates burying the treasure.
There were calls, like literal calls for adventure where it's
like, we need 7 men to go out tosea to look for this.
(20:26):
Like it was a whole thing in theearly 1900s.
But this is where that that mythbasically came from, or at least
one of the main sources behind it, which is funny because,
well, it got so much coverage atthe time.
Like, so you had Treasure Island, which really popularized
the myth, right? But yeah.
(20:47):
And what's wild is like, even ifyou look up, like I Googled it,
just I was like, is it a myth that pirates bury treasure?
It only comes up with, like, oneexample.
It totally ignores this one. But this was one of the most
popular ones that was actually in the news at the time.
So always check the sources thatyou don't know exist.
(21:09):
That's what I never say. Yeah.
I think of it, I think of the idea of it is like, it's like a
savings account, right? And man, pirates don't have
savings accounts. Pirates are notoriously do not
have savings accounts. It's a save our ass account
basically, because it was. It's like, hey, here's enough
(21:30):
money to do whatever the hell you can do to come back to get
this treasure. They weren't going to assume
that of those like 80 people that went out, they were just
going to be like, yeah, we got to get back there.
We have treasure. It was like, no, no, we're going
to send you off with a bunch of money.
Y'all get a ship and stuff together, come back, get the
rest of it. We'll make sure that it's safe
and we stay here because it'd beway too risky to go off on this
(21:50):
like homemade little rinky dink ship with like all of the
massive amounts of treasure thatthey had.
So it was a very practical solution at the time.
It made sense in this example, yes, that they.
Very specific case, yeah. And it's not like they they
left. They kept sailors there to watch
it, you know, because and to remember where it is.
(22:11):
So it makes sense. Yeah.
And, well, what happened to the Pirates of La Esperanza can be
chalked up to bad luck. The mysteries surrounding
Palmyra's hole dig much deeper than simple tales of misfortune
or freak storms. Take for instance, what happened
on the island 63 years later in 1870 to the crew of the US ship
(22:32):
The Angel, who, crashing into the island's reefs, somehow
managed to cross the shark infested waters and make it
ashore, only to be found later by a rescue team, each one
violently murdered, their bodiestorn apart and scattered across
the island. What the hell happened?
(22:55):
What? Yeah.
What? Yeah, 'cause it sure as hell
wasn't these pirates from, you know. 60 years or 10 years?
Earlier they would have had. To be about like they would have
been about like 80 or 90. I guess most most pirates being
like 20 in early 20s, it was just one guy went crazy on the
ship. He just was like, all right,
(23:15):
time to go. Yeah, but then he would have had
to have, like, stabbed himself and everything to like it.
Was it? The way it was described was
just random spots all around theisland.
Like people had been getting chased.
They were stabbed together. There were bodies decomposing.
It was just everywhere. I mean you're, you're picturing
(23:37):
607080 people, like 80 somethingbodies scattered across a four
mile island just all over the place dead. 1870 right 1870
trying to think if there was anymaybe a a certain tribe that
just was, you know, who knows, you know, land this.
Island was completely uninhabited, yeah.
(23:57):
Well, like. That that people who are
constantly ending up there permanently and intentionally
inhabited. This island is uninhabited,
right? Or although there's some
conflicting stories around that,but for the most part, consider
this an uninhabited island again, unless there's a freak
storm or any ship travelling nearby.
(24:19):
Well, to quote now from those who've interviewed, some of the
many who've been stranded on theisland quote.
The survivors claim that the forests were home to shadowy
beasts that watched from the cover of trees, and the trees
themselves seem to whisper and creak in unsettling ways.
(24:40):
The sea and lagoon of the islandwere no less unpleasant and
unwelcoming. The sea life is said to be
poisonous to eat and there was astaggering number of highly
aggressive sharks prowling the waters there.
Many who survived the wrecks of their ships were ravaged by
sharks before they could make itto land, and it was said that it
(25:01):
was unsafe to so much as Wade and the lagoons.
That makes sense. Everything on this island is
trying to kill you. It's Australia, it's a, it's,
it's a mini Australia. You know, everything is trying
to kill you. You can't get anywhere.
And, you know, black tip sharks are notoriously, I, I won't say
(25:21):
mean, but they're aggressive, you know, and territorial.
And me and Gil, you talked, we talked about this offline and I
vehemently said that sharks are not bad, you know, they bite
you, but that that's how they, that's how they understand what
you are. That's how they sense you, you
know, And yeah, they're, they're, you know, black tip
sharks are very territorial and aggressive.
(25:43):
So if you're going in their areaand you might lose an arm, you
never know. Well.
With with that said, some sharkslike to nibble more than others,
and black tips are notorious forliking to nibble like they love
to nibble. They rarely will bite to the
point of like actually killing people.
They'll just take off an arm, you know, And while one's taken
(26:06):
off an arm and other one's takenoff a foot, the other one's
taken off a lake because they don't do the solitary kind of
thing. They kind of swim in large,
massive groups like this. So if one's getting curious,
there's another 20 behind them getting curious, and they're all
just hopping in and taking bites.
This is bad. This is really bad.
(26:27):
Yeah. That's what we'll call serial
killer snow. And they're just curious, you
know, just. Yeah.
Just curious. Yeah.
Chomp. Curious.
Yeah. Well.
It's no exaggeration to say thatover the past couple of
centuries, A countless number ofships would face their demise on
the uninviting shoreline of Palmyra its whole, with some
(26:48):
crews spending days, others years, and still others
disappearing completely. But the curse of Palmyra isn't
limited to just bad weather and dangerous waters.
During the early stages of WorldWar 2, Palmera Toll played a key
role as a refueling station for US aircraft on their way to the
(27:09):
South Pacific, a perfect middle point between Pearl Harbor and
Japan. With large lagoons in the center
and thick rings of jagged reef stretching out from its
shoreline, Palmero was a naturally protected fortress in
the middle of the ocean and as soon as the war started the US
(27:30):
military made it a key base of operations.
Along with building landing strips, a few roads and military
barracks. They use dynamite to blast out a
narrow channel in the coral, resulting in a lane that was
just wide enough to fit mid sizevessels and submarines.
Quick side note, this precariousman made channel feature that's
(27:53):
still present today obviously will become comically relevant
to our story about the double murder later on, so keep keep
that in mind now. Noted.
Like I said this, this was the perfect base to have in the
middle of the ocean. The Navy could easily bring
ships into the lagoon and protect them with land.
(28:14):
They had underwater mines scattered all over the place and
along the shores. There was a quarter mile
outstretch of natural razor wirein the form of reefs stretching
out from the shores. Right?
So. And that's not even to mention
all the cannons and guns placed along the perimeter.
You could not get a better island, a forward operating base
(28:37):
for things like this, right? Just picture picture how Harpers
normally look. They're they're facing out to
the ocean. They're facing out to the sea.
They're completely vulnerable tolong distance like straight
shots. And it's, this is literally
protected by land all the way around it.
(28:57):
And these trees, I think that the average height of the trees
on the island, even though the island itself is on average
about 5 to 6 feet above sea level, the height of the trees
is 75 to 90 feet. So you're completely obscured
and you have one narrow channel which is basically like a one
way St. for submarines and shipsto come straight into the center
(29:20):
of this lagoon. Now these defenses and I, I
think this is funny, but these defenses were so good and the
island was so remote and franklyhard to find that it was only
attacked one time almost comically when a Japanese
subsurface started firing at thebase then ran away after being
(29:43):
shot at one time. The crew basically saw what they
were dealing with. It just took the fuck.
Yeah, it's like, don't come back, you know?
What? Fuck this place.
Don't come back to this place. You have not to mention the
countless shipwrecks, which are debris and stuff all over the
water. And we'll get to that in a
second with like how many freaking shipwrecks there are
(30:03):
there. But you also have coral that's
just formed like crazy all over the place.
Then you have mines in the water.
Yeah. And then you can't even see what
the hell you're shooting at because of the trees.
So everybody's water level for the most part, right?
And they're just like, I don't that literally we can't even get
(30:24):
close to this. Fucking yeah.
There's nowhere to attack. Yeah.
And then as the sub was going away, it unfortunately was lost
in a freak storm. Freak underwater storm broke.
Yeah, freak underwater storm. No, so this really was the hell
(30:45):
of a place to to defend and to kind of like have like,
lockdown. Like, this is, yeah, this
island. It cannot be more of the the
trope or the archetype of a cursed island, right?
Like, it's just like if Doctor Evil needed to buy a new piece
of real estate to put, like, hisheadquarters on, it's this
island. This is the perfect fucking
island. Literally, the water's filled
(31:06):
with sharks and poisonous fish. I mean, come.
On dude even better based. On top of an old volcano, you
know, shipwrecks everywhere. All he needs is laser beams to
attach to the sharks heads and he'd be perfect.
Freaking lasers. Yeah.
All that said, the strange activities surrounding Palmyra
didn't let up when the Navy came.
Quoting now from Hal Horton, whowas a Navy officer stationed on
(31:30):
Palmyra from 1942 to 1944. Quote Once one of our patrol
planes went down near the island.
We searched and searched, but didn't find so much as a bolt or
piece of metal. It was weird, like they dropped
off the edge of the earth. Another time, a plane took off
(31:51):
from the runway, climbed to a couple 100 feet and turned in
the wrong direction. They were supposed to go north
and they went S instead. It was broad daylight.
We couldn't figure it out. There were two men aboard that
plane and we never saw them again.
(32:11):
We had some very bad luck on that island.
Old salts in the Pacific called it the Palmyra Curse.
The island is very small, you could fly over it at 10,000 feet
and not see it if there were a few clouds in the sky.
Once we heard a plane overhead trying to find us, but he
crashed in the drink before he could find the runway.
(32:36):
We didn't get to the poor guy fast enough.
Sharks found him first. Damn.
So now and this, this goes on too.
I didn't include it here in the script, but even up into like
the 70s and in the 80s, because there's a small runway that was
(32:57):
built there by the Navy, it was all built out of crushed coral
and everything. Planes were still wrecking
there. Like this is still a constant
place for for planes just crashing.
And sometimes it makes no fucking sense.
It's it's like the case of the plane takes off from the runway,
totally fine, gets up in the sky.
It's a crystal clear day, not a cloud anywhere.
And they're like, all right, we need to head north, turn hard to
(33:19):
the right and they just start going South and just
disappeared. It's like.
Damn, what the? Fuck is going and it's like all
different types. It's military planes, charter
planes, private, just like whatever.
People are just their navigation's all screwed up.
Yeah, yeah. So not just freak storms and not
just water and coral like planesare getting messed up here too.
(33:40):
It gives a whole new meaning to dead reckoning.
You know all the planes are wrecking as they come off the.
Runway dead wrecking. Dead wrecking.
Yeah, Tom Cruise will be sad about that.
He'll probably see them. Well, as World War 2 progressed
and the US made headway in the Pacific theater, more and more
islands that were much closer toJapan were captured and this
(34:04):
quickly led to a deprioritizing of Palmyra's military base until
eventually it was abandoned by the military all together.
Meaning this beautiful creepy island also has military ruins
now overgrown by jungle. Definitely not helping the
Creek. Even better, even.
(34:25):
Better. This is getting up there with
like basically the set for lost at this point.
It's just like, oh. Yeah, that would be interesting
if that was like a idea that wasbased off of, you know, maybe
they took some of the ideas fromthat island of the atoll.
You know, Palma, I told them, you're like, maybe this is good
for the Lost show. I would not be surprised in the
(34:45):
least. Like this is the most
stereotypical deserted island that you could possibly imagine
where it's just like, Oh no, I'mI'm trapped on this island, this
crazy deserted island. I barely made it here after
sharks after swimming through shipwrecks and there's giant
crabs and massive coconuts everywhere and there's military
barracks and I know there's a plane crashed here.
(35:08):
It's just like what the fuck is happening on this damn island?
And fun fact, I didn't include Ithink the largest, if not up
there in the top largest varietyof coconut in the world grows
there. So there's literally comically
large coconuts also growing. On them I'm good, then I'm good
living there. And coconut crabs, which get
(35:32):
massive. These coconut crabs have never
developed any sort of fear or whatsoever of humans, so going
and getting dinner is as easy aswalking up to a crab and it's
grabbing the motherfucker. You know, you know, there's some
scary you unlocked like a deep rooted fear in me because I
don't know if you've ever read the Dark Tower series.
It's so good. They made a movie.
I think I talked about this before.
(35:53):
Maybe it was terrible, but in itone of the realms that the
gunslinger goes to. Roland.
He ends up on the shore and it'sthese fucking monster crabs and
they're like just biting him andtrying to kill him.
It's like that. It's such a deep seated fear now
that just be like, oh, there's monster crabs.
I mean, these are like those crabs are like the high crabs.
(36:17):
Military hat and they're just coming after me.
Yeah, they're like kind of like lobster.
Boy, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Coughing on you. Take that.
Well, we're gonna skip ahead a few decades to two more tales.
Not the last two, but two more tales, both of which were
researched and documented by Kurt Rowlett in his article
(36:40):
titled The Curse of Palmyra Island, which I'll have a link
to in the show notes quote. In 1987, after acting on a tip
from a fishing vessel, a Coast Guard C130 aircraft sighted A
sailboat just southeast of Palmyra.
An aerial inspection revealed nosigns of life on board the
(37:02):
drifting sailboat, and Coast Guard personnel noted that the
mast was broken off and that thesails were torn and shredded.
Freaks down a. Week after the siding, the
vessel was boarded by Coast Guardsmen who found the skeletal
remains of owner Manning Edward on board.
(37:24):
The cause of death was undetermined, but prior to
leaving on his extended three-year voyage through the
Pacific, Manning had spoken excitedly about his plan to
visit an uninhabited island called Palmyra.
God of. Course, now we have ships with
(37:45):
literal skeleton captains floating around.
Trying to go, I mean what? The fuck?
Do you know how scary that wouldbe?
You like get on a ship and you're like, hey, is there
anybody here and just like. That's horrifying though, yeah.
Dude, how so? How?
Sucks for that dude. He's not on land, so you got to
(38:06):
consider that and I'm assuming, you know, if it's a large enough
boat. I mean even like mid size, I can
almost guarantee you there's rats.
I mean rats everywhere, especially at sea they will get
into shit. So he had to have been floating
long enough for the rats and theflies to literally eat all of
the flesh from his body. Yeah, maybe some breaths too, if
(38:29):
he was inside, if he was outside, you know, unless he was
like, he probably had like a, you know, probably had like a
little underneath place where hecould sleep, Yeah, you know, So
I wonder if he was in there, if he was like up by The Who knows.
Still has his pornhub. Like just playing on repeat.
This is the most embarrassing way to get discovered.
I'm all bone well. Continuing on quote 1989,
(38:58):
another sailboat named the Sea Dreamer, in transit from San
Diego to Hawaii, caught a storm that pushed her far off course
to the South and onto Palmyra Island.
After a brief stay on the island, the boat again departed
for Hawaii and then disappeared.An extensive search by the Coast
(39:19):
Guard between Palmyra and Hawaiiand even along the coast of the
United States failed to turn up any trace of the Sea Dreamer and
the four members of the Graham Hughes family that were her
crew. So it was really sad if it's the
one that I'm thinking of becauseagain, there's laundry list of
these accounts. It was like a father and his
(39:40):
three daughters on like a fun sailing exponition and they just
goes to and we also have to consider this is 1989.
This is not the 1800s. Yeah, yeah, there's GPS, not the
semi, semi GPS. There's GPS, there's radar,
there's radio. Maybe not, maybe not SAT phones
at this time, but there's there's a radio system.
(40:02):
This is these waters are gettinga lot more sailed right at the
time. You have cargo ships and stuff
like that going through these waters still just straight up
disappearing, right? Yeah.
I mean, even even sea liners nowadays.
Guy was researching to you for acouple episodes.
We're doing later. 2015 cargo ship completely missing, sunk.
They know that it sunk and the people died 'cause they have the
(40:25):
transcripts of the the radio, you know, the radio signals, the
emergency, the Maydays. But they, yeah, they never found
the cargo ship. So think how big those things
are, like football field size. And they're also gone.
Just the water is just so volatile, you never know.
It's like it's untamed, you know?
It's just Palmyra, is told. Just Going around and
(40:46):
assassinating. Different.
It's moving. Yeah, it's moving.
It's like I did not know. That was there.
Crashes and wrecks are such a thing around Palmyra that I had
to look this up here. It's fascinating to me.
In the year 2000, the US government's Nature Conservancy,
(41:09):
which now pretty much runs Palmyra, had spent roughly $5.5
million just clearing shipwrecksout of the water around the
island. Damn dude.
You know, these, these awesome science nerds, 90% of the work
that they're doing is just volunteering.
(41:30):
They're not getting paid. If they're spending that much
money doing it, it's not becausethey're getting paid well
hourly. They're working their ass off to
to try to recoup. Like the natural habitats to
help with the coral reefs do this and that.
There are so many fucking shipwrecks around this goddamn
island. Imagine the archaeological finds
(41:51):
too, of like ships from the 1800s.
From the 1700s, it's fifteens, probably sixteens.
Speaking of Speaking of archaeological, if you want to
feel shocked and old, $5.5 million in the year 2000
adjusted for inflation today comes out to a little more than
$9.2 million. Oh.
(42:18):
Oh, so does that make? You feel a little old yet a.
Little bit. So it's 4 million more dollars,
4 million more dollars than yeah, for just twenty.
Well, technically it's a quarterof a decade, buddy.
It's quarter of a it's quarter of a century.
We're 1/4 of a century. In there.
But you know, normally when we talk inflation, it's like, oh,
(42:39):
adjusted for inflation, a day is1917 money or some shit.
Yeah, I was like, how much does that really?
And I was like, God damn, this is also the week of my 35th
birthday, so I was like, I really need to feel older.
Yeah. A just for inflation.
That's something an old timer would say.
Yeah. Well.
Yeah, Yeah, I believe so. I believe so.
(42:59):
Finally, before we wrap up with the prologue for upcoming series
on the Palmyra Atoll murders, I wanted to touch on the incident
that set off my personal quest to look into the creepy history
of the island. His centers around a band named
Tom Wolfe, who would eventually go on to testify in the murder
trials and provide key information about the events
(43:21):
that took place on Palmyra. Early one morning, just a month
before he was set to take the witness stand, Tom was walking
along the coast of the Puget Sound in Washington state when
only 40 feet from his front door.
Floating along the shoreline, henoticed what could be described
as a poster tube lightly knocking against the rocks.
(43:47):
He walked up to it and opened it.
Inside were three detailed charts of Palmyra Atoll, the
island still calling to him fromover 3000 miles away.
And that, my friend, is the unsettling setting for the 1974
(44:11):
double murder. We'll be starting next week.
And in the meantime, drop a comment on this episode wherever
you're listening, but especiallyif it's on Podcast Attic.
That's right. Podcast Attic listeners, we love
you too. Are you addicted to know the
names of any other cursed or haunted islands that you've
(44:31):
heard of? And if you'd be down to spend
the night there, because I wouldtotally go to, Omar Told Now and
Joey. Yes.
Before we can start this series on Meowder, we gotta take a
moment to thank all the people making the impossible amounts of
murder mystery and mayhem here at Black Cat Report possible.
(44:54):
We do. Our very lovely Patreon members.
Hit it. Bud, Don Thomas, Little Mystery,
Bobby Betsbe, Lucas, Tim D Max. You're getting a shout out soon.
Ian Morgan, Dragon Paw from the Star Blood Chronicles podcast
(45:14):
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Marissa Gavin, the Fearless leader of the chicken called
Rochelle, Eve, Jaden, Jackie, Yellow Bear, Dwayne AKA
Snatched. Watch Alyssa, Bree, Michael,
Extreme, Kristen from the Paranormal Girl podcast James,
(45:34):
and most unsinkably, our sexiestproducer, Poppy Kitty.
Coppy Kitty. Joey, any other shout outs?
Any other things? Yes, please, if you get the
chance, hop into our patreonpatreon.com/blackcat
(45:54):
report. Yeah, you can get all the cool
things we got cup of Joey. We've got monthly game nights
that we've been doing which by the way, thank you copy Kitty
for sending us new games. And if you were out there,
please, if you want to see me and Gil play games and we
haven't released last week's, last month's, and we never will
(46:16):
because game night. But if you want to see us do
Game Night Live, let us know. Tell us a game, Send us a game.
You can find. You can find you can get our
address somewhere. I don't know, just message us
and tell us you want to send ouraddress.
We'll send you something. We'll send you something cool
for doing it again. Follow us at
patreon.com/blackcat Report. Follow us, get a lot of cool
(46:41):
stuff. Also, B3 Beer, booze and
Boogeyman, which is happening inabout DOS weeks on June the 7th
at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. The topic first responder.
So if you're a first responder, you know somebody that's our
(47:02):
first responder, get them to call in and tell us a story.
Anything paranormal, we want to hear it.
Thank you all for tuning into this week's episode.
Right back to you, Gil, if you got anything else.
We love y'all. We'll see you next week.
We do bye.
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