June 19, 2025 • 41 mins
November 15, 1928. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 29-year old Glen Hyde and his 22- year old wife, Bessie, decide to spend their honeymoon taking a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon down the rapids of the Colorado River and hope to attain a new speed record. Shortly after stopping at the home of a photographer named Emery Kolb, the Hydes vanish without a trace. Their empty boat is eventually discovered on the river nearly 150 miles away with all of the couple’s supplies and possessions onboard, but Glen and Bessie are nowhere to be found. Over the next several decades, there would be a number of surprising twists, including a woman who claimed to be Bessie Hyde and the discovery of an unidentified male skeleton in Emery Kolb’s boathouse. Did Glen and Bessie Hyde drown in the Colorado River, or was something a lot more sinister behind their disappearances? This week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly” chronicles the Grand Canyon’s most famous mystery, which has remained unsolved for nearly a century.
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Additional Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Glen_and_Bessie_Hydehttp://charleyproject.org/case/glen-rollin-hyde
http://charleyproject.org/case/bessie-louise-haley-hyde“Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde” by Brad Dimock
Support the Show:
Patreon.com/julesandashley
Patreon.com/thetrailwentcold
Additional Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Glen_and_Bessie_Hydehttp://charleyproject.org/case/glen-rollin-hyde
http://charleyproject.org/case/bessie-louise-haley-hyde“Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde” by Brad Dimock
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
November fifteenth, nineteen twenty eight, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona,
twenty nine year old Glen Hyde and his twenty two
year old wife Bessie decide to spend their honeymoon taking
a rafting trip down the rapids of the Colorado River.
Shortly after stopping at the home of a photographer named
Emery Colb, the Hidees vanished without a and their empty
(01:01):
boat is discovered in the river over one month later.
Over the next several decades, there would be a number
of twists and turns, including a woman you claimed to
be Bessie Hyde, and the discovery of an unidentified male
skeleton in Emery Colb's boat house, but no trace of
Glen or Bessie is ever found after that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
The path went Chili, So on this episode we are
going to be traveling back nearly an entire century to
cover a mystery which took place in the Grand Canyon,
the nineteen twenty eight disappearances of Glenn and Bessie Hyde. Anyway,
if you're an unsolved Mysteries fan, you're probably familiar with
this story as it was featured on the very first
episode of the show, hosted by Robert Stack. Glen and
(01:42):
Bessie Hyde were a newlywed couple who decided to take
a very adventurous honeymoon by embarking on a lengthy whitewater
rafting trip through the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River,
and they hoped to find fame by achieving a new
speed record, but they would eventually go missing, and even
though the couple's empty boat was found completely into with
all their supplies still on board, Glenn and Bessie had
(02:03):
seemingly vanished into thin air. This story has become a
pretty legendary unsolved disappearance with a number of twists and turns,
and even contains a compelling mystery within a mystery, as
a skeleton initially believed to be Glenn Hyde, would be
found on the property of one of the last people
known to have seen the couple alive. Four decades later,
there would also be a woman who popped up on
(02:24):
another rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and told a
number of witnesses that she was Bessie Hyde and had
disappeared on her own and started a new life after
killing her husband. All we know for certain is that
nearly one hundred years have passed since the Hides went
missing and they have still never been found. So I
thought it was about time that the path went. Chile
tackled the very first Mysterious Legends case featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Can my mouth already be hanging open? Because I need
you guys to back up and clarify a couple of
things for me. One, how cool that it was on
the very first episode of Unsolved Mysteries. But okay, a
body was founded. They believe Eve to be Glenn Hyde
with the last known person he was seen with. And
this woman forty years later says, I'm Bessie Hyde and
I disappeared on my own after I killed my husband.
(03:10):
Is there any information more about those two incidences and
are we positive that either are either true or false
at this time?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Oh yeah, we'll definitely talk a lot more about them
and talk about whether or not they are credible or not.
But I brought up those two twists because I remember
when I watched the Unsolved Mystery segment way back in
like the late nineteen eighties. That that's what they focused on,
the woman claiming to be Bessie and the mysterious skeleton
found in the boat house belonging to Emery colp And
I was like, what is going on here? Like? Are
(03:40):
these connected to each other? I mean, when you first
hear about a couple going missing on a whitewater rafting trip,
you're thinking, initially, okay, it's probably obviously drowned. But then
they had all these weird twists and turns come up
in the story several decades later.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yes, that's where I am too. Are these real? What's happening?
This is crazy? So keep telling me more.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Okay. So our story begins in nineteen twenty eight, and
our central figures are a newlywed couple from Twin Falls, Idaho,
twenty nine year old Glen Hyde and his twenty two
year old wife, Bessie Hyde. Glenn makes his living as
a farmer, and the circumstances of how he got married
to Bessie are pretty unusual, ironically enough, given what eventually
(04:23):
happened to them. The couple first met on a passenger
ship traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles in February
of nineteen twenty seven, and they pretty much fell head
over heels in love with each other. The problem was
that Bessie was technically still married to another man in
another state at that point. Bessie was born in Maryland
and raised in Parkersburg, West Virginia, under the name Bessie Hayley,
(04:47):
and was attending Marshall College when she married a man
named Earl Helmick in Kentucky in June of nineteen twenty six.
Even though Bessie and Earle had known each other for
years and attended high school together, their relationship was pretty
much doomed from the start, as Earle was known to
have a violent temper. The couple lived together for less
than two months before they separated, and Bessie moved to
(05:09):
San Francisco to study art in poetry at the California
School of Fine Arts. It's been reported that while she
was living there, Earl sent Bessie money for an operation,
fueling speculation that she'd traveled out West to terminate an
unwonted pregnancy or to secretly give birth to a child
that she put up for adoption, but this has never
officially been confirmed. Whatever the case, Bessie would meet Glen
(05:33):
several months later and wanted to marry him as soon
as possible, but Earle refused to grant her a divorce.
In response, Bessie decided to move to Elko, Nevada, since
the state had the most lenient divorce laws in the
country at that time. She lived there for a couple
of months to meet the residency requirements and filed for divorce,
which was officially granted on April eleventh, nineteen twenty eight,
(05:56):
when Earle failed to show up in court to contest it. Bessie,
then in meeting, mediately traveled to Twin Falls to meet
up with Glenn, and they were married the following day.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So when you look at this, are we sure that
there was money actually sent for this quote operation or
is that still part of the speculation That.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Is part of the speculation. I mean, this was back
during the nineteen twenties, so I don't think we have
like any hard records of this, and I think it's
pretty much just gossip and rumors that they suspected that
Bessie may become pregnant. And of course this is the
nineteen twenties, when an abortion or giving up a child
for adoption with scandalous, so they figured that, well, this
is one of those cases where they sent her away
(06:34):
before anyone noticed she was pregnant, and then just she
miraculously reappeared after she had either terminated or given birth
to the child. But it just kind of shows that
Bessie was a woman who was kind of ahead of
her time for willing to go through this during the
nineteen twenties, and that she was a very independent woman
who probably would not have been happy in a marriage
to a guy like Earle and was much happier meeting
(06:56):
up with an adventurous guy like Glenn.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
What's also interesting is that divorce would have been scandalous,
and so even if the let's say the pregnancy rumors
are false and there was no abortion or adoption, just
her fact of saying, like, I'm so much over this
other marriage, right, whether she was being abused or just
wasn't happy or whatever was happening, she left her husband
so had the confidence to have her own independence, and
(07:19):
then does this whole elaborate scheme to go get residency
somewhere else and actually petition for a divorce, risking the
fact that he could show up if he ever found
out about it, but really having this confidence that I
bet I can beat the system and get away from
this man and the very next day go be with
my adventurer. Glenn's pretty pretty bold, especially back in the
(07:40):
nineteen twenties, but I mean even today, that's a lot
of power that she wielded.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And it is kind of relevant to what we're going
to talk about later because when we explore the theory
about whether she decided to disappear on her own to
get away from Glenn and start a new life, and
you realize, well, she had gone through something like this
before with her previous husband, so it's not impossible she
could have attempted something like that again. Anyway, since Glenn
was an avid outdoorsman and an experienced rafter who had
(08:07):
run the salmon and snake rivers in Idaho, he came
up with a very unusual idea for a delayed honeymoon.
Glenn constructed a two tent. Glenn constructed a two ton,
twenty foot long, five and a half foot wide, flat
bottom wooden sweep scout, which he named Rain in the Face,
and decided that he and Bessie would spend their honeymoon
taking a lengthy whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.
(08:30):
They would travel to Green River, Utah, and spend the
next several weeks in their scou traveling hundreds of miles
down the rapids of the Colorado River before they arrived
in Needles, California. The Colorado River was considered to be
the most dangerous stretch of water in the world at
that point, and only forty five people had managed to
travel the full two hundred and seventy seven mile length
of the Grand Canyon by river. But Glenn was an
(08:52):
adventurous thrill seeker who wanted to set a brand new
all time speed record, and by taking Bessie along, she
would make history by because I mean, the first documented
woman to run the canyon. If they succeeded, the couple
would likely become famous, and Glenn hoped that Bessie would
use the writing skills to publish a book so they
can make money recounting their adventure by touring the lecture circuit. Well,
(09:14):
in spite of Glenn's vast river rapting experience, Bessie was
pretty much a complete novice at this sort of thing.
Glenn also made the decision not to carry any life
jackets on board the boat, as apparently using life jackets
was just not something that was done in Idaho during
that time period, and they were not even readily available.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Okay, let's backtrack to this idea and the description of
their craft. Okay, I love when you describe it. Used
it a two ton, twenty foot long, five and a
half foot wide, flat bottom wooden sweep scal And after
that tongue twister, I went what the heck is that
and googled it. Guys, it's basically like a huck Finn raft. Okay,
(09:53):
side on it. It looks like you're going to be
in an adventure novel. And for someone who's a novice,
that's pretty crazy and scary, like my guts, like, uh,
they simply had an accident and they drown or something happened.
They hit their head on a rock because I would
not go down on this sweep scal named rain in
the face, right, it looks incredibly dangerous and they're not
(10:15):
going down just some quiet river, they're going whitewater rafting.
So if you get a chance, google it. It's crazy.
I do see where his adventure side said, we could
really make something of this if we survived Asterist Right,
if we survived this trip, we would be the talk
of the town because this is crazy. You are correct, Glenn,
it's crazy. So I assume that life vests were basically
(10:39):
like seat belts used to be, where they just weren't
part of the narrative and they just weren't very common.
And so not shaming him for not having life jackets,
but my god, he was definitely taking a knowing risk
putting her on this sweep scal because, like I said,
I just picture, you know, these two main characters with
a piece of wood shoving themselves off the you know,
(11:02):
side of a slow river. That's not what's happening here.
They're going whitewater rafting on this basically flat piece of wood.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I picture Bessie, who has gone through this arduous process
of getting this divorce from her husband with the violent temper,
and then she meets Glenn, you know, she falls in love,
they get married, they're going on this honeymoon and then
he's like, hey, babe, I've made this scow like on
of wood, and guess what, We're going to go down
a river and we don't have any flotation devices, so
(11:32):
we're just taking our life in our hands. Yes, we've
found love and we will be legends if we make
it all the way through, but who knows, we may
not escape with our lives.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It's a big if, right, And I almost see her
like an Amelia Earhart character, Like she's got this scarf
flapping in the wind, and she's got her goggles on
and she's.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Ready to go.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
But that's that's probably not what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, And that's one of the big mysteries of this story,
because I've heard different narratives where some sources say that
Bessie was terrified of the idea, but some other sources
say she was enthusiastic. But most women when they hear
this story have this reaction saying, not only would I
not want to do this, but I certainly want to
wouldn't want to do this on my honeymoon to a
guy I just married, Because even though Glenn's added like
an adventurous guy, going down two hundred and seventy seven
(12:15):
miles in like a piece of wood is my idea
of a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And like, would she have been as aware of the
safety risks as we are today? Like, I'm pretty sure
that's a big no, because they don't have access to
the internet, and if there are accidents doing something similar, like,
are you really going to hear about it? So you
really are going in blind in a way that we
wouldn't today.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, because they said forty five people made this trip
successfully at that point, but I guess they didn't hear
the statistics on how many people did nick successfully and
drowned who didn't live to.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Tell the tell, right, It's absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
It's like an old timey version of like doing K
two or something. The Hides began their trip in Green
River on October twentieth, and the legend has it that
an experienced river rafter who saw glens scow described it
as a quote Wooden Coffin, and he expressed his belief
that it's not safe enough.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
For the sort of trip.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Regardless, the Hides managed to complete the first leg of
their journey and made it to the Grand Canyon National
Park in record time. The two hundred and seventy seven
mile trip through the canyon on the Colorado River could
easily be documented by the mile markers, which were placed
at various locations, and on November fifteen, the couple arrived
at the Phantom Ranch near River mile eighty eight. They
(13:39):
then proceeded to hike up the Bright Angel Trail until
they arrived at the home of a photographer named Emery Colb.
Emory and his brother, Ellsworth Colb had become legendary figures
in the Grand Canyon by successfully navigating the Colorado River
and filming the entire experience. Emory's home also doubled as
a photography studio named Cold Studio, which had been in
(14:02):
business for nearly twenty five years. At this point, Glenn
knew that Colb was pretty much the area's foremost expert
on the Colorado River, which is why he and Bessie
paid him a visit, and while there, the Hides asked
Colb to take a photograph of them posing by the
canyon's rim. However, during their interactions, Cold noticed that Bessie
seemed to have grown tired of the trip and appeared
(14:23):
apprehensive because they were about to embark on the most
dangerous stretch of the river. Earlier on their journey, while
traveling through the rapids of the Cataract Canyon, Bessie, who
was only five feet tall and weighed ninety pounds, was
knocked into the water, but Glenn managed to grab her
ankle and pull her back into the boat. Glunnad also
apparently fallen out of the scal on two separate occasions
(14:45):
before Bessie managed to get a rope to him. Since
the Hides were going to be facing cold winter weather,
Cold proposed the idea of them staying with him for
a while until the weather improved, but Glenn refused. Colb
also offered to let the hides boils his life jackets
or some inner tubes, but Glenn turned this down as well,
referring to the items as quote artificial aids and assuring
(15:09):
Cold but he and Bessie were both very strong swimmers.
Before the Hides left, Cold's young daughter said goodbye to them,
and Bessie looked at the shoes the girl was wearing
and said, quote, I wonder if I shall ever wear
pretty shoes again. End quote. The Hides then hiked back
down right Angel trail, climb back into their boat, and
continued their trip down the river.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Let's all think boat in quotes. Okay, because again this
is such a bizarre craft that they're going to travel
this really treacherous track on, and you listen to the
way that Glenn is actually given lifelines, and people who
are very familiar with the area are saying like, Hey.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Have you thought about this?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do you want us to give you this? And it's
almost as though Glenn says, I don't want any of
those quote artificial aids because he so desperately wants that story.
We did it without this, We did it better than
the forty five people before us, right, he wants this
grand adventure story. And even in the face of seeing
Bessie's struggle, having people warn him about dangers, offering these
(16:13):
lifelines to him, seeing that Bessie's kind of getting worn out,
and knowing that they've already had close calls on the
easier part of the trip, it almost just seems like
arrogance and kind of ignorance on his part.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I just mentioned K two again. It reminds me of
people who are like, I want to hike to the
summit of either like Anna Perna or K two or
Everest without any oxygen, and it's like this badge of honors.
You'd be like, I made it to the top without
the oxygen, even though it's far safer to bring that
oxygen along with you and just use it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
If you need it, Yep, at the end, you made
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It's like giving birth.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I'm like, give me all the medicine because I'm gonna
have a baby too.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Let's just do it. Yeah. I think it was just
a cultural thing at that time where Glenn grew up
in Idaho, just thinking you just don't wear life jackets
because if you take a trip like that and you
wear a quote unquote artificial aid the entire time, then
to totally invalidates your accomplishment. So I think that's why
he stubbornly refused to take them.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
But it kind of feels like he's being rather reckless
and disregarding the safety of his wife, Like he would
rather have this badge of honor to be able to
make it without an artificial aid than ensure that Betsy
is safe. If you don't want the life jacket or
the inner two, cool, but like, why don't you ask
Betsy what she wants to do?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So the following day, the hide stop at a tourist
facility and bumped into a tourist named Adolf Gilbert Sutro,
whose grandfather had been mayor of San Francisco during the
late nineteenth century. In exchange for some supplies, the Hides
agreed to allow suit Or to hitch a ride on
their boat with them for the next couple of miles
while they traveled downstream to Hermit Camp. Sutro took one
(17:51):
final photograph of Glenn and Bessie before they went their
separate ways, but after this there would be no more
confirmed sightings of the Hides. They failed to arrive at
the Needles, California at their schedule time, and when Glenn's father,
Our Sea Hide, did not hear from them by December
to sixth, he organized a search effort involving the National
Park Service and several volunteers. Arcia had previously lost two
(18:13):
sons when they were children, and was so dedicated to
finding Glenn that he pretty much drove himself into poverty
by financing multiple searches over the next few years. At
one point during their journey, the Hides across passed with
a reporter from the Denver Post and shared their story,
which soon garnered some coverage in the press, and by
the time the couple went missing, the search for them
(18:34):
became national news. In fact, the story got so much
attention that it even wound up reaching President Calvin Coolidge,
who ordered his Secretary of War to authorize an air
search of Grand Canyon National Park with an army plane.
While on December the nineteenth, the plane finally spotted the
Hyde skow, which appeared to be trapped in some rocks
in the middle of the water near river mile two
(18:55):
thirty seven. Even though the boat seemed to be intact,
Glen and Bessie were not inside. It would not be
until Christmas Day when a search party which included Emery
and Ellsworth Cob made it to this location and located
the scow. Much like when it was spotted from the
search plane, the boat was fully intact, with no noticeable
signs of damage, and was fully stocked with supplies and
(19:18):
the hide's personal possession, including their clothing and hiking boots,
Glenn's rifle, and a diary that Betsy had been using
to chronicle their journey. The only thing which appeared to
be missing was the hides themselves. Forty two notches were
found carved in the boat's gunwale, which seemed to represent
each day of the trip. If the count was accurate,
(19:38):
then this meant that the last notch had been carved
on November thirtieth, which coincided with the date of the
final entry in Bessie's diary. The scow's bowline stretched from
the front of the boat into the river and appeared
to be fastened into crevice in one of the rocks
and had caught on something underwater. Since the Coal brothers
had no success with their attempts to dislodge the bowline,
(19:58):
they decided to cut it. In spite of this discovery,
subsequent search efforts turned up no trace of Glenn or Bessie.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Am I right to think that it sounds as if
the scal gets there almost like it floated down river
without someone on it and gets lodged in this place,
And that rope was not officially tied off, it was
actually jammed in somewhere and kind of caught up on stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, that's what some people think. And there's even speculation
that it could have been attached to maybe Glenn or
Bessie's body, and that maybe the cold has made a
mistake by cutting the bowline, because if they had pulled
up on it, they might have found the couple. But
this has never been conclusively proven.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Ooh, even if one of them was trying to save
the other one. Remember, at certain points Bessie had already
had to rope Glenn back in after he was trying
to rescue her. So that isn't like an impossible idea
because we've seen that action on their ride specifically. But
it's also possible they got bucked out of the scal
that they one of them fell and hit their head
(20:57):
trying to rescue the other one. I mean that could
have had anywhere along the route, and then that boat
gets lodged just by naturally drifting with the currents.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And I think this is what makes it stand out
more than most mysteries where people go missing on a
boat is if it been found like floating in the river,
tipped over, and the supplies were scattered everywhere, then it
would seem obvious that they got into an accident and drowned.
But this one has an extra feeling of eeriness to
it because everything about the boat was intact, all the
supplies were there, but Glenn and Bessie just seemed like
they had vanished into thin air.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I wonder how hard it is. How hard is it
to flip a five foot wide piece of like wood
with sides on it? Is it a harder thing to
flip over than a typical boat or is that easier
to tip over?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Good question, and I don't want to test it and
try it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
See come on now, I'm wondering for is it more
stability on that and that simply the waves would knock
you out because it doesn't rotate or like ride the
waves as well as something that has more of a
curve to the base of the boat, right, which is
why boats have that. But what it all so then
be harder to flip over, So that's why it looks
quote intact instead of capsize.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
I think that's possible because of the shape of the boat.
You might be more likely to get thrown off since
we know that Glenn was thrown off twice, Bessie was
thrown off once, and it seems statistically improbable. But there's
a lot of debris and logs and rocks in rivers
like that, and so a body could potentially get stuck
underneath those things. And even though the gases would develop
(22:29):
in the gut, which usually brings bodies to the surface,
that wouldn't necessarily happen. It seems unlikely with two bodies,
but it could have happened the last specific location Bessie
had mentioned in her diary was Diamond Creek, rapid located
at River mile two twenty five, and evidence was discovered
to suggest the hides and set up camp in the area.
(22:50):
In fact, two years later, a search party for an
unrelated event wound up finding an inscription on the beam
of a ceiling in an old shack near Diamond Creek.
It read quote Glenn and Bessie Hide November thirty first,
nineteen twenty eight. If either Glenn or Bessie had inscribed that,
they probably did so on December first of that year
(23:10):
and had forgotten that November only had thirty days. There
was also an eyewitness account from a prospector who reportedly
saw a brown leather jacket floating in the Colorado River
around the approximate time the Hides went missing. The currents
were too swift for him to retrieve it, but Bessie
was known to have worn a leather jacket on the trip. Ironically,
(23:31):
the location the boat was found was just over forty
miles from the mouth of the Grand Canyon, and if
the details in Bessie's diary were accurate, the couple had
actually been ahead of schedule and would have easily broken
the speed record if they had traveled the entire distance. Anyway,
even though the hide's bodies could not be found, many
people suspected that Glenn and Bessie had fallen out of
(23:53):
their scow and drowned in the river. Others theorized that
they may have become separated from the boat and attempted
to hike their way to the canyon, but died of
exposure before they made it. However, over the course of
the next several decades, a number of unusual events would occur,
which caused speculation that there was a lot more to
the story.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Well, also, if you think about them, if they were
truly ahead of schedule, is that because of this incredible
skill or could it be because of some kind of recklessness.
Glenn's already shown some kind of, you know, tendency to
be almost arrogant in his confidence of how he's going
to do this trip.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I'm not going to really pay attention to timelines. I'm
not going to worry about what the safest route would be.
I'm just going to try to have these claims to fame. So,
if he was trying to be the fastest to ever
do it, and maybe they were ahead of schedule. Could
it be a result of recklessness and not just this
incredible feat which then could have led to them getting
hurt as well.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh yeah, that's entirely possible that they were so ahead
of schedule that they were not taking safety precautions. And
maybe Glenn thought they were invincible, saying that, or we're
going to show like several days before anyone's expecting us to,
and that led to him making more chances, taking more risks,
and eventually they reached a point where they did something
too dangerous and it cost them their lives. So in
(25:12):
nineteen seventy one, a tour group went on a three
week commercial rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, and near
the end of their trip, they set up camp at
Diamond Creek. Since this was near the location where Glenn
and Bessie Hyde's boat had been found four decades earlier,
the tour guy decided to share the story about their
mysterious disappearance around the campfire that night. It was here
(25:33):
that an elderly woman in the group named Elizabeth Cutler
remarked that she was actually Bessie Hyde. She claimed that
Glenn had become so obsessed with completing the rafting trip
that things erupted into a violent fight, which resulted in
Glenn beating her. In response, she grabbed a knife, stabbed
Blent to death, sank his body, and let their float
and let their boat float downstream. She then proceeded to
(25:55):
hike her own way out of the Grand Canyon to
Peach Springs, climbed on a bus, and then went on
to start a new life for herself under her new identity.
Well The other members of the group initially figured that
Cutler was just making up this story, even though she
would have been around the same age as Bessie if
she was still alive at that time, But word about
this story eventually spread, and when historians tracked down Cutler
(26:17):
to her home in Palm mo Roy, Ohio and asked
her about it, she denied ever telling the story and
claimed to have never heard of Glen or Bessie Hyde.
Once further research was done, it became clear that Kutler's
story could not have been true. Not only was she
around half a foot taller than Bessie Hyde, but birth
records showed that Kutler was born in Palm Moroy on
December the second nineteen oh eight. In fact, old newspaper
(26:40):
articles were uncovered which showed photographs of Cutler attending some
family reunions in Palm Roy, Ohio during the late nineteen twenties,
effectively debunking the idea that she was Bessie Hyde living
under a false identity. Cydler died in nineteen ninety eight,
and since she had once worked as a psychology professor
and had a reputation for playing games with people, this
(27:01):
may have been the reason she decided to tell people
she was Bessie.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
That's interesting that you have this psychology professor who's almost
making the world her experiment or her playground, right to say, hey,
I'm going to do these psychological experiments on people. She
has to be a pretty smart cookie to be, you know,
young and becoming a professor and a woman back then, right,
pursuing that kind of career, and so she's no dummy.
(27:26):
But it's really interesting that she would take on such
a powerful, hurtful, dangerous narrative to play with people with.
This is saying I even she's saying I killed somebody, right.
How did she think she.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Get away with that?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Or what was the perk in doing something like that.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But she's a load of saying no, I killed my
husband and pretending to be someone else. And it's like,
even though it would be effectively debunked, like you're out
in the woods alone with these strangers, Like, how do
you think they're going to react if they find out
you confess to killing someone? And thankfully, I think at
the time they just thought she was joking, so they
didn't really take it that seriously. But it just seems
like a very brazen thing to do, to confess to
(28:05):
a murder you didn't do while you're out there in
the woods with a bunch of strangers. So the next
surprise development took place when Emery Coal passed away on
December the eleventh, nineteen seventy six, at the age of
ninety six. Two months later, Colp's grandson was going through
the boathouse on his property at Cold Studio when he
was surprised to discover the remains of a male skeleton
(28:26):
inside a canoe being kept in the rafters. Some remnants
of clothing, a shoe and a belt were next to
the remains, and everything was subsequently turned over to the
Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office. The victim was determined to
have been a Caucasian mail in his twenties, but most importantly,
a bullet from a thirty two caliber gun was found
embedded in his skull and there was a bullet hole
(28:48):
in his right temple. Tests showed that the bullet originated
from a Revolver originally manufactured in nineteen oh two, and
the condition of the bones and the clothing fragments seemed
to suggest that the victim's death that occurred sometime during
the nineteen twenties. Of course, this began to feel rumors
that the victim was Glenn Hyde and that Emery Colb
could have murdered him well. Like I mentioned on the intro,
(29:11):
this case would be featured on the very first episode
of Unsolved Mysteries hosted by Robert Stack, which originally aired
on November twenty nine to nineteen eighty seven. For the segment,
the show consulted with doctor Walter Burkby, a forensic anthropologist
from the University of Arizona. While Birkeby was a nationally
recognized expert in his field and it earned the nickname
(29:31):
Doctor Death because he specialized and unidentified human remains basically
long before the era of DNA testing and websites such
as the dough Network, Doctor Birkby was one of the
best people to turn to if you ever wanted to
identify the skeleton remains of a John or Jane Doe,
so the skeleton found in Colb's boat house was passed
(29:51):
on to him. The segment showed Birkeby performing a test
where he compared the facial structure of the skull to
a photograph of Glenn Hyde and to Term and they
did not match at all. Well, Burntney was unable to
determine the victim's true identity. He was able to conclude
with one hundred percent certainty that it was not Glenn.
Of course, this only opened up a lot more unanswered questions,
(30:13):
creating a mystery within a mystery about who the remains
did actually belong to and why Colb had been keeping
them on his property.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So bizarre, and it's almost like they weren't even hidden.
They're just in this canoe. So it's they're going through
his stuff and it's like, oh, yeah, here's also a body.
I mean, who was that and what the heck was
he doing with it? Is it someone that got hurt
on a trip with him. Is it somebody that he
actually did? No, he's shot, right, this guy shot in
(30:42):
the head.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, Well, later on in the episode, we're going to
reveal who this person probably was. This is kind of
a logical explanation for it. But when Unsolved Mysteries here
their episode back in nineteen eighty seven, they still had
no idea. So a lot of people watching at the
time were thinking that Emery Colb, this legendary photography was
actually like a clotset serial killer or something like why
was he keeping remains in his boat house? But it
(31:05):
turned out that the explanation was a lot less gruesome
than barrigely thought.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Perfect I'll wait for that one.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
At first, I'm like, could have been an accident.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I'm like, no, there's a man with a gunshot wom'm
sitting in a canoe in his space, So okay, I
will wait to know more about that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
While if you asked doctor Famiu Malik, it very well
could have been natural causes.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's very true, very true.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
The dog did it, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
And he was smoking thirty more marijuana cigarettes. So that's
what that is.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Oh my gosh, Well, believe it or not, it wasn't
long before rumors started to spread about another woman possibly
being Bessie Hyde under a new identity. In May of
nineteen ninety two, Georgie White Clark, a legendary figure in
the field of river rafting, died of cancer at the
age of eighty one. Georgie had worked as a river
(31:50):
rafting guide in the Grand Canyon for forty five years
and made history in nineteen fifty two when she became
the first woman to row the full length of both
the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Marble Canyon. Following her death,
Georgie's caretaker was searching through her lingerie er and was
surprised to discover a certified copy of Glenn and Bessie
(32:11):
Hyde's marriage certificate, which also happened to be resting alongside
a pistol. Furthermore, when Georgie's birth certificate was uncovered, it
revealed that she had originally been born under the name
Bessie de Ross, as White and Clark were the surnames
of the two ex husbands that she'd previously been married to.
Throughout her life, Georgie was always known for being a
(32:32):
very secretive woman, even to her closest friends and Georgie's caretaker,
who also recalled her expressing a personal hatred towards Henry
coleb and refusing to even be in the same room
with him, though she never specified why. So naturally, this
only fueled speculation that Georgie White Clark was actually Bessie Hyde, however,
since Georgie was about five inches taller than Bessie and
(32:54):
didn't really resemble her that much. However, since Georgie was
about five inches taller than Bessie and didn't really resemble
her that much, it didn't take much for historians to
debunk this idea, particularly since Georgie's early life was well
documented in a biography titled Woman on the River. Georgie
married her first husband at an early age. It was
only seventeen years old when she gave birth to a
(33:16):
daughter in March of nineteen twenty nine. If Georgie was
Bessie High, then this meant Bessie would have had to
have been five months pregnant at the time she vanished,
so the idea of them being the same person was
pretty much completely dismissed.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And you don't stretch five inches older, you get right,
you actually shrink so yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
That doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
But what is bizarre is why would you have that
birth certificate there? Why the marriage certificates that seemed to
line up? It is very odd. Are we sure those
items were found or could the caretaker have alluded to
these ideas thinking that she knew Georgie so well and
that Emory Colb and that frustration with him might actually
(33:56):
make the caretaker think that she could be Bessie. Was
she caught up in somethingre Did she actually turn over
those documents?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Oh? No, they did find the marriage certificate and it
was certified and it was the real thing. And we
still don't know how Georgie acquired a copy. And I
guess it's my guess that she may have been such
a historian about river rafting that maybe she had a
fascination with the hide disappearance and decided to acquire it
as a souvenir. But if so, she never talked about
(34:24):
it or showed it to anybody, because they did not
find it in her drawer till after her death. And
we still don't know the story about why she had
a hatred towards Emery Cole. That is also a big mystery.
So I can understand why I'd be tempting to believe
that she might be Bessie, but obviously that has been
completely debunked. So in two thousand and one, two separate
books about the disappearance of Glenn and Bessie Hyde were
(34:45):
released pretty much simultaneously. Interestingly enough, one of them was
factual while the other was fictionalized, and apparently neither of
the authors even knew that the other book was being published.
The factual book was sunk without a say. The Tragic
Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde, which was
written by a Grand Canyon River guide named Brad Dimmick
(35:07):
and is the most complete and detailed account of the story.
As part of his research, Dimmick even went so far
as to build an exact replica of the hides Wooden
sweep scow and used it to travel down the Colorado
River in order to get an exact idea of what
the couple went through. The other book was titled Grand Ambition,
and while author Lisa Michaels based the story on actual events,
(35:29):
it was written in the style of a fictional novel,
with Glenn and Bessie as the main characters. Anyway, in
two thousand and eight, there would finally be some answers
about the male skeleton found in Emery Colbs boathouse. The
cold case squad at the Coconino County Sheriff's Office were
able to determine that the victim was likely an unidentified
John Doe, who had been found in the Grand Canyon
(35:50):
at Shoshone Point in June of nineteen thirty three. This
discovery came about when the son of a former Grand
Canyon ranger sent a number of photographs and docum eguments
from his father's collection to the Grand Canyon Museum collection.
One of these photos featured the skeleton remains of the
aforementioned John Doe. When he was originally found. The victim
(36:11):
carried no identification, and it was estimated that his actual
death occurred about two years beforehand. He had a bullet
hole in his right temple, and since a thirty two
caliber gun was next to the remains, his death was
ruled to be a suicide. Clothing fragments, a shoe and
a belt were also at the scene and perfectly matched
the same items found with Emery colb skeleton. It turned
(36:33):
out that in nineteen thirty three, Colb had been a
representative on the County Corner's journey for death inquests at
the Grand Canyon. Since the John Doe could not be
identified and there was no next of kin to claim
his remains, it seemed likely that Colb took them home
himself and stored them in his boat house. In fact,
Colb's grandson, who eventually found the remains four decades later,
(36:54):
would recall having seen some bones on his grandfather's property
when he was just a small boy during the nineteen thirties.
The actual identity of the John Doe is still unknown,
but authorities are certain that no foul play was involved
in his death and he has no connection to the
High Case. As for Glenn and Bessie, the legend of
their disappearances continues to live on after nearly a century,
(37:16):
but the truth about what happened to them remains a mystery.
So I guess you could say the path went chili.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Okay, it explains a lot, but that's still really bizarre.
I guess back in the nineteen twenties and thirties, if
you were called to help with a crime scene and
you helped figure out what went on, and no one
came forward, why not just take the body home with you? Right,
Like I get taking the case file home or taking
(37:44):
maybe a piece of evidence or something maybe, but the body.
That's kind of crazy, but really kind of interesting too.
So he's like, you know what, I'll take it home.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I'll uh.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
It's almost like a little medical specimen I guess for
him or part of the career he was doing. But man, today,
looking back, that seems very bizarre.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Didn't age well for sure, No.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I mean, I'm sure he had good intentions. He's probably thinking, well,
if nobody claims this victim, he's probably gonna be burying
a pauper's grave and he'll be forgotten about. So I'll
just keep the remains on hand in case his family
does come forward someday. But you think he lived all
the way to the age of ninety six, that at
some point he would maybe write into his will for
his grandkids say, and when I die and you find
(38:26):
some remains in my boat house, this is what happened
to them. So it is just kind of amusing that
he kind of forgot about them for about four decades,
and that after he dies people start suspecting he's a
murderer or a serial killer or something because of this mistake.
But yeah, it made the whole thing, the connection to
the High case, less mysterious than we thought. But it
is still a mystery. Who this person? Well, it was,
(38:48):
and I guess Cole technically did a good thing because
if this victim had been buried in a pauper's grave
back in the nineteen thirties, people would have forgotten about him.
But now he's part of this very mysterious story.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Was it Robin where one of the investigators kept the
skull of the victim like on their desk?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Oh, yeah, I'm trying to remember that. Oh, I think
it was the lady of the Dunes case. I remember
we talked about that and she was eventually identified. I'm
just gonna double check her name. Yeah, she was identified
by DNA testing a couple of years ago as a
woman named Ruth Marie Terry. She was found murdered in Provincetown, Massachusetts,
(39:28):
in nineteen seventy four. But yeah, for many years afterwards,
the lead investigator on the case actually kept the victim's
skull on his desk, just as a reminder, as a
motivator to solve the case an identify her. But I'm
sure if this happened today, a lot of people would
frat upon that. So I think that about brings an
end to Part one. Join us next week as we
present part two of our series on the disappearances of
(39:49):
Glenn and Bessie Hyde.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer the standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on
(40:18):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
(40:41):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles and Ashley Patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
We'll link them in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at
gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle
up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers comedy,
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
November fifteenth, nineteen twenty eight, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona,
twenty nine year old Glen Hyde and his twenty two
year old wife Bessie decide to spend their honeymoon taking
a rafting trip down the rapids of the Colorado River.
Shortly after stopping at the home of a photographer named
Emery Colb, the Hidees vanished without a and their empty
(01:01):
boat is discovered in the river over one month later.
Over the next several decades, there would be a number
of twists and turns, including a woman you claimed to
be Bessie Hyde, and the discovery of an unidentified male
skeleton in Emery Colb's boat house, but no trace of
Glen or Bessie is ever found after that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
The path went Chili, So on this episode we are
going to be traveling back nearly an entire century to
cover a mystery which took place in the Grand Canyon,
the nineteen twenty eight disappearances of Glenn and Bessie Hyde. Anyway,
if you're an unsolved Mysteries fan, you're probably familiar with
this story as it was featured on the very first
episode of the show, hosted by Robert Stack. Glen and
(01:42):
Bessie Hyde were a newlywed couple who decided to take
a very adventurous honeymoon by embarking on a lengthy whitewater
rafting trip through the Grand Canyon along the Colorado River,
and they hoped to find fame by achieving a new
speed record, but they would eventually go missing, and even
though the couple's empty boat was found completely into with
all their supplies still on board, Glenn and Bessie had
(02:03):
seemingly vanished into thin air. This story has become a
pretty legendary unsolved disappearance with a number of twists and turns,
and even contains a compelling mystery within a mystery, as
a skeleton initially believed to be Glenn Hyde, would be
found on the property of one of the last people
known to have seen the couple alive. Four decades later,
there would also be a woman who popped up on
(02:24):
another rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and told a
number of witnesses that she was Bessie Hyde and had
disappeared on her own and started a new life after
killing her husband. All we know for certain is that
nearly one hundred years have passed since the Hides went
missing and they have still never been found. So I
thought it was about time that the path went. Chile
tackled the very first Mysterious Legends case featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Can my mouth already be hanging open? Because I need
you guys to back up and clarify a couple of
things for me. One, how cool that it was on
the very first episode of Unsolved Mysteries. But okay, a
body was founded. They believe Eve to be Glenn Hyde
with the last known person he was seen with. And
this woman forty years later says, I'm Bessie Hyde and
I disappeared on my own after I killed my husband.
(03:10):
Is there any information more about those two incidences and
are we positive that either are either true or false
at this time?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Oh yeah, we'll definitely talk a lot more about them
and talk about whether or not they are credible or not.
But I brought up those two twists because I remember
when I watched the Unsolved Mystery segment way back in
like the late nineteen eighties. That that's what they focused on,
the woman claiming to be Bessie and the mysterious skeleton
found in the boat house belonging to Emery colp And
I was like, what is going on here? Like? Are
(03:40):
these connected to each other? I mean, when you first
hear about a couple going missing on a whitewater rafting trip,
you're thinking, initially, okay, it's probably obviously drowned. But then
they had all these weird twists and turns come up
in the story several decades later.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yes, that's where I am too. Are these real? What's happening?
This is crazy? So keep telling me more.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Okay. So our story begins in nineteen twenty eight, and
our central figures are a newlywed couple from Twin Falls, Idaho,
twenty nine year old Glen Hyde and his twenty two
year old wife, Bessie Hyde. Glenn makes his living as
a farmer, and the circumstances of how he got married
to Bessie are pretty unusual, ironically enough, given what eventually
(04:23):
happened to them. The couple first met on a passenger
ship traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles in February
of nineteen twenty seven, and they pretty much fell head
over heels in love with each other. The problem was
that Bessie was technically still married to another man in
another state at that point. Bessie was born in Maryland
and raised in Parkersburg, West Virginia, under the name Bessie Hayley,
(04:47):
and was attending Marshall College when she married a man
named Earl Helmick in Kentucky in June of nineteen twenty six.
Even though Bessie and Earle had known each other for
years and attended high school together, their relationship was pretty
much doomed from the start, as Earle was known to
have a violent temper. The couple lived together for less
than two months before they separated, and Bessie moved to
(05:09):
San Francisco to study art in poetry at the California
School of Fine Arts. It's been reported that while she
was living there, Earl sent Bessie money for an operation,
fueling speculation that she'd traveled out West to terminate an
unwonted pregnancy or to secretly give birth to a child
that she put up for adoption, but this has never
officially been confirmed. Whatever the case, Bessie would meet Glen
(05:33):
several months later and wanted to marry him as soon
as possible, but Earle refused to grant her a divorce.
In response, Bessie decided to move to Elko, Nevada, since
the state had the most lenient divorce laws in the
country at that time. She lived there for a couple
of months to meet the residency requirements and filed for divorce,
which was officially granted on April eleventh, nineteen twenty eight,
(05:56):
when Earle failed to show up in court to contest it. Bessie,
then in meeting, mediately traveled to Twin Falls to meet
up with Glenn, and they were married the following day.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So when you look at this, are we sure that
there was money actually sent for this quote operation or
is that still part of the speculation That.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Is part of the speculation. I mean, this was back
during the nineteen twenties, so I don't think we have
like any hard records of this, and I think it's
pretty much just gossip and rumors that they suspected that
Bessie may become pregnant. And of course this is the
nineteen twenties, when an abortion or giving up a child
for adoption with scandalous, so they figured that, well, this
is one of those cases where they sent her away
(06:34):
before anyone noticed she was pregnant, and then just she
miraculously reappeared after she had either terminated or given birth
to the child. But it just kind of shows that
Bessie was a woman who was kind of ahead of
her time for willing to go through this during the
nineteen twenties, and that she was a very independent woman
who probably would not have been happy in a marriage
to a guy like Earle and was much happier meeting
(06:56):
up with an adventurous guy like Glenn.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
What's also interesting is that divorce would have been scandalous,
and so even if the let's say the pregnancy rumors
are false and there was no abortion or adoption, just
her fact of saying, like, I'm so much over this
other marriage, right, whether she was being abused or just
wasn't happy or whatever was happening, she left her husband
so had the confidence to have her own independence, and
(07:19):
then does this whole elaborate scheme to go get residency
somewhere else and actually petition for a divorce, risking the
fact that he could show up if he ever found
out about it, but really having this confidence that I
bet I can beat the system and get away from
this man and the very next day go be with
my adventurer. Glenn's pretty pretty bold, especially back in the
(07:40):
nineteen twenties, but I mean even today, that's a lot
of power that she wielded.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And it is kind of relevant to what we're going
to talk about later because when we explore the theory
about whether she decided to disappear on her own to
get away from Glenn and start a new life, and
you realize, well, she had gone through something like this
before with her previous husband, so it's not impossible she
could have attempted something like that again. Anyway, since Glenn
was an avid outdoorsman and an experienced rafter who had
(08:07):
run the salmon and snake rivers in Idaho, he came
up with a very unusual idea for a delayed honeymoon.
Glenn constructed a two tent. Glenn constructed a two ton,
twenty foot long, five and a half foot wide, flat
bottom wooden sweep scout, which he named Rain in the Face,
and decided that he and Bessie would spend their honeymoon
taking a lengthy whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon.
(08:30):
They would travel to Green River, Utah, and spend the
next several weeks in their scou traveling hundreds of miles
down the rapids of the Colorado River before they arrived
in Needles, California. The Colorado River was considered to be
the most dangerous stretch of water in the world at
that point, and only forty five people had managed to
travel the full two hundred and seventy seven mile length
of the Grand Canyon by river. But Glenn was an
(08:52):
adventurous thrill seeker who wanted to set a brand new
all time speed record, and by taking Bessie along, she
would make history by because I mean, the first documented
woman to run the canyon. If they succeeded, the couple
would likely become famous, and Glenn hoped that Bessie would
use the writing skills to publish a book so they
can make money recounting their adventure by touring the lecture circuit. Well,
(09:14):
in spite of Glenn's vast river rapting experience, Bessie was
pretty much a complete novice at this sort of thing.
Glenn also made the decision not to carry any life
jackets on board the boat, as apparently using life jackets
was just not something that was done in Idaho during
that time period, and they were not even readily available.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Okay, let's backtrack to this idea and the description of
their craft. Okay, I love when you describe it. Used
it a two ton, twenty foot long, five and a
half foot wide, flat bottom wooden sweep scal And after
that tongue twister, I went what the heck is that
and googled it. Guys, it's basically like a huck Finn raft. Okay,
(09:53):
side on it. It looks like you're going to be
in an adventure novel. And for someone who's a novice,
that's pretty crazy and scary, like my guts, like, uh,
they simply had an accident and they drown or something happened.
They hit their head on a rock because I would
not go down on this sweep scal named rain in
the face, right, it looks incredibly dangerous and they're not
(10:15):
going down just some quiet river, they're going whitewater rafting.
So if you get a chance, google it. It's crazy.
I do see where his adventure side said, we could
really make something of this if we survived Asterist Right,
if we survived this trip, we would be the talk
of the town because this is crazy. You are correct, Glenn,
it's crazy. So I assume that life vests were basically
(10:39):
like seat belts used to be, where they just weren't
part of the narrative and they just weren't very common.
And so not shaming him for not having life jackets,
but my god, he was definitely taking a knowing risk
putting her on this sweep scal because, like I said,
I just picture, you know, these two main characters with
a piece of wood shoving themselves off the you know,
(11:02):
side of a slow river. That's not what's happening here.
They're going whitewater rafting on this basically flat piece of wood.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I picture Bessie, who has gone through this arduous process
of getting this divorce from her husband with the violent temper,
and then she meets Glenn, you know, she falls in love,
they get married, they're going on this honeymoon and then
he's like, hey, babe, I've made this scow like on
of wood, and guess what, We're going to go down
a river and we don't have any flotation devices, so
(11:32):
we're just taking our life in our hands. Yes, we've
found love and we will be legends if we make
it all the way through, but who knows, we may
not escape with our lives.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It's a big if, right, And I almost see her
like an Amelia Earhart character, Like she's got this scarf
flapping in the wind, and she's got her goggles on
and she's.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Ready to go.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
But that's that's probably not what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, And that's one of the big mysteries of this story,
because I've heard different narratives where some sources say that
Bessie was terrified of the idea, but some other sources
say she was enthusiastic. But most women when they hear
this story have this reaction saying, not only would I
not want to do this, but I certainly want to
wouldn't want to do this on my honeymoon to a
guy I just married, Because even though Glenn's added like
an adventurous guy, going down two hundred and seventy seven
(12:15):
miles in like a piece of wood is my idea
of a good time.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And like, would she have been as aware of the
safety risks as we are today? Like, I'm pretty sure
that's a big no, because they don't have access to
the internet, and if there are accidents doing something similar, like,
are you really going to hear about it? So you
really are going in blind in a way that we
wouldn't today.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, because they said forty five people made this trip
successfully at that point, but I guess they didn't hear
the statistics on how many people did nick successfully and
drowned who didn't live to.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Tell the tell, right, It's absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
It's like an old timey version of like doing K
two or something. The Hides began their trip in Green
River on October twentieth, and the legend has it that
an experienced river rafter who saw glens scow described it
as a quote Wooden Coffin, and he expressed his belief
that it's not safe enough.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
For the sort of trip.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Regardless, the Hides managed to complete the first leg of
their journey and made it to the Grand Canyon National
Park in record time. The two hundred and seventy seven
mile trip through the canyon on the Colorado River could
easily be documented by the mile markers, which were placed
at various locations, and on November fifteen, the couple arrived
at the Phantom Ranch near River mile eighty eight. They
(13:39):
then proceeded to hike up the Bright Angel Trail until
they arrived at the home of a photographer named Emery Colb.
Emory and his brother, Ellsworth Colb had become legendary figures
in the Grand Canyon by successfully navigating the Colorado River
and filming the entire experience. Emory's home also doubled as
a photography studio named Cold Studio, which had been in
(14:02):
business for nearly twenty five years. At this point, Glenn
knew that Colb was pretty much the area's foremost expert
on the Colorado River, which is why he and Bessie
paid him a visit, and while there, the Hides asked
Colb to take a photograph of them posing by the
canyon's rim. However, during their interactions, Cold noticed that Bessie
seemed to have grown tired of the trip and appeared
(14:23):
apprehensive because they were about to embark on the most
dangerous stretch of the river. Earlier on their journey, while
traveling through the rapids of the Cataract Canyon, Bessie, who
was only five feet tall and weighed ninety pounds, was
knocked into the water, but Glenn managed to grab her
ankle and pull her back into the boat. Glunnad also
apparently fallen out of the scal on two separate occasions
(14:45):
before Bessie managed to get a rope to him. Since
the Hides were going to be facing cold winter weather,
Cold proposed the idea of them staying with him for
a while until the weather improved, but Glenn refused. Colb
also offered to let the hides boils his life jackets
or some inner tubes, but Glenn turned this down as well,
referring to the items as quote artificial aids and assuring
(15:09):
Cold but he and Bessie were both very strong swimmers.
Before the Hides left, Cold's young daughter said goodbye to them,
and Bessie looked at the shoes the girl was wearing
and said, quote, I wonder if I shall ever wear
pretty shoes again. End quote. The Hides then hiked back
down right Angel trail, climb back into their boat, and
continued their trip down the river.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Let's all think boat in quotes. Okay, because again this
is such a bizarre craft that they're going to travel
this really treacherous track on, and you listen to the
way that Glenn is actually given lifelines, and people who
are very familiar with the area are saying like, Hey.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Have you thought about this?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Do you want us to give you this? And it's
almost as though Glenn says, I don't want any of
those quote artificial aids because he so desperately wants that story.
We did it without this, We did it better than
the forty five people before us, right, he wants this
grand adventure story. And even in the face of seeing
Bessie's struggle, having people warn him about dangers, offering these
(16:13):
lifelines to him, seeing that Bessie's kind of getting worn out,
and knowing that they've already had close calls on the
easier part of the trip, it almost just seems like
arrogance and kind of ignorance on his part.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I just mentioned K two again. It reminds me of
people who are like, I want to hike to the
summit of either like Anna Perna or K two or
Everest without any oxygen, and it's like this badge of honors.
You'd be like, I made it to the top without
the oxygen, even though it's far safer to bring that
oxygen along with you and just use it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
If you need it, Yep, at the end, you made
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It's like giving birth.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I'm like, give me all the medicine because I'm gonna
have a baby too.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Let's just do it. Yeah. I think it was just
a cultural thing at that time where Glenn grew up
in Idaho, just thinking you just don't wear life jackets
because if you take a trip like that and you
wear a quote unquote artificial aid the entire time, then
to totally invalidates your accomplishment. So I think that's why
he stubbornly refused to take them.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
But it kind of feels like he's being rather reckless
and disregarding the safety of his wife, Like he would
rather have this badge of honor to be able to
make it without an artificial aid than ensure that Betsy
is safe. If you don't want the life jacket or
the inner two, cool, but like, why don't you ask
Betsy what she wants to do?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So the following day, the hide stop at a tourist
facility and bumped into a tourist named Adolf Gilbert Sutro,
whose grandfather had been mayor of San Francisco during the
late nineteenth century. In exchange for some supplies, the Hides
agreed to allow suit Or to hitch a ride on
their boat with them for the next couple of miles
while they traveled downstream to Hermit Camp. Sutro took one
(17:51):
final photograph of Glenn and Bessie before they went their
separate ways, but after this there would be no more
confirmed sightings of the Hides. They failed to arrive at
the Needles, California at their schedule time, and when Glenn's father,
Our Sea Hide, did not hear from them by December
to sixth, he organized a search effort involving the National
Park Service and several volunteers. Arcia had previously lost two
(18:13):
sons when they were children, and was so dedicated to
finding Glenn that he pretty much drove himself into poverty
by financing multiple searches over the next few years. At
one point during their journey, the Hides across passed with
a reporter from the Denver Post and shared their story,
which soon garnered some coverage in the press, and by
the time the couple went missing, the search for them
(18:34):
became national news. In fact, the story got so much
attention that it even wound up reaching President Calvin Coolidge,
who ordered his Secretary of War to authorize an air
search of Grand Canyon National Park with an army plane.
While on December the nineteenth, the plane finally spotted the
Hyde skow, which appeared to be trapped in some rocks
in the middle of the water near river mile two
(18:55):
thirty seven. Even though the boat seemed to be intact,
Glen and Bessie were not inside. It would not be
until Christmas Day when a search party which included Emery
and Ellsworth Cob made it to this location and located
the scow. Much like when it was spotted from the
search plane, the boat was fully intact, with no noticeable
signs of damage, and was fully stocked with supplies and
(19:18):
the hide's personal possession, including their clothing and hiking boots,
Glenn's rifle, and a diary that Betsy had been using
to chronicle their journey. The only thing which appeared to
be missing was the hides themselves. Forty two notches were
found carved in the boat's gunwale, which seemed to represent
each day of the trip. If the count was accurate,
(19:38):
then this meant that the last notch had been carved
on November thirtieth, which coincided with the date of the
final entry in Bessie's diary. The scow's bowline stretched from
the front of the boat into the river and appeared
to be fastened into crevice in one of the rocks
and had caught on something underwater. Since the Coal brothers
had no success with their attempts to dislodge the bowline,
(19:58):
they decided to cut it. In spite of this discovery,
subsequent search efforts turned up no trace of Glenn or Bessie.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Am I right to think that it sounds as if
the scal gets there almost like it floated down river
without someone on it and gets lodged in this place,
And that rope was not officially tied off, it was
actually jammed in somewhere and kind of caught up on stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, that's what some people think. And there's even speculation
that it could have been attached to maybe Glenn or
Bessie's body, and that maybe the cold has made a
mistake by cutting the bowline, because if they had pulled
up on it, they might have found the couple. But
this has never been conclusively proven.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Ooh, even if one of them was trying to save
the other one. Remember, at certain points Bessie had already
had to rope Glenn back in after he was trying
to rescue her. So that isn't like an impossible idea
because we've seen that action on their ride specifically. But
it's also possible they got bucked out of the scal
that they one of them fell and hit their head
(20:57):
trying to rescue the other one. I mean that could
have had anywhere along the route, and then that boat
gets lodged just by naturally drifting with the currents.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And I think this is what makes it stand out
more than most mysteries where people go missing on a
boat is if it been found like floating in the river,
tipped over, and the supplies were scattered everywhere, then it
would seem obvious that they got into an accident and drowned.
But this one has an extra feeling of eeriness to
it because everything about the boat was intact, all the
supplies were there, but Glenn and Bessie just seemed like
they had vanished into thin air.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I wonder how hard it is. How hard is it
to flip a five foot wide piece of like wood
with sides on it? Is it a harder thing to
flip over than a typical boat or is that easier
to tip over?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Good question, and I don't want to test it and
try it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
See come on now, I'm wondering for is it more
stability on that and that simply the waves would knock
you out because it doesn't rotate or like ride the
waves as well as something that has more of a
curve to the base of the boat, right, which is
why boats have that. But what it all so then
be harder to flip over, So that's why it looks
quote intact instead of capsize.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
I think that's possible because of the shape of the boat.
You might be more likely to get thrown off since
we know that Glenn was thrown off twice, Bessie was
thrown off once, and it seems statistically improbable. But there's
a lot of debris and logs and rocks in rivers
like that, and so a body could potentially get stuck
underneath those things. And even though the gases would develop
(22:29):
in the gut, which usually brings bodies to the surface,
that wouldn't necessarily happen. It seems unlikely with two bodies,
but it could have happened the last specific location Bessie
had mentioned in her diary was Diamond Creek, rapid located
at River mile two twenty five, and evidence was discovered
to suggest the hides and set up camp in the area.
(22:50):
In fact, two years later, a search party for an
unrelated event wound up finding an inscription on the beam
of a ceiling in an old shack near Diamond Creek.
It read quote Glenn and Bessie Hide November thirty first,
nineteen twenty eight. If either Glenn or Bessie had inscribed that,
they probably did so on December first of that year
(23:10):
and had forgotten that November only had thirty days. There
was also an eyewitness account from a prospector who reportedly
saw a brown leather jacket floating in the Colorado River
around the approximate time the Hides went missing. The currents
were too swift for him to retrieve it, but Bessie
was known to have worn a leather jacket on the trip. Ironically,
(23:31):
the location the boat was found was just over forty
miles from the mouth of the Grand Canyon, and if
the details in Bessie's diary were accurate, the couple had
actually been ahead of schedule and would have easily broken
the speed record if they had traveled the entire distance. Anyway,
even though the hide's bodies could not be found, many
people suspected that Glenn and Bessie had fallen out of
(23:53):
their scow and drowned in the river. Others theorized that
they may have become separated from the boat and attempted
to hike their way to the canyon, but died of
exposure before they made it. However, over the course of
the next several decades, a number of unusual events would occur,
which caused speculation that there was a lot more to
the story.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Well, also, if you think about them, if they were
truly ahead of schedule, is that because of this incredible
skill or could it be because of some kind of recklessness.
Glenn's already shown some kind of, you know, tendency to
be almost arrogant in his confidence of how he's going
to do this trip.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I'm not going to really pay attention to timelines. I'm
not going to worry about what the safest route would be.
I'm just going to try to have these claims to fame. So,
if he was trying to be the fastest to ever
do it, and maybe they were ahead of schedule. Could
it be a result of recklessness and not just this
incredible feat which then could have led to them getting
hurt as well.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh yeah, that's entirely possible that they were so ahead
of schedule that they were not taking safety precautions. And
maybe Glenn thought they were invincible, saying that, or we're
going to show like several days before anyone's expecting us to,
and that led to him making more chances, taking more risks,
and eventually they reached a point where they did something
too dangerous and it cost them their lives. So in
(25:12):
nineteen seventy one, a tour group went on a three
week commercial rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, and near
the end of their trip, they set up camp at
Diamond Creek. Since this was near the location where Glenn
and Bessie Hyde's boat had been found four decades earlier,
the tour guy decided to share the story about their
mysterious disappearance around the campfire that night. It was here
(25:33):
that an elderly woman in the group named Elizabeth Cutler
remarked that she was actually Bessie Hyde. She claimed that
Glenn had become so obsessed with completing the rafting trip
that things erupted into a violent fight, which resulted in
Glenn beating her. In response, she grabbed a knife, stabbed
Blent to death, sank his body, and let their float
and let their boat float downstream. She then proceeded to
(25:55):
hike her own way out of the Grand Canyon to
Peach Springs, climbed on a bus, and then went on
to start a new life for herself under her new identity.
Well The other members of the group initially figured that
Cutler was just making up this story, even though she
would have been around the same age as Bessie if
she was still alive at that time, But word about
this story eventually spread, and when historians tracked down Cutler
(26:17):
to her home in Palm mo Roy, Ohio and asked
her about it, she denied ever telling the story and
claimed to have never heard of Glen or Bessie Hyde.
Once further research was done, it became clear that Kutler's
story could not have been true. Not only was she
around half a foot taller than Bessie Hyde, but birth
records showed that Kutler was born in Palm Moroy on
December the second nineteen oh eight. In fact, old newspaper
(26:40):
articles were uncovered which showed photographs of Cutler attending some
family reunions in Palm Roy, Ohio during the late nineteen twenties,
effectively debunking the idea that she was Bessie Hyde living
under a false identity. Cydler died in nineteen ninety eight,
and since she had once worked as a psychology professor
and had a reputation for playing games with people, this
(27:01):
may have been the reason she decided to tell people
she was Bessie.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
That's interesting that you have this psychology professor who's almost
making the world her experiment or her playground, right to say, hey,
I'm going to do these psychological experiments on people. She
has to be a pretty smart cookie to be, you know,
young and becoming a professor and a woman back then, right,
pursuing that kind of career, and so she's no dummy.
(27:26):
But it's really interesting that she would take on such
a powerful, hurtful, dangerous narrative to play with people with.
This is saying I even she's saying I killed somebody, right.
How did she think she.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Get away with that?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Or what was the perk in doing something like that.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But she's a load of saying no, I killed my
husband and pretending to be someone else. And it's like,
even though it would be effectively debunked, like you're out
in the woods alone with these strangers, Like, how do
you think they're going to react if they find out
you confess to killing someone? And thankfully, I think at
the time they just thought she was joking, so they
didn't really take it that seriously. But it just seems
like a very brazen thing to do, to confess to
(28:05):
a murder you didn't do while you're out there in
the woods with a bunch of strangers. So the next
surprise development took place when Emery Coal passed away on
December the eleventh, nineteen seventy six, at the age of
ninety six. Two months later, Colp's grandson was going through
the boathouse on his property at Cold Studio when he
was surprised to discover the remains of a male skeleton
(28:26):
inside a canoe being kept in the rafters. Some remnants
of clothing, a shoe and a belt were next to
the remains, and everything was subsequently turned over to the
Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office. The victim was determined to
have been a Caucasian mail in his twenties, but most importantly,
a bullet from a thirty two caliber gun was found
embedded in his skull and there was a bullet hole
(28:48):
in his right temple. Tests showed that the bullet originated
from a Revolver originally manufactured in nineteen oh two, and
the condition of the bones and the clothing fragments seemed
to suggest that the victim's death that occurred sometime during
the nineteen twenties. Of course, this began to feel rumors
that the victim was Glenn Hyde and that Emery Colb
could have murdered him well. Like I mentioned on the intro,
(29:11):
this case would be featured on the very first episode
of Unsolved Mysteries hosted by Robert Stack, which originally aired
on November twenty nine to nineteen eighty seven. For the segment,
the show consulted with doctor Walter Burkby, a forensic anthropologist
from the University of Arizona. While Birkeby was a nationally
recognized expert in his field and it earned the nickname
(29:31):
Doctor Death because he specialized and unidentified human remains basically
long before the era of DNA testing and websites such
as the dough Network, Doctor Birkby was one of the
best people to turn to if you ever wanted to
identify the skeleton remains of a John or Jane Doe,
so the skeleton found in Colb's boat house was passed
(29:51):
on to him. The segment showed Birkeby performing a test
where he compared the facial structure of the skull to
a photograph of Glenn Hyde and to Term and they
did not match at all. Well, Burntney was unable to
determine the victim's true identity. He was able to conclude
with one hundred percent certainty that it was not Glenn.
Of course, this only opened up a lot more unanswered questions,
(30:13):
creating a mystery within a mystery about who the remains
did actually belong to and why Colb had been keeping
them on his property.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So bizarre, and it's almost like they weren't even hidden.
They're just in this canoe. So it's they're going through
his stuff and it's like, oh, yeah, here's also a body.
I mean, who was that and what the heck was
he doing with it? Is it someone that got hurt
on a trip with him. Is it somebody that he
actually did? No, he's shot, right, this guy shot in
(30:42):
the head.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, Well, later on in the episode, we're going to
reveal who this person probably was. This is kind of
a logical explanation for it. But when Unsolved Mysteries here
their episode back in nineteen eighty seven, they still had
no idea. So a lot of people watching at the
time were thinking that Emery Colb, this legendary photography was
actually like a clotset serial killer or something like why
was he keeping remains in his boat house? But it
(31:05):
turned out that the explanation was a lot less gruesome
than barrigely thought.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Perfect I'll wait for that one.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
At first, I'm like, could have been an accident.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I'm like, no, there's a man with a gunshot wom'm
sitting in a canoe in his space, So okay, I
will wait to know more about that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
While if you asked doctor Famiu Malik, it very well
could have been natural causes.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It's very true, very true.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
The dog did it, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
And he was smoking thirty more marijuana cigarettes. So that's
what that is.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Oh my gosh, Well, believe it or not, it wasn't
long before rumors started to spread about another woman possibly
being Bessie Hyde under a new identity. In May of
nineteen ninety two, Georgie White Clark, a legendary figure in
the field of river rafting, died of cancer at the
age of eighty one. Georgie had worked as a river
(31:50):
rafting guide in the Grand Canyon for forty five years
and made history in nineteen fifty two when she became
the first woman to row the full length of both
the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Marble Canyon. Following her death,
Georgie's caretaker was searching through her lingerie er and was
surprised to discover a certified copy of Glenn and Bessie
(32:11):
Hyde's marriage certificate, which also happened to be resting alongside
a pistol. Furthermore, when Georgie's birth certificate was uncovered, it
revealed that she had originally been born under the name
Bessie de Ross, as White and Clark were the surnames
of the two ex husbands that she'd previously been married to.
Throughout her life, Georgie was always known for being a
(32:32):
very secretive woman, even to her closest friends and Georgie's caretaker,
who also recalled her expressing a personal hatred towards Henry
coleb and refusing to even be in the same room
with him, though she never specified why. So naturally, this
only fueled speculation that Georgie White Clark was actually Bessie Hyde, however,
since Georgie was about five inches taller than Bessie and
(32:54):
didn't really resemble her that much. However, since Georgie was
about five inches taller than Bessie and didn't really resemble
her that much, it didn't take much for historians to
debunk this idea, particularly since Georgie's early life was well
documented in a biography titled Woman on the River. Georgie
married her first husband at an early age. It was
only seventeen years old when she gave birth to a
(33:16):
daughter in March of nineteen twenty nine. If Georgie was
Bessie High, then this meant Bessie would have had to
have been five months pregnant at the time she vanished,
so the idea of them being the same person was
pretty much completely dismissed.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And you don't stretch five inches older, you get right,
you actually shrink so yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
That doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
But what is bizarre is why would you have that
birth certificate there? Why the marriage certificates that seemed to
line up? It is very odd. Are we sure those
items were found or could the caretaker have alluded to
these ideas thinking that she knew Georgie so well and
that Emory Colb and that frustration with him might actually
(33:56):
make the caretaker think that she could be Bessie. Was
she caught up in somethingre Did she actually turn over
those documents?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Oh? No, they did find the marriage certificate and it
was certified and it was the real thing. And we
still don't know how Georgie acquired a copy. And I
guess it's my guess that she may have been such
a historian about river rafting that maybe she had a
fascination with the hide disappearance and decided to acquire it
as a souvenir. But if so, she never talked about
(34:24):
it or showed it to anybody, because they did not
find it in her drawer till after her death. And
we still don't know the story about why she had
a hatred towards Emery Cole. That is also a big mystery.
So I can understand why I'd be tempting to believe
that she might be Bessie, but obviously that has been
completely debunked. So in two thousand and one, two separate
books about the disappearance of Glenn and Bessie Hyde were
(34:45):
released pretty much simultaneously. Interestingly enough, one of them was
factual while the other was fictionalized, and apparently neither of
the authors even knew that the other book was being published.
The factual book was sunk without a say. The Tragic
Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde, which was
written by a Grand Canyon River guide named Brad Dimmick
(35:07):
and is the most complete and detailed account of the story.
As part of his research, Dimmick even went so far
as to build an exact replica of the hides Wooden
sweep scow and used it to travel down the Colorado
River in order to get an exact idea of what
the couple went through. The other book was titled Grand Ambition,
and while author Lisa Michaels based the story on actual events,
(35:29):
it was written in the style of a fictional novel,
with Glenn and Bessie as the main characters. Anyway, in
two thousand and eight, there would finally be some answers
about the male skeleton found in Emery Colbs boathouse. The
cold case squad at the Coconino County Sheriff's Office were
able to determine that the victim was likely an unidentified
John Doe, who had been found in the Grand Canyon
(35:50):
at Shoshone Point in June of nineteen thirty three. This
discovery came about when the son of a former Grand
Canyon ranger sent a number of photographs and docum eguments
from his father's collection to the Grand Canyon Museum collection.
One of these photos featured the skeleton remains of the
aforementioned John Doe. When he was originally found. The victim
(36:11):
carried no identification, and it was estimated that his actual
death occurred about two years beforehand. He had a bullet
hole in his right temple, and since a thirty two
caliber gun was next to the remains, his death was
ruled to be a suicide. Clothing fragments, a shoe and
a belt were also at the scene and perfectly matched
the same items found with Emery colb skeleton. It turned
(36:33):
out that in nineteen thirty three, Colb had been a
representative on the County Corner's journey for death inquests at
the Grand Canyon. Since the John Doe could not be
identified and there was no next of kin to claim
his remains, it seemed likely that Colb took them home
himself and stored them in his boat house. In fact,
Colb's grandson, who eventually found the remains four decades later,
(36:54):
would recall having seen some bones on his grandfather's property
when he was just a small boy during the nineteen thirties.
The actual identity of the John Doe is still unknown,
but authorities are certain that no foul play was involved
in his death and he has no connection to the
High Case. As for Glenn and Bessie, the legend of
their disappearances continues to live on after nearly a century,
(37:16):
but the truth about what happened to them remains a mystery.
So I guess you could say the path went chili.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Okay, it explains a lot, but that's still really bizarre.
I guess back in the nineteen twenties and thirties, if
you were called to help with a crime scene and
you helped figure out what went on, and no one
came forward, why not just take the body home with you? Right,
Like I get taking the case file home or taking
(37:44):
maybe a piece of evidence or something maybe, but the body.
That's kind of crazy, but really kind of interesting too.
So he's like, you know what, I'll take it home.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I'll uh.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
It's almost like a little medical specimen I guess for
him or part of the career he was doing. But man, today,
looking back, that seems very bizarre.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Didn't age well for sure, No.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I mean, I'm sure he had good intentions. He's probably thinking, well,
if nobody claims this victim, he's probably gonna be burying
a pauper's grave and he'll be forgotten about. So I'll
just keep the remains on hand in case his family
does come forward someday. But you think he lived all
the way to the age of ninety six, that at
some point he would maybe write into his will for
his grandkids say, and when I die and you find
(38:26):
some remains in my boat house, this is what happened
to them. So it is just kind of amusing that
he kind of forgot about them for about four decades,
and that after he dies people start suspecting he's a
murderer or a serial killer or something because of this mistake.
But yeah, it made the whole thing, the connection to
the High case, less mysterious than we thought. But it
is still a mystery. Who this person? Well, it was,
(38:48):
and I guess Cole technically did a good thing because
if this victim had been buried in a pauper's grave
back in the nineteen thirties, people would have forgotten about him.
But now he's part of this very mysterious story.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Was it Robin where one of the investigators kept the
skull of the victim like on their desk?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Oh, yeah, I'm trying to remember that. Oh, I think
it was the lady of the Dunes case. I remember
we talked about that and she was eventually identified. I'm
just gonna double check her name. Yeah, she was identified
by DNA testing a couple of years ago as a
woman named Ruth Marie Terry. She was found murdered in Provincetown, Massachusetts,
(39:28):
in nineteen seventy four. But yeah, for many years afterwards,
the lead investigator on the case actually kept the victim's
skull on his desk, just as a reminder, as a
motivator to solve the case an identify her. But I'm
sure if this happened today, a lot of people would
frat upon that. So I think that about brings an
end to Part one. Join us next week as we
present part two of our series on the disappearances of
(39:49):
Glenn and Bessie Hyde.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer the standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on
(40:18):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
(40:41):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles and Ashley Patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
We'll link them in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at
gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle
up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers comedy,
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