Five listeners. We are back. You may have thought our enemies won, but guess what? I mean, anyone with common sense would have quit. And probably the fact that our last episode was called This Podcast is Never Gonna Make It. And then we just stopped recording for like weeks and months without even saying anything. You were probably like, well, they finally figured it out. And every other podcast that started when we started that didn't like somehow become viral and make it big, like everybody else has quit. I feel like we might actually be the only Unsolved Mysteries podcast left. I'm not sure. I haven't checked. Don't correct me on that. I don't care. But we might be. Maybe.
There were a lot of them. When it first came to Netflix, I feel like there was a boom. There was an Unsolved Mysteries podcast boom. Mike and Josh were out here just buying their own business for years. And then all of a sudden, all these new bitches show up thinking they can take over the Unsolved Mysteries podcast space. And they could not have been nicer about it. And now they're not even doing it anymore. So it's just us. Someone started an Unsolved Mysteries podcast after we did. I won't say who. But when I reached out to be like, you know, because Mike and Josh have been so nice to us and like supportive of us, I like reached out. I was like, oh, hey, I have an Unsolved Mysteries podcast too. But they were just like, we know.
that was it okay they clearly listen to our podcast we're like we can fucking do better than this yeah but who's still here bitch who's still here that's my point Is our podcast better? Probably not, but it's still going. Look, we may not have quality, but we have, well, we don't have consistency. Although we have consistency in the fact that we're still technically doing it. We have quantity. We don't have quality, but we have quantity and we have the listeners. I would bet all of our podcast that our listeners are the best of anybody's listeners. And that's why we're still doing it. Because the five are so strong. They're so beautiful. They're so supportive. They're so wonderful in every way. They smell better. They look better. They're glowing. They're thriving. They're moisturized. They're in their lane.
yep and um that just can't be said of the population at large please please so um that's why we have not learned our lesson uh we did have to take some time off uh samantha just like loves getting surgery i don't know everything you know some people go on vacations once a year they take off like you know a couple weeks from work and go you know to mexico or the bahamas or something what i really love doing is using all my vacation to recover from surgery yeah yeah you're like what i was doing you're like that resort has bottomless drinks no thanks i will i'll be in bed for days yeah sounds great sounds so good it's such a i mean you're just doing it for the attention and um yeah yeah the get well soon cards and i keep saying that and it's it's probably not funny on a podcast but it's funny if you know samantha because i could like not be less it's just like so obviously false that i'm like wow samantha is just like really milking that attention and meanwhile she's like please do not look at me you know i do not want to be perceived it's like wow i just can't stop getting surgery it's all about you it's all about me and then i also got really sick so
just for just in april i'm fine whatever it was not a big deal but it did mean that there was a month where we like literally couldn't do patreon and of course all our patrons were super nice about it but we were like anyway we're you know on the mend do you want to oh this is so sad but you want to say a quick word for gracie we lost one of them yeah we lost one of the pod dogs also we did gracie i can talk about it without crying i think uh my dog gracie passed away she was 14 almost 15 maybe you know rescue dogs it's hard to say exactly how old they are he was 14 or 15 she had a long life she was so sweet So many people loved her. Her picture is hanging in the vet's office. That's why they loved her. But it was hard, you know. I mean, I think a lot of listeners have experienced a pet crossing over. And it's, yeah. I don't know. She was sweet. She's missed by everybody. I think Curtis most of all, maybe. He doesn't know. It's for the best. It's for the best. If you don't know, my dog Curtis had like a serious crush on Samantha's dog, Gracie. Which is very funny because Curtis spends...
pretty much 99.9 percent of his time being extremely nervous and scared it's just this way but then when he would see gracie he would be like oh hello he would like he's strutting around he would pretend he was like really confident so funny so i will never we might never go to see that side of curtis again the flirt maybe not Mac was gone all day yesterday, which is not his favorite thing. But he was so good and so brave yesterday. I'm looking at him right now. Curtis, you did a great job yesterday. He's like, I don't know what you're talking about because I'm a dog. But he really was very good. We all grow. We all change. We all deal with loss. Samantha is in shambles. I just learned Gordon Ramsay got hit by a car. It might have been Saturday. I don't know exactly what day it happened. But he put out a Father's Day message that was like, I almost died. Which was like, OK, happy Father's Day.
uh if you i mean okay i don't see the trigger warning but if you watch the video he posted where he was like wear a helmet i almost died by getting hit by a car on my bike he shows his like side he like lifts his shirt off a little bit which i'm usually excited about but it's like so black and blue like there is no there is no regular skin it's just solid bruise okay i'm assuming this is the driver's fault maybe not maybe it's just like a freak accident whatever but imagine you're driving you hit a cyclist terrifying right like you're like oh my god i'm going to jail this like my whole life is ruined whatever i cannot believe i have to deal with the guilt that i killed almost killed someone and then you get out of your car and you find out that it's gordon like That must have been. Obviously, my sympathy is with Gordon, the person that got hit, but I'm just imagining the driver. No, because this is how I would be Gordon Ramsay. Yeah. Like, I would be like, driving along. I don't know. I blink and all of a sudden there's a cyclist and it's fucking Gordon Ramsay. You sneeze, like your eyes close. When they open, you realize you've hit Gordon Ramsay. No, you realize you hit a person. You're like, oh my God, I'm almost a murderer. This is the worst day of my life. And then you get out of the car. You're going to take me to jail right now. And then it's Gordon Ramsay. And then it's Gordon Ramsay. And he's just like cursing at you, but it's not the way you wanted, you know? Yeah.
What a day. What a day that was for that person. Well, I'm just glad he's okay. Glad he's still with us. And he can go on to have six more kids and a thousand more shows and open 10,000 more restaurants where I guess he doesn't treat his staff very well. Whatever. I swear to God, every day I discover a new Gordon Ramsay show. I'm not even kidding. Did you ever watch that one about him and cocaine? That one does not really appeal to me, but the name is so funny.
Gordon Ramsay does cocaine or whatever. I think it's Gordon Ramsay on cocaine. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. He doesn't do the cocaine. I think doing cocaine would be a little bit too on the nose. He, like, studies where cocaine comes from. I guess. I've not watched it. I don't really know. To meet new suppliers for the restaurant industry, I can only assume. I mean, how else is he doing all of this? He's clearly one of those people that doesn't need much sleep, which I'm the opposite, so I'm always so jealous of those people. But also, like, what do I have to do? You know? I don't have...
a thousand restaurants all over the world yeah you literally probably couldn't sleep if you were gordon ramsay yeah i was trying to think if we have any updates and i'm sure there's so many we could say but the only one i can think of is that there is a new white bison at the yellowstone park that's really important so if you have a baby that you need baptized which you know whatever you do you obviously you should be bringing your baby to yellowstone to get it baptized by the white bison just like the person in unsolved mysteries because i just think that's a cool thing to do i would love that to be my backstory 100 I mean, I just got baptized in like some church, like a dope. Like that's boring. Boo. If my parents had been like, and then we drove all night so we could see the rare white bison. We're like, yes, this is so cool. Oh, also the orcas are back. I don't know if that's just because it's summer and like more people are on boats, but the orcas are out. They're attacking boats. The Porpoise of Justice is out there doing her thing. The sharks too. The sharks are biting people left and right. Stay out of the ocean. It's not our domain. Like get out of there. It's not our home. My mom sent me an amazing video the other day of two sea lions that were on this like very small boat. They like basically stole a boat and were just riding around on it.
and they were so heavy that like half of the boat was sinking and they were like completely oblivious just like floating a lot like that boat is not going to survive i don't know where it ended up it was a great video find it if you can i'll post it in the group um yeah i'm sure they you know we've like completely ruined their natural habitat i'm sure they were like looking for an iceberg or some shit but those all melted so now they're just like well i guess we steal a boat You know? I love that the orcas are sinking boats. The sea lions are pirating boats. Yeah. The sharks are biting people who've fallen off the boats. Yeah. The ocean, we made it too hot. All the animals are angry, rightfully so. So maybe stay out of there. Yeah. And you can't really trust lakes. So stay out of those two. Snapping Turtle City down there. You don't know what is in there. Did we find out what that ship hit in the middle of Lake Superior? Did you see that? I have no idea. There was like a ship that hit something in like the middle of Lake Superior where nothing was supposed to be. That's so weird. Ship hit. It hit.
Okay. I can only assume it hit a ghost ship. I would think so. Absolutely. Right. I just need to brag about this. And it's probably not a good story at all, but I'm going to tell it while you look this up, which is that for my birthday, I went to Las Vegas because I wanted to see Dita Vontisa's show at the horseshoe with the vintage Bob Mackie showgirl costumes. Oh, I guess what? It was fucking amazing. It was like the most sparkly glamorous thing I've ever seen in my life. Whatever. But while I was there, I went to the antique mall and I was just like fiddling around, you know, and I found the souvenir spoon from the Winchester mystery house.
It had this little dangly, like the top of the spoon, you know, where the souvenir part was, has a little charm of the house on it. And it was $3.50. And I'm just really proud of that find. It's an amazing find. I gave it to a friend of the pod, our history nerd, Rochelle, for her birthday. Now she knows how much it was. Don't listen, Rochelle. It was millions of dollars.
but it was just in like a pile of spoons you know so i was like this is this is really dope an amazing find yeah there doesn't seem to be an update okay then it's ghost ship i think there's no other and all the news articles i found just says a freighter ship in lake superior collide with something underwater that's i don't know what so yeah they don't like it the great lakes are spooky man you can't even trust lakes no you cannot even trust them maybe it was a really big snapping turtle let's just the biggest one ever it was probably lake monster oh yeah yeah that makes sense I don't know if there's a named lake monster in that lake, but what would you call it? Does Lake Superior have a lake monster? Oh, it's gotta. Let me Google that. If it doesn't, what would you name it? Hmm. Superiorio. I was trying. I can't come up with anything better than that. Superiorio? But it's terrible. You really can't come up with anything better than that. No, it's perfect. What are you talking about? It's something that sucks. Superiorio. You know, Lake Superior is a lake monster. Okay, this thing has four legs. There's no way this is in the underwater panther in Lake Superior. What?
What is that called? Okay. There's a few things. Okay. So the first, the first result is I'm going to say this wrong and I'm so sorry. It's a Mishy Pishu. The most, um, mythical water being. Uh, it's the most important of several mythical water beings among many indigenous peoples of the Northwestern woodlands and the Great Lakes region. Uh, so I'm sure I said that wrong, but it's a.
i really like it looks like a panther but it lives underwater i've never heard of this we should go look for it they live in opposition to thunderbirds masters i'm reading wikipedia this could have been written by someone who has no fucking clue so i don't i don't know if this is actually in alignment with the actual legends but um underwater panthers are opposing a complementary force to thunderbirds and are they're engaged in eternal conflict super interesting it's an amalgamation of parts of many animals the body of a wild feline often a cougar or lynx horns of deer or bison upright scales on its back occasionally feathers and parts from other animals as well depending on the particular myth they have particularly long tails so that knocked the boat honestly yeah i feel like it could be this there's apparently also Pressy? This is from the Cryptids Wiki, so I assume it's true. I don't like that name, but go on. Pressy, P-R-E-S-S-I-E, is a lake monster that allegedly inhabits Lake Superior. It's been described as around 75 feet in length with a horse-like head and sharp, possibly jutting teeth and set on a long neck. It's purported to have large pectoral fins and many have fins that may have been held close to the body for streamlining.
This picture is absolutely fucking hilarious because it's clearly just a whale and someone put like a weird dinosaur head on it. Love it. Should we get tattoos? No. I've never heard of Pressy in my life. You can comment on the cryptid wiki and someone said it's a bootleg Nessie. I mean, yeah. The first sightings allegedly were in 1800s. In parentheses or before. Yeah, sometime. They were at a time.
a past time and it's not really important when that time was you know yeah think about it did you eat one of these um hazelnut kitkats i brought to you oh i didn't well i'm gonna do a snack time without you then okay i heard there's a glazed chocolate donut kitkat floating around out there somewhere i'm sorry what allegedly i haven't seen one but I bought some hazelnut Kit Kats from World Market. And I think this is supposed to be released in Germany. Okay, both of our question is, why are their Kit Kats bigger? Yeah, this is America. We are supposed to be the slobs of the world. We're supposed to be eating the garbage, right? We are the Oscar the Grouch, right? Or whatever eats garbage. I don't even know. Why do they get bigger Kit Kats than us? This is America. We have freedom. And that means gigantic candy bars. Our candy bars need to be bigger than everybody else's candy bars. It's just...
I'm sorry, who won World War II? I mean, think about it, all right? And what were we fighting for? Pretty sure it was kick-out size. Because our education system is real bad. But anyway, I actually, honestly, I've already eaten a bunch of these, and they're fine. There's really nothing special about them. They're supposed to be, I thought they were going to taste like delicious Nutella, and you can barely tell.
How do you feel about the summer polars? Have you tried them all? I don't know if I've tried all of them. I don't know if I've tried all of them. The strawberry and cream one is good. Okay, I don't think I've had that. There was one that I thought was not that good. Oh, it was the iced tea one, the peach iced tea. I thought it tasted nothing like iced tea, or peach, frankly. It was honestly just not good all around. You know, I can't even remember what I've had, but I feel like what I had was very unremarkable, and it didn't really have a specific flavor. Yeah.
i feel like polar did kind of drop the ball this summer um since they never gave us any money i'm very free to say thanks for nothing polar we could not have promoted you more for you i miss repod man repod come back did they quit i think they're i think they're long gone oh i miss their unconditional support and money and also i would find i did actually use that app we didn't just say their money i didn't really use it i feel like our listeners are the only ones who used the app i think we're the only people that ever promoted it or ever used it and i would find like weird random pockets i never would have found otherwise You know what? These KitKats are fine. I don't know. I'm sure they're not worth whatever they cost at World Market. That's my theory. There's not enough. I wish the whole thing, like the outside everything, tasted like Nutella. That's what I wanted. Yeah. And it's just not really there. Well, I'll keep an eye out for the donut KitKats. Really, I just wanted to eat a KitKat, so this was just an excuse to have mouth noises on the pod. So hope you appreciated that. It wouldn't be our podcast without some mouth noises. I assume this is why my husband does not listen to our podcast. That or he's just really sick of this out of my ways. Maybe he has to spend like all day every day with me and he doesn't eat anymore, but it could be the mouth noises.
could be uh i guess not really an update but if you're not on our patreon we have been on hiatus from our regular episodes but we haven't been on hiatus okay there was that one month but We caught up the next month. We did two episodes the next month. If you give us, not that we necessarily are out to put our content behind a paywall, but if we are strapped or there's a lot of things going on and we can just only pick, we can only pick one. We always do Patreon. So if you want like the most consistent content, you can give us a dollar. I feel like it's not that much, you know, a dollar. And at this point, we've recorded like over 75 episodes on Patreon. So if you're still not on there, I feel like only like the most dedicated people listen to us still. So probably like all our listeners are, but if for some reason you're not on Patreon, you can give us a dollar and get all that content.
you know we consistently put out patreon content even when we're not doing regular content which hopefully we'll get back to regular content consistently now but just want to plug our patreon there because also the episodes we put out recently i think were hilarious so if you want to hear me and max summarize the movie children of the corn which i know you do that we did that we've done uh we did the x-files episode darkness falls me and samantha and then me and samantha did another x files episode about the puss boss that's coming out this month so And if you have any additional X-Files episodes you want to talk about, please let us know on Patreon or in the Facebook group. We'll do it. We'll do it. I love doing those ones. And I also love talking about Children of the Corn. So, all right. I think it's time. I think that was enough waffle. We can finally get to the Unself Mysteries. Every time I see a comment somewhere about how much people just hate needless banter on podcasts, I'm like, too bad.
my podcast is not for you and that's the fun part for me so we are on season eight episode 15. you can watch that for free on youtube where there's like a bunch of different channels that have unsolved mysteries now roku has one i think pluto has one oh you can hear curtis howling because mac's not here it's okay buddy he will come back unless he gets hit by a car like gordon ramsey oh my god you can't speak english yeah so um we're starting with an unexplained death this is actually the story that inspired the movie a few good men which actually i have never seen but you know it was a big hit back in the day so this is about 27 year old david cox he was from massachusetts he joined the marines straight out of high school which i'm just gonna i'm sure no one listening to this podcast would do that do not do that do not join the military oh my god they own you they will lie to you they will manipulate you to get you to join don't do it i know they're talking about automatically enrolling everyone in the draft now uh good luck with that i we are not prepared to I mean, I realize I'm too old, but we're not prepared to fight for this country. Nobody likes this country. So good luck with that. But anyway, so all he wanted to be, according to Robert Stack, was being one of the proud and the few. Oh, boy. That propaganda worked real well. So in 1986, he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. You may have heard of it. It's a great place to send an 18-year-old. Obama never closed it, just in case you were wondering. So blah, blah, blah. That's a U.S. naval base. We still have it. We refused to give it back when Fidel Castro came to power. It was like a constant political whatever.
So trouble happened when a different person of his platoon, William Alvarado, he wrote to his senator about some marine misconduct, which basically unofficially his platoon was trying to aggravate Cuba. Like there was an official orders, but they understood that they were supposed to be doing things to provoke Cuba, like firing into their space and blah, blah, blah. And so someone, William Alvarado, wrote to his senator, like, are you aware of this? Like people are actively trying to start a war. Well, that was not appreciated. So William soon became the target of a brutal hazing ritual, which the Marines called Code Red. That's never good. That literally sounds like the name of a horror movie. Like, bad sign. So according to another person who was there, Christopher Valdez, who was David's friend, he was the former squad leader, it wasn't their idea to haze William. That unofficially came from their platoon commander, Colonel Samuel Adams, who said that if they were good Marines, something would happen to William.
he called it an implied order right which is like they knew that he couldn't like officially say on the record or whatever i want you to beat the shit out of this guy but they knew what he meant so on saturday night in july 1986 to stop you so we don't see the full hazing or get a description of it is that what they literally like gonna beat the shit out of him i mean okay so what we do see is that david christopher and eight other marines they go into william's room they blindfold him they stuff a gag in his mouth on unsolved mysteries they show them putting duct tape then over the gagged mouth they drag him it looks like into the like shower area i don't know they drag him off into a different part from his bed oh yeah they take him into the bathroom down the hall and then i think they were just gonna like yeah beat him yell at him whatever oh they start they start also shaving his head because that's all we see is that they shave his head and then they stop because they notice he's like gone limp yeah because he stops breathing because they've they've closed up his mouth it kicked over his mouth they possibly blocked both his mouth and nose so he passes out while they're shaving his head i assume they were just like i assume they were gonna kick the out of him i guess i don't really know but um they had already like gags him and blindfolded him and dragged him so he stopped struggling they go oh something's wrong um he had like inhaled part of the rag and his lungs were filling with fluid
In five minutes. That's how brutal this was. So they notice that his face is turning blue. And they go, oh, we need to stop the hazing. So they remove the mag. They untie him. He's spitting out blood. He loses consciousness. That's when they start to panic. Anyway, so he was taken to the Miami hospital for emergency care. He recovered, but his 10 attackers were charged. And I think they think that this is unfair. I don't.
I realized that like their commanding officer implied like, oh, something should happen to that guy. Doesn't mean you have to do it. In fact, you shouldn't be there at all. Like, I don't have a lot of sympathy for David in this situation. Like, should you be allowed to gag and humiliate and beat people because someone told you to? No, not really. No, I'm not really on board. But anyway.
Don Macari was the lawyer appointed to defend David. It was literally his first case as an attorney. And he told David that he was going to be charged with attempted murder because William almost died. they the the reason this was a strong case was that nobody was denying they did it they had confessed that they did it and that they had a quote pretty beat on marine like he literally had to be flown to miami for emergency services and almost died um so he was like hey this does not look good for you and david was just like i'm just following orders and his lawyer was like yeah that is not a defense that has worked well in the past also there were no orders actually i realize what he's saying is that it was an implied order but there was no order so maybe like resist a tiny bit david i'm sorry like You did not have to do this. You really didn't. I don't think you were in danger if you didn't do it. You know, like. Maybe he was, though. I mean, I guess I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Maybe the code red would happen to him. That is never said. No, it's not. At least not in the Unsumbestries Wiki. Yeah. I'm gathering that they wanted to impress their commanding officer. And so they were doing it to, like.
win his favor more than anything else and that's not a good reason but maybe i'm mistaken about that anyway so his lawyer points out like oh you might want to look at nuremberg when you're saying like i was just following orders like that no yeah there's some precedent there um also yeah as samantha said it's not an official order so there's this other burden of being like an implied order is effectively the same as an implicit or you know blah blah whatever but david was determined to fight the charges and he didn't think he'd done anything wrong and he wanted to stay in the marines I mean, fortunately for David, this kind of worked out for him. There was a court-martial proceeding. He was acquitted of aggravated battery. The charge was down from attempted murder, and he was convicted only of assault. Then he was sentenced to the time he had already served in the brig. The two other Marines that were charged also refused the plea bargain. But two of the other Marines refused the plea bargain. The other seven accepted, and they were given other than honorable discharges instead of dishonorable. But that was later upgraded to honorable for Christopher anyway. So guess what? It really didn't matter that he almost killed this dude.
Yeah. So after the current marshal, David finishes his tour or whatever. He serves out his final two years in Korea, Panama, and North Carolina. He is then honorably discharged. Despite all this, in August of 1989, at the time he had the riot of corporal. After his discharge, he returns to his civilian life. He works out of jobs, blah, blah, blah. Then three years later, the movie A Few Good Men was released, and it told the story of Marines on trial for attacking a squad member during a Code Red. Unsolved Mysteries tells us that most viewers were unaware that this was based on a real story involving William. When David learned about the story, he felt like the movie leaders had stolen his story.
David, you do not have to admit that it's about you. No. Also, is it your story or is it the person who was victimized the story? Yeah. Like, I have not seen the movie, but I cannot imagine that David is the hero of the movie. Doubt it. I would hope not. Okay. So according to David's girlfriend, Elaine Tinsley, he was stunned when he saw the movie. And he thought that he was watching his life in front of him and not getting any credit for it. Why would you want credit for that? Yeah. That's like the sort of thing you should really keep to yourself if you ask me.
Say he's made this horrible mistake, right? Like he's in the military. He's in this environment where you're supposed to just do what you're told and you're not supposed to question anything and they've brainwashed him good. Okay, great. So he gets this implied order that he is supposed to haze this guy. The guy almost dies. I would say that's like a horrible mistake that you should feel bad about. Not like, how dare they not give me credit for beating the shit out of that guy. Weird thing to say. Okay, so he later became more angry when he realized the movie company was making millions off quote his story and claimed that if it was not for him, the story would have never existed in the first place.
Okay, that is taking a lot of credit for the situation that you, supposedly, were just following orders, and you're one of ten people. That's just a really weird way to frame it. Like, if it weren't for me, this wouldn't have happened. Yeah, but that would be a good thing. That would be good! It would probably be better if this movie never got made, because it means that this person would never have been victimized. Yes! By people he was supposed to trust! Right? Like, you're supposed to be together as a unit, having each other's back, and instead, you're dragging him out of his bed in the middle of the night, gagging him, blindfolding him, and shaving off his hair to humiliate him, to the point where his lungs fill with fluid.
Okay. If it weren't for me, that guy would have never almost died. It got in a movie. Imagine being a girlfriend and hearing that and you're just like, okay. I need to call my mom and pack my bags. Okay. But it's clear that I think David and maybe his other squad members who participated in this think that they're also the victim for getting this implied order to do this. I don't know that he thought of himself. I'm not sure that he was, like, so much embarrassed by it as he thought, like, he was probably... He felt like it was unfair that he was given the order and then got in trouble for it, which I can see a logic to that. It's like, you told me to do it. Why are you now mad I did it? And it's like, well, because it went really wrong. Yeah. And certainly the superior is at fault. And not getting in trouble, right? Like, I'm sure they didn't get it. It's still not something that you should be, like, proud of and, like, want credit for in a movie. At least I wouldn't.
no because you are sane okay but also he was also mad that the story was inaccurate which i would say just means that it's not based on you because he was upset that the victim died in the movie but survived in real life and it's like okay well that's just movie making us a better story right and also that two of the marines in the movie were relieved of duty and dishonorably discharged which did not happen in real life and it's like then it's not about you then it's not your story yes okay so david christopher and some other marines involved in the cold red filed suit against the movie production company castle rock entertainment they felt that their life story had been stolen and that it was an invasion of privacy and that they were being inaccurately portrayed as killers i can kind of see that except that no one would know that was supposed to be you if you didn't say so it's not your name are you are you like i look so much like tom cruise that everyone's just gonna assume that that's me like what are you talking about Okay, so after that, David spoke up a lot about the case. He went on radio. He was in newspapers talking about the Marines and how things worked at Quatomino and probably saying shit he was not supposed to say. And he also planned to write a book to, quote, set the record straight, which is like when Mark Furman wrote that book. It's like, no one wants to hear it, dude. Keep it to yourself. Okay. So by January 1994, David and Elaine had moved into a new apartment. And for her birthday, he gave her a rabbit, Lenny. Aww. And he had a temporary job for UPS.
and his brother okay whatever that's not interesting so he he and um his brother went out for drinks the night of january 4th and steve noticed that he did not see him like himself and seemed a bit quote reserved and he told his brother he was having some problems with his girlfriend probably because he was constantly insisting that he wasn't a murderer he was just a horrible person i don't know um so elaine gets home at some point and there's a message from ups about his job on the machine essentially saying like oh we have good news which was probably that his job was becoming permanent or whatever at 1pm she calls to check the messages that message was still there and there was another message from ups again so then by 5 30 she gets home she comes inside she realizes that all the doors to all the rooms were open i guess i usually kept a rabbit in the kitchen i don't know whatever and so it was just like hopping all around the whole apartment it wasn't confined to the kitchen anymore some glasses were tipped over i mean Okay. Maybe they were very neat. At the same time, Jim from UPS had called again. David's 1988 Ford pickup was still in the driveway. The keys were in the ignition. There was an uncashed paycheck on the dashboard, and his gun was still in the glove box. However, he's gone. She knows something was wrong. He doesn't come home. He doesn't call. She calls his family and friends. No one knows where he is. The next day, she reports him missing. The police did not take David's disappearance seriously. At first, they just said he had run off. Super helpful. Good thing we found them.
They did not interview neighbors. They did not search the area. They didn't do anything. So and we hear from his mom and she was like, I immediately knew something was wrong. This is very out of character for him. Like, you know, if he wanted to break up with Elaine, he would have just broken up with Elaine. He wouldn't have just literally left with and left every little everything he owns and his money and everything. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. So the mom was immediately concerned. A few days passed. There was still no news from him. His family got in cancer with his bank. There was no activity on his bank account. Anyway, so then on the afternoon of April 2nd.
Okay, so there's no news for the rest of the winter. Then there's a thaw in the spring, and in April 2nd, 1994, a canoeist out on the Charles River sees a white sneaker sticking out of a bunch of pine branches. It's David's body hidden under some branches. He was a mile from the nearest road, and he was approximately five miles from his apartment. He was wearing the same clothes when he disappeared, which included, weirdly, his Marines camouflage jacket, which is not something he would ever just wear, you know, like out and about. And also his Marines sniper jacket, jeans, and sneakers. The sneakers thing is weird because there was a lot of snow, and he did own, like, boots.
So if he knew he was going out into the woods, you would not think that he would be wearing sneakers, right? Right. According to the medical examiner, David was shot four times, once at the base of the neck and three times in the left side of his torso. Three nine millimeter shells were found at the scene. It seems like he was killed where his body was found. His wallet was still in his back pocket, including cash and credit cards. So, you know, if that was a robbery, it's the worst robbery of all time. They believe that he left his home with someone he knew. It doesn't seem like he was dragged out of there or something. It seems like it was someone he trusted, but he didn't know where they would be going or he would have worn his boots. So it seems like he knew someone was coming to pick him up. He willingly got in their car. He was brought to a secuted area and killed.
There's a lot of speculation that if this was done by the military, it would have been in his home or it would have been closer to the road. And I don't really understand why. It's like when the military comes to your home and kills a former officer, they always do that right by the way. I was like, there's a procedure for that. Like, what are we talking about? I don't understand. So, yeah, he had to walk nearly a mile in the snow in sneakers. And then we just have a lot of speculation from his family and friends. Like, why was he killed?
It seems to be the leading theory, though there's no proof of this at all, is not that it's so much about the trial. It's about him getting upset about the movie and then saying way too much about what happens in Quotanable Bay. That he was starting to say things like, yeah, they were openly trying to provoke a war with Cuba. He's starting to say things that the military and the U.S. government actually would not want people to know. And it's not actually related to this Code Red thing. It just came up on that subject. Right, because I don't really believe that that movie would be able to be made if the government actually cared, that people knew about it.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I feel like they can stop that, right? Well, there's actually a ton of military funding in a lot of major motion pictures, like Top Gun, Marvel movies, whatever. So it's not like there's no connection between those two industries. And this, you know, was a major, this is not like some greedy indie film. This is a major Hollywood release. And it's, you know, I think it...
I haven't seen the movie, but I don't think it's an indictment of the entire system. It's an indictment of individual people, right? It's a bad Apple-type situation. But the speculation is that him saying that the U.S. is trying to provoke a war with Cuba is not something that they would have wanted out there. I don't know. But there's really actually nothing about this to connect the military to the murder. There's some speculation that it has something to do with something nefarious going on at UPS.
yeah but that seems to be like literally like he got a job like he got a full-time position so and i asked what he just like stumbled upon something i have no idea what that would even be he found out about the ups and they had to kill him please um okay so suspects there's really none they have no idea who killed him um of course the police want you to think that has something to do with drugs however there's no evidence for that theory at all uh he was a known gambler however at the time of his and at the time of his appearance he had 1100 in gambling debt it's not a lot not seem doesn't seem enough to kill someone over although i suppose people have been killed over less but unsolved wiki notes that however he was good friends with his bookie and had more than 3 000 in his checking account so he could have just paid his debt there's just no reason like it comes to the point where they're like pay us or we're gonna kill you you would think he'd be like well let me go to the bank um Yeah, the police looked into the possibility that UPS was involved in the murder. What? Why? People still think it has something to do with Code Red. I don't know. Maybe he was talking too much. Maybe he just like made some... You know, I'm speaking ill of the dead, but he doesn't seem like the nicest guy. Maybe he just had some other enemies. Yeah, maybe. If he's willing to just like beat up people or haze people and then be like, that was me. How dare you tell me? I don't know. There might be some aggression going on. Yeah. I don't know. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
it's still unsolved i mean they said they were gonna take a fresh look at it at 2019. okay well and then it's like oh why was he wearing these military things that's not something people do in public and it's kind of like i don't know think of it as just like if the government's coming to kill you they're not gonna like put you in your uniform first yeah so he would have to know they were coming to kill him to do that as evidence and then the government would be wouldn't notice or something you know be like well we better make sure we pin this medal on him so everybody knows that we killed him like what that doesn't make any sense as evidence that it was a government conspiracy oh yes samantha to silence the other marines keep them in line it was a warning to the yeah yeah yeah maybe I don't, I don't know. I personally, this is just my own personal opinion. I'm going with the theory that this guy was a jerk. Yeah. Because honestly, if the government, I feel like if the government is going to kill you, they're going to just like make you disappear. Like they're not going to, he's going to be in Gitmo. Like he, like, why are we saying, why are we assuming that he, the government is going to do this like sloppy murder? And put him under a bunch of branches when they could have literally renditioned him and taken him back to Guantanamo. What a, Oh God. Imagine waking up. You're the Marine that used to take the black bag off your head. Yes. And you're on the other side of the cage now. Okay. That would make a dope movie. Oh my God.
Yeah, I think the government would have done that. Is that the ending of A Few Good Men? Someone tell us. I do not think so. You know what? I should just watch it. I don't know. I'm probably not going to do that. That would be a fucking terrifying ending. Or it's like the government needs you to shut up. So they put a bag over your head. You wake up and you're like, oh, hi, Fred. You are now my guard. You used to be my co-worker. That would be sick as an ending. Now you're going to force feed me through a tube and make me stand in a stress position all day. Oh, my God.
Samantha, have we said too much? I'm going to end up dead under a pile of sticks. If you do, I'll know what happened. If you have a little metal pin to you. They have to like make one. It says like podcasting bitch. Samantha, I'm going to say in this situation, do not avenge my death. It's not worth it. Okay. We have a Patreon tier for a quarterly gift. Can we please get pins that say podcasting bitch?
It doesn't make any sense, but sure. Really, only because I want one. Podcasting, bitch. Yes. Yes. Samantha, yeah, if this is how I die, do not avenge my death. You can't take on all the Marines. No, I can't. Don't worry. I know my limits. Yeah, I want you to live more than I want that revenge, you know? So don't do it. I'll find a way to kill myself in Guantanamo if that's what happens. I'll join the Marines and take them down from the inside. Oh, my God. Amazing. No, I don't know what it takes. I'm going to make you through basic training. They're going to take one look at that back and be like, what are you doing here?
which would be a good waste of their time actually maybe that's some kind of revenge okay actually all of us that have you know health problems should start trying and are yeah in my case like way too fucking old just start trying to join the military to just waste their time where they're like well here's a whole list of reasons you are not qualified uh you can barely jump that's one you've never run a mile in your life that's two and i'm just nodding like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but let me say But show me where all the guns are. You're just like constant red flags. I can't wait to take the military down from the inside. How do I sign up? Oh my God, don't do that. You probably will get arrested or something. Okay, now Samantha has one. Oh, if you wanted to know like a serious rundown of that case, it was on the Trail Went Cold podcast. So I'm sure they did way better research. They probably have much more information. Like actual research. All right, so this is an arson. This is the inner city church fire. I hate this one. This is sad.
So Green Bay Packers football player Reggie White has a second career as a preacher in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is an ordained minister. He took over or like purchased or something a church in his hometown back in Knoxville, Tennessee. And this was previously the Matthews Merkland Presbyterian Church. He renamed it the Inner City Church. And it was a gathering place for both Black people and white people in the local community. So they talk about, there's a couple different ministers who, I mean, he's obviously gone for most of the year playing football. And so he has like an associate pastor or whatever. And they're talking about how like there's still segregation and church going because Black people do not go to white people churches. White people do not go to Black people churches. And they were trying to bridge the gap in their community.
but at the end of the day this was still a black owned church and so it made uh racist mad it's also i think the fact that they were so interested in integration like oh yeah and like reggie white was open about it and spoke about it and was like actively trying to cross boundaries in the community and obviously that kind of thing is going to make white supremacists super mad it seems like you know as churches go it seemed you know pretty dope they had a lot of outreach programs they were doing a lot of things to help the community you know yeah it seemed fun like all good things So obviously racists hate that. Yeah, so obviously it's firebombed by a bunch of racists. So on January 8th, 1996, an unidentified person set it on fire with kerosene gunpowder and several Molotov cocktails. It was completely destroyed, although certain parts of it were not damaged. Unfortunately, those are the parts where they spray painted racist things that I cannot say on the podcast. Oh my God. Why do racists have so much time on their hands? I do not know. Racists, get a hobby. Get into trains. See who play.
please do literally anything else with your time um bird watching raise sea monkeys um i don't know i like any calligraphy like literally the most useless boring task is such a better use of your time uh collect souvenir spoons you know maybe you can find that winchester mystery house the rush you feel when you find the winchester mystery house spoon exactly it's gonna be so much better than firebombing a church yes i promise yeah so the fbi and the atf began an investigation um it was obviously clearly arson like that wasn't even in question um it was also clearly a hate crime there was a like racist letter left behind that basically said like we're doing this because we hate you if you can say it's a good thing the one like good quote-unquote aspect about this is that it was like so clearly a hate crime that people did take it very seriously like there was no ambiguity about that fact yeah sort of we'll get to that um so they learned also that a at least 23 block three black churches in the south have been set on fire presumably by the same group or the same individual
Along with five others in Tennessee, the attacks have occurred in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. The most recent attack occurred on March 5th, 1996. So unfortunately, the church did not have enough fire insurance to cover all the damage. However, Reggie hoped that he would be able to rebuild and bring the perpetrator to justice. So a little bit about who the police told us in Unsolved Mysteries that they thought it was. They thought it was the same person responsible for all the fires in the area. Hilariously, they're like, racism may have been involved. Yeah, no shit. Okay.
uh they found flyers how do they think that graffiti got on the church if not for racists i don't know yeah considering yeah it was clearly racial epithets like yeah maybe they just have to say that for legal that's like an allegedly you know yeah maybe um flyers from two white supremacist groups the bfi brotherhood and the skinheads for white justice turned up at a bank that had ties to the church um so embarrassing they're like it's possible that the flyers and the graffiti were planted as decoys like why else would someone firebomb this church yeah They hate Reggie White? Like, it doesn't make any sense. They're too into football, but for, like, a different team. They're a Vikings fan? Like, what? Oh, my God, no! No, Vikings fans would never, I assume. It's not very neighborly, I'm going to say.
Yeah. So according to Unsolved Mysteries Wiki, this remains unsolved. According to the National Church Action Task Force, 99 suspects were arrested in 150 church attacks between January 1995 and June 1997. However, no arrests were ever made in this case. It's not known if any of these suspects were investigated for it. Sadly, Reggie White died of a heart attack in 2004 without ever finding out who set fire to his church, nor was he able to ever rebuild it. I know. Original suspicions was that this case was similar to other church arsons in the area, but investigators never found enough evidence to connect them. And arsonists have never been...
identify yeah it just feels like the arsonist won which is the part that sucks the most um the unsolved mysteries wiki was a little light on details for this case so i did google it and i found a really interesting vice article from 2015 called the racism and incompetence behind the unsolved firebombing of an nfl legends church and there's some really interesting i'm not gonna go like into all of this like you can read the article yourself but like there's some really interesting things in here including that like um the packers uh the security director for the green bay packers received a phone call days before um warning him that white's church would be burned down however oh like he wasn't informed of a specific threat like it seems like the um fbi and the atf had intelligence that like his church was going to be a target but he like never was informed wow that sucks yeah and they claimed after that they had never heard um of either hate group which seems like really unlikely um so anyway this article talks about like a lot of like the investigation itself was kind of bungled i mean you can draw you can draw inferences from there if it was on purpose or if it was incompetence or what but um it does just kind of suck the cops are like i've never heard of either of these hate groups that i'm definitely not in yeah exactly and then they're like why do you never see miley cyrus when hannah montana's on stage yeah the other thing that this article points out is that there was a ton of evidence like they had handwritten letters um yeah no it seems like they left a shit ton of evidence so
So I guess they didn't really take it that seriously. I lied. It kind of seems like maybe they didn't. I hate it. Okay. What are some other great hobbies races can pick up? Racing hermit crabs. I don't know if that's very ethical, but it's better. Yo-yoing. Oh yeah. Competitive yo-yoing. You can do basically like anything competitively. There are people that competitively dance with dogs. It's like a serious thing. I sent Samantha the other day a video about hobby horsing, which is literally- Hobby horsing. That's a great one for racists. Which is when you get a hobby horse, but then act like a horse and like jump over things. They jump really high. Liz was like, are you going to start doing this? And I was like, bitch, I can't jump that high.
But, you know, they could try growing really big pumpkins. Yes. Competitive pumpkin growing. You can make seed art for the state fair. I don't think they would be attracted to that particular art form. Look, I don't know. I'm just starting to think it out there. I'm in a group on Facebook of people that collect like 80s horror paperbacks. People are way more into that than you would think they are. Rock tumbling. Yes. That's a great one. That sounds like it takes up a lot of time. Yeah. Stamp collecting. It's making jam. There's so many hobbies.
you know there's so many better ways to fill your time truly adults that don't have hobbies kind of blow my mind because like skateboards exist like there's you could do anything you could get a bunch of pen pals you could you could um there's people that do larps but they're not like fighting larps they're like you pretend you're in the victorian era and you have like fancy dinners and okay that sounds kind of cool and you like probably have to wear a costume i'm not gonna do that yeah you do have to wear you have to wear like a fancy ass costume but you gotta pick a character they like pen pal each other as the character because a friend of mine does this she does these like regency larps and she has like this character who's like a boy and she's like writing all these flirty fake letters i don't know that's so amazing how can you not have a hobby when this exists yes there's so many things people have like you know you have like three kids don't have time for a hobby i get that like people who like don't have anything to do and are like bored and are like I don't know. No one is available to go out to the bar. Like, what am I going to do? Like, you can do Regency LARPing. Yeah. You could start reading tea leaves, you know? There's like, there's really so much. You could take a community ed class to learn about eating bugs. Yeah. You could be a real weirdo and do something like that. Thing I'm totally not doing sometime this month. Or next month. Oh, God. I hope that day never comes. I have to go eat the bugs. Okay. Anyway. So we have coming up a miracle segment. This is now my new favorite case. So this is the story of Mary.
I can't remember how to say her name. Clamser? Anyway. She was, at the time of the segment, 44 years old. And for 23 of those years, she'd been battling multiple sclerosis, which, if you did not know, is a genetic nerve... Oh, my God. I can't say it. Whatever. It's a nerve disease. She was first diagnosed at age 19 in 1972. She originally thought she had the flu, but she just kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point where she was unable to move or feel her legs and was eventually diagnosed. At that time, she was told that she would never be able to walk again and could not have children. That was not true. But at this time, very little was known about MS. I mean, it's still something we're learning about all the time.
My grandmother had MS and initially that was, you know, they didn't even know that was a thing. And so people just kept telling her that she was insane and that she wasn't really having any of those problems. So this, I don't know. I really fought for this woman. Anyway, so she was told that she wouldn't be able to walk or have children. And she thought she would have to break off her engagement to this guy Ron. Because she wanted him to, you know, he wanted to have children. She didn't want to like hold him back from that. And she didn't want him to have to like spend his life taking care of, you know, whatever. In this act of love, she was willing to let him go. And he was like, no, like, even though we're not married yet, it's supposed to be for better or for worse for sickness and health. And I'm sticking with you. So two weeks before the wedding.
The disease relented enough that Mary was able to walk her in the aisle. Over the next 10 years, she struggled through three different pregnancies and was able to give birth to two sons and a daughter. So the doctors had been mistaken about that, but the pregnancies were very difficult. MS kind of has waves or attacks. It's not like consistent in the symptoms. So in the summer of 1992, her MS was worse than it had ever been before. That attack lasted for over a year. Usually they were less than six months, her flares, and she was unable to get out of bed for that entire time.
um and she tells this heartbreaking thing that like you know obviously her children loved her and helped her and took care of her but it was sometimes difficult on the family and she just remembers lying in bed and hearing them like all argue like her children argue about like whose turn it was to do something for her and her just feeling like she was already dead and that she had like her family was like struggling without her and you know i don't know she just she just felt like a burden to them um but then There was a thunderstorm in August 17th, 1994. And we see this reenactment where Mary has moved her wheelchair next to the bathtub. She's filling the bathtub with water. Her hand is on the metal knob. I think the metal of the wheelchair is touching the bathtub and the house gets struck by lightning. So she gets electrocuted. She literally gets thrown across the room.
Across the room. She somehow survives. Her family finds her, takes her to the emergency room. While the doctors are working on her for being fucking electrocuted, she realizes that she can feel her legs. This was shocking to her because for her left leg, she had not felt anything for 23 years. And it had been two years since she could feel anything in her right leg. And all of a sudden, after getting electrocuted, she can feel in her legs. So miraculously, after the lightning strike, her MS went into remission. So she was in a lot of pain for the next two weeks, but it was because she'd been struck by lightning.
So she could feel her legs and eventually she healed from the electrocution and was feeling so much better than she had for like decades. She no longer needed to use the wheelchair. She could walk across the room without any mobility aids. Within just a year, she was walking long distances without any braces of support. Now, this segment was filmed two years after she was hit by lightning and she is saying that she was cured. Now, unfortunately, the MS does come back. But Samantha, did you know this?
She was hit by lightning again. Shut up. Are you serious? Yes. So her MS returned. She was using a wheelchair again. But then in 2005, she was outside and she was hit by lightning. Was she trying to get hit by lightning again because it worked so well the first time? It went into remission again! Stop it. Okay. Is this the cure for MS? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. Anyone are studying this? They found the gene that causes MS. It's actually the same one that causes fibromyalgia. It's a genetic thing. I don't know why it would be cured by lightning.
But it went into a remission again. Okay. According to the Unsolved Mysteries wiki in updates, it says she now has a special room in her house to protect her from any further lightning strikes. Why? I was going to tell you. It seems like you want to get hit by lightning. I want to get hit by lightning now. Is it going to cure fire biology? Should I be walking around with a golf club straight up in the air in a field? It's storming all week. I'm taking a shower every day. Come on. Every storm. Come on. Cure me. I'm right here. Lord, strike me down. Throw me across the room. I want you to be cured.
Also, just a weird coincidence, on April 19th, 1995, Mary canceled an appointment she had at the Federal Ma Federal Building, where she was supposed to do an interview. That was the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. She just happened to not go to the interview that day. Okay, listen, if you are in this woman's life, I'm sure you, you know, maybe you have a Zoom relationship. Maybe you don't actually hang out with her real-life person. What are the fucking odds? She was literally supposed to go to that building to talk about how she experienced a miracle.
and then canceled for I don't know why and was spared again. Is this like become a saint? Should she be sainted? I think so. I would saint her if it was up to me. Yeah, me too. Because clearly she is God's favorite in a way. In a way. I mean, she did get struck by lightning, which probably sucks, but it seems like it worked out. Like he could have like not given her MS at all. That would have been like a nice thing to do. But she does seem to be like really being picked, really being chosen on multiple occasions.
For these three miracles. I guess you just need to be zapped. I don't know, Liz. It's going to storm tonight. Maybe you should walk around outside. It is wild that she gets hit by lightning twice. And it is wild that Unsolved Mysteries does not mention that this happens again. That is an update. Bitch. Maybe we'll get an update later. Robert Stack, add that in. Robert Stack's ghost, add that in. In another episode. Maybe we'll get it. It was like, oh, by the way, that miracle, it happened again. Now I want to get hit by lightning.
Well, I hope you do. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope you survive, and I hope it cures your fibromyalgia. I hope it cures your back somehow. I mean, what else will lighting cure? Yeah, I hope it hits you right in the back, and then it's like you've never had a back pain in your life. And then you'll be hobby horsing from town to town. The next time I see you, you, like, skip, you, like, gallop up to my house on a hobby horse. On a hobby horse, yeah. Yeah, you've done that the whole way. You're like, oh, yeah, this is my primary mode of transportation now. Hobby horse. Hobby horse, yeah.
Are we ready for Lost Love? Yes. This episode really does kind of have everything. It kind of does. So this is the family of LaDonna Alfano.
so this is a beautiful name yeah really i feel like is anyone other pregnant ladonna yeah i love it yeah um so this is a wild and sad story uh yeah on december 29th 1961 army wife darlene alfano and her three daughters patricia rosalinda and ladonna all beautiful names um pick up her friend ethel whose nickname was pinky which is very funny kind of love pinky not really feeling at all but it's pinky well maybe that's why she went by pinky so it was pinky and darlene which i think is hilarious very 61. So Pinky Johnson and Pinky's two sons left their home in Abilene, Texas to go on a trip into town. So we see in Unsolved Mysteries that these five children and two adults are just packed into this car. Obviously, it's 1961. There's no seatbelts. There's no child seats. There's like a kid on the woman's lap who's driving. Like there's a kid in between them. There's just kids all over this car. How did people survive? How is the human race still alive? I mean, I'm guessing a lot of people did it, but like this is wild. We're just like rabbits, I guess. We're just like, well, there's enough of us that if a few of us are taken out by our...
by our lack of seatbelts yeah wild behavior like humanity itself will survive true yeah this is just a car full of kids and people driving down the road like a clown car but of children pretty much at 2 p.m uh they were on shelton street headed north towards the center of town when their car stalled for unknown reasons on the railroad crossing so we don't actually know like how this went down but the unsolved mysteries reenactment i know they're just trying to make it dramatic but like makes it seem like they just like chose to stay in their car instead of like getting out when this train is like kind of slowly approaching yeah I'm sure that's not how it actually happened. I'm sure there was like no railroad crossing, like in this middle of nowhere town. They probably didn't hear the train or whatever. And it's called down all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, an approaching train from Dallas hit their car. It was torn to shreds. Its roof was ripped off.
As you can imagine, there were basically no survivors. Darlene, Patricia, and Rosalinda, along with one of Pinky's sons, Marty, were killed. Pinky, her second son, and LaDonna survived. However, LaDonna was seriously injured and doctors feared she would not recover. So despite catastrophic injuries to her face and head, LaDonna did begin to recover.
Unfortunately, Fred was then forced to tell his little daughter what happened to her mother and her sisters. She doesn't remember anything from the accident. He told her that her mother and her sisters were in heaven and were angels, and she found a lot of comfort in this. But she did grow up wondering why she survived when the others did not. So, however, later she decided that maybe she survived as a way to motivate her father to keep on living, because if his entire family had been killed, he probably wouldn't have wanted to remain on this earth. Yeah, there's a... So sad. Over the years, LaDonna went through several facial reconstructive surgeries.
And, you know, she was so young when this happened, she had basically no memories of her mother. And any memories she did have, she thinks were basically wiped out by the accident. Compounding this frustration was the fact that Fred had only met Darlene's family a few times and had lost contact with them. And then she believes that after the accident, it was too painful for them to stay in contact. So they lost what little contact they had. Which, so she, boo. Why would you not want to maintain contact with your granddaughter? I don't know. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's shitty.
It's very shitty. So she's coming out on some mysteries in hopes of finding Darlene's family so that she can fill in the remaining gaps of her life. She says that she only has one clue on how to find them, which is a letter that she had received from her maternal grandfather, which included a photograph of her maternal aunt, whose name is Patricia Ann Hines. So this is solved. Unfortunately, we don't get a reunion, which is a bummer, but we're not really entitled to one, so I guess it's fine.
A couple of Darlene's relatives watched the broadcast and were soon put in contact with LaDonna. She was happy to speak to her Aunt Patricia, whose last name is now Hofer, and even more happy to learn that her maternal grandparents, Stanley and Greta Hines, are still alive and were looking for her. A few weeks later, LaDonna drove to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she was reunited with her Aunt Patricia, her grandparents, Stanley and Gerda, and several other relatives. Sadly, Stanley passed away shortly after the reunion. She later wrote a book about her experience called My Dance with Opa. She now lives in South Carolina and owns her own hair and beauty salon.
okay i guess they were looking for her so i take back why weren't you in touch with your granddaughter and it's not clear if like their family cut off contact or if maybe her father did because he found it too painful to be in touch with them like that was not it could have been either one it just i can't emphasize enough how much harder it used to be to keep in touch with people like you would have a phone number and someone would move and they would forget to update you and you wouldn't know how to find them anymore like it was super easy to um yeah even if he only like intended to cut off contact you know maybe he wasn't thinking long term maybe he later wanted to get in touch with them he had no idea yeah you know and it would not even have to be intentional it would just have to be they didn't speak for a while someone moved you know blah blah Okay, that's the end. There was an unnecessary update in there. We didn't talk about it. We don't need to. Let's see. What is our first category, Samantha? I have to remember. It is mysteriousness. Hmm. I guess we don't know about this church fire thing. It's still unsolved. We don't know about the power of lightning. We want to know about the power of lightning. Yeah. LaDonna was able to find her family. I feel like it's like a sideways for mysteriousness. Yeah, we also don't know who killed David Cox. Okay, maybe a thumbs up. I'll say thumbs up, sure. It could be more mysterious, but it's mysterious. Reenactments.
uh pretty good i know they blow up a church i think they didn't i can't remember i don't think so they should have another church why did they blow up this one yeah but then remember from that that documentary they like really over blew it up and it was like i broke all the windows in town and that was so funny okay um so i'm just gonna stay sideways for that it's fine they're fine Fashion? Unremarkable. Yeah, nothing stood out. I don't even remember any mustaches. No, thumbs down. I didn't name a single one, so. Yeah. I could have been in it more. We could have been in it more. He is in a movie theater at the very beginning. Yeah, which is interesting. Weak. Weak. No, he's just not in it enough. He doesn't wax poetic enough. Thumbs down. Yeah, I agree. I do think this was a really solid episode. I would give it a four. I liked it overall. I thought it was four worthy. Yeah, it was a good one. It's got a variety. You've got some murder. You've got the power of lightning. You've got a lost love. You've got racists. I don't know. It's got a little of everything.
It's a smorgasbord of an episode, which is what I like. So, four. I think it's four worthy. Do you want to do found loves, or do you want to say coming back to this podcast is your found love? Let's say coming back to this podcast is my found love. Maybe I'll have one next time. Okay. The listeners. The listeners are your found love. The listeners are my found love. Great. Let's leave it at that. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for sticking with us all this time. If you have somehow not written us a five-star review, goddamn, today's the day.
Clearly we deserve one because we just quit without warning and then randomly come back. Yeah. Yeah. Reward us for coming back with five stars of just not just paragraphs and paragraphs of praise. I feel like, yeah, our five star reviews are definitely like a participation trophy at this point, but we deserve one. God damn it. We're still doing this. Absolutely. Literally. Yes. Samantha already plugged the Patreon. If you have a spooky story of something that has happened to you, maybe you know someone that got hit by lightning, email that in for the end of the season whenever we goddamn get there. That's perhaps it's you podcast at gmail.com.
uh if you saw a ghost if you saw a dark that's darker than darkness we have not had an alien anything in a while so if you saw you of oh my god right in is there anything else my dear oh god i can't think of anything yeah who cares about any of that stuff so uh goodbye keep barking and goodbye