Hello, friends and enemies. It's time for Perhaps It's You, your favorite unofficial Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast, where every episode is dedicated to BD Wong. Hello, BD Wong. He's out there somewhere. I assume he's listening. Probably not listening to this podcast. Probably living a very glamorous but understated, glamorous but tasteful life, I assume. And I'm assuming that that life does not involve listening to this podcast, but I hope it does. Considering he ostensibly has a Twitter account, but I'm not sure that he actually is ever on it. Yeah.
Maybe he's listening to this obscure Unsolved Mysteries podcast right now, but maybe. Hi, BD Wong. Honestly, if you're there, thanks. Yeah, thank you. I'm glad your assistant told you about this podcast. Do we have any updates? Okay, the thing is, we watched this episode a while ago. Samantha re-watched it this morning. Did I? No. It's also just like...
Again, this episode sucks. I don't want to do this. Yeah, but even though I watched it twice, that doesn't mean I actually remember that much about it. This is one of the most forgettable episodes in recent memory. It's so forgettable. That's not why this episode is a week late, but it doesn't help. Can we address your slanderous lies about me that you've been spreading on the internet? What, that you partied too hard for your birthday and that's why?
Samantha, just because you don't like the truth. I had an out-of-control party lifestyle. That's why we couldn't record last week, which is false. I just want to state on the record is false. Truths you are uncomfortable with are not automatically lies, Samantha. You know, I should go with it so it makes me sound cooler and more like I live a more exciting life than I do. You wanted to tell everyone that you might have had a sinus infection? No, my story that you partied too hard for your birthday and therefore we couldn't record it. People were giving like hangover remedies. Hilarious. Hilarious. I couldn't tell if they were in on the joke or if they believed you. I can't imagine anyone actually believes this.
I mean, look, either way, it's good remedy, you know? Like, if you need it, it's there. How would you even party hard in COVID if you're, like, not flouting, you know, the rules, the recommendations? I don't even know how that would happen. I've been making myself a lot of Shirley temples this week. That's how hard I've been partnering. You know what? Delicious. That's a high recommendation for me. Playing Animal Crossing while drinking a Shirley temple takes it up a notch. You're right. That is how you party hard. Look, I don't know what you got into. I wasn't there. I wasn't invited.
when you went on that bender and then we couldn't record. We can decide if we're going to cut this out later, but Mac was supposed to meet someone for a group project once and he like went to the library or whatever and then got a call that was like, yeah, I can't meet you. I'm at a titty bar in Mexico. So I'm just going to assume that that's why you couldn't record. But it is the best reason to not be where you said you would be. I wish there was a recording of like Mac's response. I feel like it was along the lines of like shrug. Well, okay. That's a good reason.
Hey, Mac. So sorry about this. I know we're supposed to be reading. Oh, literally right now. Yeah, I'm in a titty bar in Mexico. So not going to be able to beat you for that group project thing. I'm kind of busy. All group projects have like the one person that does most of the work, but that is like to the extreme. Literally other members of the group are partying in Mexico.
It's the best excuse I've ever heard. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, the truth is, is I was at a titty bar in Mexico. That's why we couldn't record Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast episode about this shit episode. Samantha, there's a pandemic. That's not right. Wait until it's safer to go to a titty bar in Mexico and tip generously, might I add. Well, that's a given.
Okay, well, I think my only update was that I need to complain about a bad review. Oh, absolutely. We got this so long ago, you might have forgotten. But we haven't complained about it on the show yet. If you're new to this podcast and probably with this opening, you're never going to listen again. But we have a policy here. It's strictly stated. We only accept five-star reviews. Very simple, people. Very simple. We've been very clear about this. So it's disappointing when a one-star review with the title Bletch. Bletch. However you say that. I'm sure how that...
That sound comes out. Black. Yeah. When a black comes through with one star. Write the same review with five stars. Yeah. You can say black in your podcast review, but it's got five stars. The trailer alone with terrible uptalk made me want to die.
okay i think is that our promo or is that someone is this review containing a complaint about someone else's promo i have multiple things to say about this first sentence first of all this is the second person who has heard us speak and decided that they wanted to die the power of my vocal cords i am a goddamn motherfucking siren at a rock in the ocean luring men to their death nothing makes me feel better about myself multiple people have wanted to die after hearing us talk which Some people would take that as an insult. Honestly, I think we have more power than we realized before we started this podcast. Absolutely. Also, it's a pandemic. You want to die? That's widely available. Keep that, you know, just saying. Okay. It's just another podcast with two obnoxious, annoying, untalented people cackling about their own jokes.
this word cackling why does it haunt us though we are surprisingly consistent probably because we're constantly cackling it's gonna be my guess some people apparently don't like it i'm really confused about this review because like you said they mention a trailer which makes me think like we often we swap ads with other podcasts other indie podcasts all the time it's a fun thing to do helps people discover new podcasts they might not otherwise know about uh but i don't know if they're like Like, did they hear someone else's trailer on our podcast and then decided that they hate this show? Or did they hear our trailer on someone else's podcast and decided they hate this show? Either way, I don't think this person has actually listened to us. Okay, it almost seems like they heard our trailer on another show and went, wow, that sounds so terrible. I wish I was dead. Better go listen to that. Then they started listening to our show. And then they went, yeah, yeah, no, this is pretty bad. To be fair, the trailer we've been sending out is not super crazy. Okay, it was very old. It's very old. We kind of just winged it and then decided this is fine. We're going to send it to God.
When we sat down to record it, which yes, we could record in person, I guess this was years ago. Samantha was like, did you write something out? And I was like, no, I'm just going to wing it and you're going to pipe it. And Samantha was like, oh, so like the show. It was brutal. She cut me to my core. Then I was like, yeah, exactly. So people will get a taste of what their show is like. But yeah, this person got a taste and they don't like it. I think maybe they just started listening to our show. They hated it from the trailer and then they just kept on hating it because they said, let's hope this trend dies out and the talented podcasters stick around. I would like to let this person know this is CB16. You don't have to listen to our show. They're like, well, once I start listening to a podcast, I can never stop.
We have a lot of episodes. I feel sorry for them if they're trapped in some sort of self-made hell where now they have to listen to every episode. You don't have to listen. It cost you zero dollars and zero cents. I'm happy to refund that money. You're going to be subscribing to our Patreon next week. God damn it, there's more content. I have to listen to it all. I made that deal with the devil. No. I appreciate you put the word up talk in your very first sentence so that I know that you're a misogynist. It's helpful to call that out. Yeah. The thing is, we're getting to the point there's been so much bad.
feedback it's getting hard to keep putting it on merch but someone suggested we could put a bletch bletch merch i wanted to put two obnoxious annoying untalented people but someone said that's kind of long i don't know that is a little long for a t-shirt maybe just made me want to die podcast made me want to die. Can someone illustrate us as just two sirens on a rock? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. That has possibilities. Yeah, I can see it. I had no idea my voice was so powerful. We hold a lot of power. My uptime makes people want to die, so I feel very powerful. Yeah. It's like your X-Men weapon. Yeah. That's your music.
That's your muted power. I don't know. What could Jubilee do? Make fireworks or something? I think you're better than that. I guess if my upspeak makes people want to die, that is a pretty powerful. That's pretty powerful. You should get on a megaphone. Just lay waste to fire regions.
when a sort of happening... Did you ever see the movie The Happening? I'm not sure. Okay, you gotta watch it because it's the worst fucking thing I've ever seen. It's the M. Night Shyamalan movie starring Mark Wahlberg. I mean, those sentences alone didn't get you. I don't think I've seen it, but you know why I thought that for a second? Because I think you've talked about it before. I probably have because it's so bad. But in that movie, everybody just sort of spontaneously starts committing suicide. Okay. And don't worry, guys. Mark Wahlberg's gonna figure it out. He looks very confused.
Well, what if that was our voices? What if they found out why everybody was committing suicide? And the twist was our cackling. I think it's just opening our mouths and this cackling comes out and people just drop. There's like a glitch in the iTunes algorithm and it accidentally puts us as number one. It's like number one podcast. Perhaps it's you. And so all these people listen like, oh, how come I've never heard of this? And then they all just want to die.
login wanting to listen to my favorite murder or whatever and it ends up being our death cackling i was kind of okay so when this person says i hope this trend dies out and the talented podcasters stick around i was like that's joe rogan right you're talking about the person this person respects is joe rogan you know what there's a good chance samantha recently reminded me i totally forgot about this when we were at the um true crime podcast festival a couple years ago in chicago we were talking to some dude unfortunately and he said in talking to us that he mostly listened to joe rogan and apparently i said yeah that makes sense out there promoting the podcast list. Yeah, I mostly listen to Joe Rogan. Yeah, that makes sense. That's the funniest thing. I'm certain that I paused out laughing just like right in front of that man's face. It was so funny. So funny. I don't remember that at all. I probably didn't even realize I had said that out loud. I was like, I am. You would be a Joe Rogan guy. Get away from our one-fifth of a table, please. And you know what? It did make sense, but it's neither here nor there.
Oh, mercy me. Okay, let's just talk about this episode so we can get it over with. We should get this over with. Please. Okay, so if you're following along at home, we are on season six, episode seven of the original Unstolved Mysteries with Robert Stack. You can watch this on YouTube. It is on other streaming things, but then I think you have to watch ads, so fuck that. Okay, the problem with this episode, there are many, is that we start off with an unexplained, which is a miracle, and it is so...
goddamn long oh my god there's no way the virgin mary wanted the segment to be so long because it's going to turn people away from the church people who were believers are going to watch this and be like this is so boring i question my faith so they at first they like they did a little sum up of other miracles we've talked about on the show yada yada but we're talking about fatma portugal in 1917 where according to robert stack the virgin mary made her most dramatic appearance because apparently robert stack rates Virgin Mary appearances on levels of drama. He sort of does because he listed some that we've seen before, like Our Lady of Guadalupe, which we've talked about. So clearly they rate lower on Robert Stack's scale than this one. Now I'm just picturing like different versions, different visions of the Virgin Mary, like walking out the main stage in RuPaul's Drag Race and Robert Stack is saying whether or not they're dramatic enough for him. Okay. He makes them lip sync for their life. Yeah. Yeah. Saying, yeah. Ave Maria. Okay. I'm imagining one of them is like the Virgin Mary on toast and just a piece of bread.
You would have to. The problem is that you would be like someone else is going to do Virgin Mary on toast. If I do Virgin Mary on toast, is someone else going to do it? Because then it takes all the fun out of it. It's true. Okay. So this is the time that the Virgin Mary appeared to three children on a regular basis, including 10-year-old Lucia Santos, her cousins Justin and Francis Kumar. This was in rural Portugal. And Unsolved Mysteries wants you to know that they flew all the way to rural Portugal just to film this. Which I guess is why it's so long, because they wanted to really recoup those expenses. Yeah, apparently. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. So Lucia and her cousins were out tending sheep on her family land in the countryside.
Looks, you know, very relaxing. The children are playing while the flock grazed when Lucia saw a flash of light. A reasonable child, she assumed this was lightning and said they should go home before it started to rain. However, they're walking home and they see a second flash of light, which it turns out is the Virgin Mary. It's not lightning at all. And she first tells the children that she will not harm them, which is just like a good way to open any combo. If you descend from the heaven in a flash ball of light. So maybe I can't say that because our voices are so deadly that that would actually be liable.
If we approach them on the street and was like, I bring you no harm. People would be like, first of all, I'm already dead. Second of all, that's not true. I have a couple notes. One is I'm dead in the ground. So the Virgin Mary told the children that they were going to be called to heaven soon, which also is terrifying. Like, hi, child. You're going to die soon. But in the meantime, I want you to act as my messenger.
Oh, and side note, that's going to involve great hardships for you. So the Virgin appeared to them a total of six times, but Lucia's mother was not very happy about this, and she wanted her to say that it was a lie, but she refused. So they don't say this right away for some reason, which makes it slightly confusing, but the Virgin Mary is appearing on the 13th of each month. So she appears to them, and she's like, I'm going to be back in a month, okay? So when they go back for their second visit, they're joined by 50 villagers. Once again...
lucia speaks to the virgin mary but nobody else can see her her mother then brings her to confession to confess that this was a lie but she's real mad about this which is honestly the virgin mary is being kind of a dick like you could just reveal yourself to everybody and then these poor kids wouldn't get in trouble i know but that's not her style again is that really that dramatic not sure i were sick okay so she's brought to confession to admit that she's been making this up for attention and apparently the priest didn't want to endorse this as a miracle because there was currently tension between the church and the government he was a fearful backlash from the government if he was like saying oh look we have this miracle so he said that the vision was actually created by the devil and that she should renounce it. But Lucia was faithful and she refused, which also was like notable because these are, you know, her mom and her priest are these people she's supposed to be obeying. And she was like, nope, sorry. I saw the Virgin Mary. There's nothing you can do about it. By the third appearance, even more people came. And at this point, Lucia asked for a miracle so people would believe her because she was getting in all this trouble. And the Virgin told her to keep coming and that a miracle would occur on her sixth appearance. And I'm sure Lucia was like, oh my God, fine.
Like, why me? Okay. So at this point, Lucia has a vision of hell. And that vision seemed to say that God was offended by World War I and also called the country of Russia an offense to God. I mean, honestly, no comment. Like, what? Also, what is this child from Portugal supposed to do with that information? I don't know. Like, stop wars, Lucia. Okay. She also said that Lucia would be tested in one month's time. Which, what an anxious month that's going to be. No kidding. Okay, so for her fourth appearance, government administrators said, oh, how about we take you to the spot where the Virgin Mary appears in our glorious wagon that's pulled by a donkey or something. And so her and her cousins got a ride there. But, twist, they were actually kidnapping them. And they put them in jail. Honestly, I did not see this twist coming. Gotta say.
It's really the only exciting thing that happens in this whole segment. So her mom and some other people were in like a different cart. And Lucia and her cousins were in one cart with these government people. So they were like, oh, wait, is this where we turn to see the Virgin Mary? Nope. Got you.
I'm kidding you. We're going to put you in jail with the charge of concocting a hoax to promote the church. They then tried to get Lucia to admit that she'd been making it all up by threatening to torture and possibly kill, I wasn't quite sure on that, her cousins. Because they were like, look, clearly, Lucia, how old is she? Ten. She's too ballsy. This ten-year-old is not going to cave. But if we threaten to hurt her younger cousins, she might admit it was a fake to save them. But of course, her cousins were like, I'll see you in heaven, Lucia. Don't betray the Virgin Mary.
So Lucia would not confess that it was a hoax. And they either tortured them for three days or just sort of like pretended they were going to. I'm not really sure. But the townspeople got so mad, they were all like banging on the walls of the jail. And so they eventually had to let them go. And it didn't work. They failed to get Lucia to crack. Okay. Then a couple other appearances happened. And I guess they're not not worthy at all. We don't hear anything about them. By the sixth appearance, people had gotten really excited. So this is October 13th, 1917. It's raining that day. Thousands of people come to see this promised miracle. Supposedly 70,000 people.
or the countryside of Portugal. Wow, they show some photos of the actual event. So many people. Yeah, one of the reasons this miracle is, I don't know, well regarded, is that the phrase? It's because there is some photographic evidence that at least something, there were at least people around. So we have witnesses. We also have photographic evidence of those witnesses being at this place. So as soon as Lucia arrived at the spot, it stopped raining.
Lucia began to speak to the Virgin, but nobody could see anything. And so some people were like, oh, nothing's happening. Boo. But then she told the crowd to look at the sun, which apparently began to move, beamed colored light, and then fall, causing many in the crowd to fear being scorched. Robert Stack refers to this as the awesome celestial display. Okay. Which reportedly lasted for 12 minutes. However, some people in the crowd claimed to see nothing. In other cases, people who came to them as skeptics going, wow, I can't wait till this 10 year old girl is exposed as a fraud. Because look, they didn't have TV. There was not a lot to do.
They became believers after seeing the sun spin around for 12 minutes. And also, the sun appeared to get closer to the earth and people thought they were going to get burned. They described it as falling towards the crowd, which is strange. And probably frightening. So, was this a case of mass hysteria? Was this actually a miracle? That is for you, listener, to decide. Today, a basilica stands at the site where this allegedly happened. Her cousins died a couple of years later from a flu outbreak, which people interpret as the Virgin Mary saying they were going to go to heaven soon, so that seems true.
but lucia didn't however at the age of 14 she joined the convent she didn't die until 2005 wow and millions of people visit the basilica on that site every year so they didn't say in the episode but this is recognized by the catholic church as a like official miracle i'm not sure if official is the right term i believe so because of um all the witnesses and there is okay so the photographic evidence doesn't really show like oh the sun moved around but it does show that really that many people were there um i actually didn't look this up on self mysteries wiki so let me see what it does Because I was like, well, obviously it's not solved. Because, I mean, how are you going to solve it? Yes. It is one of the most revered shrines in all of Catholicism. It was officially recognized as a miracle in 1930. Okay. Interesting. The problem with this segment is it's just really long. And honestly, kind of boring. Yeah. But fortunately, we have a log cabin fraud next, so buckle up. I wish this segment was in a different episode because it's a little different. It's a little different fraud. We haven't had a log cabin fraud yet. It's different, but it's kind of straightforward. I don't know.
I mean, it is a log cabin. That's fair. That makes it different. I don't know. We'll talk about it. I drew a mustache and I have no idea whose it was, but it was big and kind of feathery and I called it the wind beneath my wings. I believe that's Earl Chotback's mustache, which I described as unsettling. And honestly, your name makes it kind of more unsettling. Well, yeah. It's so wide. It's so wide. It's kind of small face with this wide ass mustache.
It does not fit. You know, like if you put a Mr. Potato Head mustache, it's just like, no, that's not the mustache that goes there. Don't stick that mustache on that face. It's wrong in many ways. All right. So Wade Mitchell Parker is wanted for taking money from 28 families from whom he had promised to build log cabins near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Earl and Donna Chotbacks were two of his victims. They had planned to have a log cabin built for their family to live in. For years, they had saved thousands of dollars to put into this cabin. Okay. Was this going to be their primary residence or like their summer cabin thing?
they didn't say but it sort of sounded to me like it was gonna be their primary residence because this is like they saved every penny that they had like they talked about how a lot of the people that he scammed were wealthy and could kind of absorb that loss whereas for them they're not sure if they're ever gonna be able to like even they may never even own a home ever again so it seems like they weren't the type of people that had the means for two residents but i don't know maybe not they didn't actually say but this looks like an area where you would have like a second home there's like beautiful mountains right in your backyard con men fraudsters listening to this podcast please only steal from the very wealthy okay His wealthy victims just wrote it off as a business expense.
It's a great system we have. What was interesting to me, they didn't go into a lot of details about these log cabins, but it seemed like they were being advertised as kits, like almost pre-made kits. So I'm not sure that this is a log cabin like I would normally think of a log cabin. It's like made from, I mean, it's made from logs, but it's like, I don't know, a little bit more accessible to the average person is kind of what I got from it, but they didn't really describe it. That's totally a thing that you have basically what is a super nice house, but then you have the outside look like it's made of logs and then you call it a log cabin. There you go. That's totally a thing. I find it incredibly annoying.
It's a little strange. A little strange. But yeah, so they were going to purchase this kit. In April of 1991, they answered this newspaper ad about a log home company, and they spoke to Parker, who then was going by the name of Mark Mitchell. He told them that if they invested $25,000 in his business, in return, he would give them a large discount on the construction of their log cabin. So this is sounding sketchy from the get-go. They're not actually purchasing one of these kits. They're purchasing a log cabin. They're investing in his business, and then he was going to give them a discount. Yeah, it's...
Some people don't seem to realize about investments. I said they don't always work out. Yeah. So if you're, oh, I don't know, a landlord, and then you're surprised that people don't have money to pay rent during a pandemic, it's like, I guess that investment didn't work out. They don't always work out. They do not. And since they didn't, like, I don't, they weren't clear on all the details, but it seems like they didn't have, like, a contract with him to build a log cabin. They literally just invested in his business. You're not, like, guaranteed a return on that investment. Yeah, they're not buying something.
They were just promised a discount. So as you can probably imagine, this goes bad for them. He was taking advantage of their naivete, right? Like, it's not like they're buying a ton of log cabins. It's not like they're rich people with 10 houses. And I think, yeah, they just got kind of excited about the idea of a discount. I mean, we all love a BOGO. And it blinded them to the truth of that. This was a terrible idea. Yeah. And also he promised them that their investment would be returned to them with interest, which the literature test.
said that was a lie. That was a lie. Oh, I wish we could somehow go on a trashy show and be the person that tells people whether or not the lie detector said it was a lie. Amazing. How do we get that gig? Honestly, I think people would watch that. People are clamoring for another Maury type show, I think. I really do. We got a lot of time on our hands. We need some trashy television. Just absolute garbage television that makes the nation worse as a whole. Yeah. I saw some meme on Twitter or maybe it was TikTok. I don't remember. But it was just a clip from Maury where someone was terrified of olives and a woman comes out of the back room with a giant jar of olives. The person just bolts. It was like a 10 second clip. It was wild. So mean. This person has this phobia. Oh my goodness. I was reminiscing the other day.
You might not really remember this, but then in like the year 2000, TV hit like a real low point. It was like trashy as could be. Fox had this show where people competed against animals. Like people like raced against a cheetah or they had like someone try to swim faster than a dolphin or something. They had a champion eater try to eat more than a gorilla. Just like just sideshow kind of stuff. It was it was a wild time where there was no bottom before. You're going down dolphin.
Yes, that's when they had that Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire show, which was like a beauty pageant where not that rich dude picked a total stranger to marry. There was this Guinness Book of World Records show where literally they would just bring out giant tumors and poke them. I'm not kidding. I'm not making this up. There was the Swan reality show, which was just giving people like thousands of cosmetic surgeries so that people would finally love them. And after 9-11 TV was like, well, we got to make wholesome content again. Yeah. I feel like it's time to get back to making someone chase a dolphin. This empire is done. This country is over. Like bottom basement television. It's time. Bring it back. Let's have Michael Phelps swim against a tuna. I don't know.
I endorse this. I think we should be the tip of the spear. Put us on a reality show. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have people do these horrible things. Eat bugs and coffins or whatever. Behind this curtain, we have a jar of olives. Oh, my phone. Oh, man. All right. Well, an architect and a salesman from Mitchell's office came to inspect the shotbacks of property. Okay. They do own this very nice piece of land. Yeah. That part, I think they owned outright. That had nothing to do with the log cabin people. So.
We could go sit there without any house, I guess. If the vista they showed in the show was actually their land, it's a beautiful piece of property. The mountain is literally right there. So their attorney approved this arrangement, apparently, and the Chopbacks handed over their $25,000 deposit to Mitchell's salesman. The log yard at Mitchell's Denver headquarters did appear to be legitimate. When they visited, workers were processing logs and the shells of cabins were being carefully pre-assembled. When the area was ready, the shells would be disassembled and transported to the location and reassembled on a concrete foundation.
However, after eight weeks, there was still no progress on the shot back's property. The critical job of measuring and pouring the foundation had still not started. The couple made the four-hour drive to Mitchell's log yard to find out what was going on. However, he convinced them that nothing was wrong. He showed them a shell of the future log cabin, and Earl did take some measurements, and they appeared to be correct based on what he assumed they should be. Mitchell insisted that the construction at their property would start soon. I mean, the thing is, construction projects are behind all the time. So in a way, that's not really that big of a red flag. No, and if you go there and you see the shell of your log cabin, the layout is correct, everything's measuring properly, and it's just behind, it's not really alarming. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this place looks legit. There's logs. They're building cabins. So I don't know. I think it probably is. He's probably showing everyone that same one log cabin. And everybody's like, yeah, that's pretty much what I said.
Because it's a log cabin. Yeah, there's a good job. It's made out of logs. They're like, yeah, that's what I had in mind. Right, exactly. So several more weeks passed and there was still no construction starting at their property. The chopbacks called Mitchell several times and convinced him to dispatch a work crew. Measurements were finally taken and they were hoping that it would be done by the following spring. So it seems like their original deadline was like before Christmas. And Donna was like, you know, we realized that it wasn't going to happen by Christmas, but if it happened by March, we'd be happy. And that's not that delayed. So we'll go. No, not at all. Yeah. Next, the couple applied to their local bank for a construction loan.
On October 1st, they learned that their request had been denied, and the banker told them that the loan was denied not because of them, but because their builder, Mark Mitchell, was in serious financial trouble. This is such a bad meeting. Yeah, it's not good. The guy is like, you know what, there's nothing, yeah, your credit history checked out or whatever, everything's fine, but unfortunately, your builder is a huge con, man. So they learned that he had been taking deposits from other families and never starting construction on their homes. They also learned that his real name was actually Wade Mitchell Parker. That's what, they're like sat down in a meeting in the bank, which, you know, it's like an intimidating thing. And he's like, look, it's not you. But I do have to tell you that your builder, yeah, that's not his real name. And you're like, that's not good. That's not good. This is not where you want to be hearing this. Unless it's like, he goes by Chuck. Like, it's not like a nickname thing. It's like a totally different name. What if that's why they got denied their loan? We can't loan money to people whose builders are named Chuck. I'm sorry.
One of our policies. We had a bad run-in with a Chuck when we first started, and just can't do it again. My grandpa, he started this bank, and it was one of his founding ideas. No Chucks. He wanted to go by Chucky. We couldn't handle it, so your guy's got to go. I wish that was true so much. I wish for the shotbacks it was true, but unfortunately, no. He was just a huge con man.
So at this point, the Chopbacks realized that they were going to lose all their money. On October 5th, they went back to the Mitchell's, quote, I'm doing air quotes, headquarters in Denver. He showed up more than two hours late. He did agree to refund the couple's deposit, but claiming to be short of cash, he instead gave them a promissory note, which Robert Stack describes as a $25,000 IOU. Yeah. Coming from a con man isn't great.
So the couple never spoke to Parker again. Within a month, he declared bankruptcy and vanished with all of his clients' money. The Chopbacks never received any money. They soon learned that they were not the only ones who were scammed by Parker. In November 1991, the Chopbacks met with more than 30 of Parker's other victims at a meeting organized by Colorado authorities. Parker is believed to have taken over a million dollars from various people in his scams. After meeting the other victims, the Chopbacks...
do not feel as bad about being so easily duped as so many others had fallen for Parker's schemes. They, along with other victims, hope that he can be arrested. Investigators at this point have been unable to find any of his victims' money and are convinced that he still has it with him. I don't know why they think that. They're kind of like, the money's out there somewhere. Yeah, it is, but it doesn't mean it's with this guy. He's not stealing money just to keep it.
To just lie on top of it. Yeah, he probably spent it on stuff. That's what people often do with money. Yeah, I don't know why he still had it. That's a little expert info that you might not be aware of, is that people spend money. I'm glad I was here to fill that in. I know that because I've been spending a lot of money lately. Because pandemic. Receiving packages in the mail is one of my only choices these days. Same. Hard same. Do you think this guy bought like 12 Rolexes and would wear them all at once? Just to feel like a big shot? He's got them on his ankles.
all of his arms probably i don't i don't get that fancy watch thing but i'm not a dude i guess no yeah i don't get it and also i just don't really like wearing things on my wrist i'm not a bracelet person so Yeah. So you don't want a bracelet that tells time, but also costs thousands of dollars. Nah. Yeah. Okay. So the result is that he was captured. After three years on the run, Parker was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia on August 11th, 1994, while using the aliases Ronald Anderson and Larry Wheeler. With the help of the broadcast, Georgia investigators were able to determine his true identity. On September 26th, he was arraigned in Colorado on fraud and theft charges. The chat facts attended his hearings, happy to see him finally caught. However, after posting his own bail, he vanished again, failing to appear for his hearing. Oh my God. In April of 2011, an investigator received a tip about Parker's whereabouts. And on May 4th, he was arrested in Norfolk, Virginia.
Virginia under the assumed name George Davenport. He was extradited to Colorado. That's such a fake name. George Davenport. Oh, I'm so pleased to meet you. I'm George Davenport. Sounds like the protagonist in a romance. George Davenport. Yes, of the Connecticut Davenports. Of course. This guy does wear 12 Rolexes. So he was extradited to Colorado where he finally faced trial for his fraud and theft charges. He was convicted on all of the charges and was released from prison in 2015. Sadly, Donna Chabak passed away from breast cancer in 2011. Oh my god. What a sad note to that fraud. Yeah, it is sad. Really brought it down. Thanks a lot, Samantha.
escaped again in 1994 and wasn't caught until 2011. What do you think he was doing all that time? Buying Rolexes, I assume. Not building log cabins, that's for sure. His favorite hobby, not building cabins. That's my favorite hobby too. Yeah, that is one of my favorites. I too don't build log cabins. This guy and I have that in common. Alright, we have only one more case to talk about and it's sad, so hey, let's go. Yeah, we have an unnecessary update from that guy who had different color eyes on his siblings and decided that he...
had a different family and yeah that was a weird his brother just carries around a picture of his dad's grave at all times in case it comes up in conversation yeah all right this is a missing person this is the case of john cheek so at the age of 26 straight out of business school john was hired to be the chief cfo of a major real estate company and then by 28 he had purchased a nice home in memphis so you know things were like going well for him uh he was at that time working on quote the deal of a lifetime which was taking his company public millions of dollars were at stake But on December 2nd, 1993, John Cheek did not show up for work, which was very unlike him. He was a workaholic. So people got worried. The next morning, his car was found abandoned along Interstate 55, and people thought he had jumped off the bridge into the Mississippi River, but his body was not found. They had divers and whatever. They looked around for him, assuming that he committed suicide, but no, he wasn't there. We hear from family and friends saying they didn't believe he would commit suicide, but I kind of feel like that's always what family and friends would say, but that doesn't seem to be what happened in this case. He was not seen again until February 14th, 1994, when a trucker stopped in Memphis, Arkansas.
is opening the door of the truck stop and he sees a missing persons flyer and he realizes that he recognizes the man on the flyer as a guy he treated to breakfast the day before. And apparently he said, hey, I had breakfast with this guy. So that had happened in Ruffin, Virginia, which was 700 miles east of where he was. So we got reenactment of this, which is that he saw a young man sleeping inside a truck stop under his coat. He describes him as a drifter and asks him if he had had breakfast, which is very nice. So he offered to buy this man breakfast. He does say that the man did not appear to be living on the street because he was clean, he was in a white shirt, and he was clearly well-educated. But he's kind of...
rambling over their breakfast and wasn't making a ton of sense and he actually never asked the man his name he just like kind of let him talk fed him and then they were going in separate directions so um they went their separate ways during that conversation he did reference a shelter in little rock where he had stayed and he described this rambling as the man not seeming of being of sound mind um but after they parted ways um this trucker drives to memphis arkansas and that's when he sees this flyer so he is able to describe the man's shoes which matched a pair of johns that were missing and he also it was just like a very specific account and it did seem to match up with things the family felt like, oh, this was a description of John. Well, and also this trucker said that he saw missing persons flyers all the time. And this was the first time where he saw one and it caught his attention and he recognized the person. So that seems credible to me. Also, a lot of these times when people think they recognize a person on a missing persons flyer, they've had like a glance of them. And in this case, they sat down and had a whole meal. So it does seem more credible to me. So now Unsolved Mysteries is wondering if he had an episode of stress-induced amnesia known as a fugue.
Unfortunately, there are no further sightings. There are no updates. We don't know what happened to John Sheik. He was legally declared dead in 2000. But that's, I mean, that's it. No one ever saw him again. Yeah, it's really sad for his family. I do sort of think that that was him at that sighting. It seems very credible, but what happened to him after that, nobody knows.
And that's the end of the episode. On that high note. It's a weird case because he was like working 18 hour days, they said, towards this goal of taking his company public and then to have him just disappear and show up at a truck stop mile to mile away. It's so wild. I know Unsolved Mysteries is always guessing that people have amnesia, but I kind of do buy it in this case that he just kind of...
it was too much pressure yeah i mean yeah it could have been stress induced i mean that's a lot of stress if he's not sleeping and eating working 18-hour days yeah right right um unfortunately yeah it seems like he probably was harmed not really having a full understanding of where he was or who he was i don't know dang it sucks it's sad but let's take from that lesson don't work too hard that is the takeaway yeah don't be like john Yeah, play some more Animal Crossing. Yeah, it wasn't worth it, was it? No. No. All right, should we rate it? I think we have to, by law. Okay, so our first category is mysteriousness. Really not very mysterious? Not really. I mean, we'll never be able to prove whether or not the sun almost scorched the earth in Portugal, but whatever.
The lock cabin thing is not that mysterious. Not mysterious. John is kind of mysterious, but it's more sad than mysterious. I agree. So thumbs down. Thumbs down. The reenactments are the next category. In the miracle case, too long? Can reenactments be too boring? Yeah, they're pretty boring. And I feel like they didn't take full advantage of the location either.
Also, I would have liked to see them rematch the sun going all crazy and they didn't do that. They kind of did, but it was not good. It was just like a ball of light zigzagging. No, I wanted a change in color swirling around. I wanted something like... Yes! They could have gone somewhere memorable with it and they didn't. Thumbs down. Thumbs down. Fashion? Okay, the scene where all the different victims of the Log Cabin Con get together to talk about how they've been conned has amazing 90s fashions. Yeah, and amazing 90s hair. Yeah, if you love a turtleneck that's so high...
And gold earrings that are so big. And some serious perms. Yeah, and some perms that are, like, hard. Hard perms. Then that is the segment for you. I have to give it a thumbs up just for that. I agree. I can get on with that. The Robert Stack? Phoning it in. Where was he? I don't know. Was it a day off for him? They blew all their money traveling to Portugal. They didn't have enough to pay Robert Stack's salary. And then Robert Stack was like, I'm not going to Portugal. My yacht's not there. I mean, just stay at home.
Yeah, he wasn't really there for most of it. I like him saying awesome celestial display for some reason, which sounds like the name of a prog album. I don't know. Yeah, thumbs down again. I mean, I just don't like this episode. No, I don't. Which brings us to a reference text, I don't know, a two? Yeah, I was going to say one and a half, too. Yeah, it's not good. It's lousy. I'm going to forget this immediately after we're done recording. I can't wait to forget this. I can't wait to free up that part of my brain and fill it with other useless nonsense.
Could Samantha make a quilt faster than an orangutan? Let's find out. You know, I'm not fast at quilting, but I probably could be an orangutan. I think so. I have faith in you. Yeah. That's it. Let's just go home. We're done. We're done. No, we gotta recommend something. All right. This is the recommendations part of our show. Yeah. The least sensical, but in some ways most beloved part of our show, where we recommend something to you, our dear listeners. It's a little palate cleanser. It's our gift to you. So we pretend to be influencers. Yeah. We have influence over our audience and also other over whether you live or die listening to our voices.
Okay, okay, okay. My recommendation this week is because friend of the pod, Rochelle, was asking me about tea. So I'm going to recommend some tea. Because as a person who can have very, very, very little caffeine, because my life is a waking nightmare, I drink a lot of herbal tea. And the tea that I would recommend is from local store Tea Source. Okay. There's a few locations in the area, but don't worry. You don't have to be cool and live near us. They will ship it to you.
That's how businesses often work. You can also order it and go pick it up curbside, I think, but also they can just mail it to you and then you get a package and then your life is slightly improved. These teas are delicious. I think their blends are so good. If you drink a lot of tea, you may be familiar with the phenomenon that sometimes you make tea and it smells amazing and then you taste it and you go, oh, it's bitter. Yeah. It doesn't taste half as good as it smells. It's like a huge disappointment. These teas are actually as good as they smell. That's what I'm going to say about them. And they have all sorts of delicious blends. My personal favorite.
I'm going to make a very specific recommendation is the lavender berry tea. Oh, that sounds so good. It's so delicious. And let me look up right now how much this costs. So I'm at teasource.com. Even though I can drink caffeine and do drink copious amounts, I often avoid caffeine with teas because it's hard to always know how much caffeine is in tea. Maybe if you drink tea more than I do, you have a better handle on this than I do. But even when I worked at a coffee shop that sold tea, I was always just like, I don't know. The black tea has a lot of caffeine in it.
but I can't really tell you how much. And green tea is going to have a little less caffeine in it, but still some caffeine. And yeah, I just tend to go for decaf teas if I'm going to drink a tea just to be safe. Black tea usually has more caffeine than coffee. And I don't think people realize that. They'll be like, oh, it's nighttime. I should have black tea. It's like, that's actually going to keep you up forever. Okay. So the lavender berry is herbal tea. It's a Roy boost.
And the ingredients are rooibos, natural flavor, lavender, and raspberries. Another good thing about this company is it's really not very expensive, particularly compared to like David's tea, which I like David's tea. It's really fucking expensive. And also they will put sugar or sweeteners into the blends, which I feel like it's cheating. Right? It does feel a little like cheating. You're like, oh, this is delicious. And then you look at the green, it's just literally like sugar. You're like, oh, I wonder why it's so good. Okay. So you can get two ounces of this tea, which apparently makes 19 cups of tea for $5.50. Oh, that's a heck of a deal.
Four ounces, $9. Right? It's really the most delicious tea I've ever had in my life. So free shipping starts on orders over $49. That's going to be a lot of tea. I don't think I'm ever going to qualify for that free shipping. Okay. So that's at teasource.com. And a helpful thing that they have on the site is they have a little quiz you can take that will tell you what type of tea you would like. And that is under learn about tea. They have a tea quiz. So that is my recommendation. Support local business. Tea source. That's a really good recommendation. Especially because not that long ago we were talking about how sleepy time tea is like a cult. Yes. Friend of the pot Arden.
alerted us okay so we all know celestial season's tea the tea they have in a cardboard box at the grocery store is bullshit it tastes terrible but also apparently their company has like these weird cult dynamics so i know we all love that bear that super cozy bear that's napping by a fireplace and i just want to be that bear but i i don't know look into celestial season's it's weird yeah it's really weird cults they're all around us we don't even realize it yeah i learned recently that the body shop uh is an is a multi-level marketing scheme in england that blew me away i had never heard that before you told me yeah though wild wild Because obviously I associate cults and multi-level marketing. They're sort of in the same category in my mind. Clearly they are in mine because I just was like another example. That's a really good recommendation. I love some good tea.
Yeah. Lambda berry. It's the best. Yum. Okay. So I have a recommendation that you may have already seen if you're in our book Facebook group. Yes, we have a spinoff Facebook group for books. You should join it. I get some great recommendations there, but I posted about what I'm reading. Sort of the thing we're doing is we're posting like what we're currently reading, what we're liking. I posted this short story collection that I've been meaning to read pretty much all last year. I just didn't read a lot last year though, so I didn't pick it up. But this year I was like, now's the time. And it is a science fiction short story series called Forward. It was published in 2019. It came on my radar because it was curated by author Blake Crouch, who's pretty famous now. He wrote some really popular stuff.
Last year, another one of his books came out. He wrote the Wayward Pine series, which was super good. He wrote one of the short stories and then curated the collection, which is six short stories total. And they're all science fiction, like I said. Apparently he came up with the idea for the short story collection when he was having a conversation with his partner about emerging technologies. So these are like all stories about looking forward to the future. There's like AI stuff in here. There's some climate disaster stuff in here. It's all really interesting and they're super quick reads. If you're an audiobook person, they're all available on Audible. And it's through this new thing that Amazon has called Amazon Original Stories. So if you have Prime, you get to read it for free, which is nice. I downloaded them on my Kindle just directly from Amazon. On my Kindle, it was super convenient. And I've been reading them. I've only read, well, I've read four out of the six stories. I started the fifth one this morning. And so far I've liked all of them.
them so i feel like i can confidently recommend them also these are very well-known authors n.k jemisin amore tools andy weir paul tremblay um these are veronica roth who wrote the divergent series like these are like these people write good stuff so you kind of know already they're going to be really interesting really good um and i love science fiction and i'm i've been kind of looking for shorter reads uh recently things that i can just sit down and kind of read in a morning um which isn't always the case with science fiction most things are like super fucking long and intimidating so i can't recommend this enough i really enjoyed them as i said it's free um yeah, I'm going to read the last couple of books and, or the last couple of stories. That sounds really good. Yeah. I liked it. That's the four word series on, from Amazon. Yeah, you're right. Science fiction is usually so long. They tend to be just tomes and I love science fiction, but I never really thought about that. It is kind of like a big commitment. It's like, not only is this book 900 pages, but it's part of a 12 book series and you're like, okay. All right. Well, I don't know that I have time for that right now. Yeah. Yeah. I previously recommended the expanse and, um,
the last book is coming out this year, supposedly. Apparently the release date that's been floating around is not real, but supposedly it's coming out in the fall. And that's a nine book series and they're all extremely long, plus novella. And I'm going to embark on a reread. There was a few people in our Facebook group that mentioned that they wanted to do it with me. We'll see if we run out of steam or not, but it is my favorite science fiction series. So I'll probably reread the whole thing. It's just, it ends up being a lie. It's very intimidating. And that Facebook group is called, perhaps you'd like to see what book I'm reading, I believe. Yes. Yeah. Perhaps it's you who wants to see the book I'm reading, something like that. You'll find it.
You'll find it. Join us there. Join us on our Animal Crossing Facebook group. We're having a lot of fun over there. Yep. Welcoming Wart Jr., the world's best villager. I can't believe people were down on him. He's actually super sweet. I like him. Oh, good. I'm glad Wart Jr. worked out. Thank you for whoever left him a frog umbrella as a present. That's a perfect gift. Oh, I learned that frogs in Animal Crossing are the only animals that won't use umbrellas because they're frogs.
So you won't even use it? No, apparently not. It's probably not just playing his house, though, I assume. Yeah. He'll treasure it. It's weird because in Animal Crossing you have frog villagers, but you can also go fishing and catch a frog. Yeah, but those aren't the type of frogs that stand up and wear clothes. It's just different. And also Ward Jr. is a toad, so different species.
We're so off the rails. Yeah. Okay. So there's social media. I yell at people on Twitter sometimes. That's always fun. We've got an Instagram that occasionally gets updated sometimes. I abandon our Instagram accounts. Now Liz posts sometimes. Yeah. What else? What else? What else? You should give us a five star review again to reiterate the rules. It's not that hard. Five stars.
Five star reviews. Looking at my face makes you want to keel over. That's fine. But just make sure it's five stars. What a weird review for a podcast where they can't see you. I hate looking at Samantha's face. Good thing I only hear her beautiful voice. Five stars. This must be someone I know. Yeah, not all of you can be trusted to leave reviews, apparently.
So if you have something nice to say, maybe consider leaving us a five-star review. That would be much appreciated. We also have a dollar on Patreon. Good news. We're not talking about the Unsolved Mysteries reboot this month. We're going to talk about Paranormal Home Inspectors. I can't wait. Paranormal Home Inspectors. If you haven't yet subscribed and you are interested in our thoughts on the Unsolved Mysteries reboot, we've covered all of the available episodes now. So you can listen to our back catalog. It's only going to cost you a dollar. It's a great deal. But for those of you who are kind of sick of it like we are, we're moving on to something else. Yeah, we have more than 30 Patreon episodes now. That's a lot.
It's not a bad use of your money. And people should really sign up for our top tier thing, which is basically I send you a gift every quarter. And I have so much fun doing that. And the other day, Matt was like, you really found a way to just send people more presents. And I was like, yes. And people pay for it. You sent me our latest Patreon reward gift. And I got to say, I love the bookmarks. I love the bookmark that is just a screenshot of this own recommendation. Someone left us on Facebook that calls us two very ignorant and delusional people. That's just their name is just scratched out in red. When I sent that image to the printer, I kept getting emails that are like, are you sure?
Do you realize this has a big red scribble on it? Also, the clarity of this photo is not so great. Also, are you sure this is what you want? I had a feeling like, yes, yes. I really want bookmarks of someone calling me ignorant and delusional. Thank you. I love it because they used the recommendation feature on Facebook, but they said they don't recommend us. So it's just such a much person, which you can kind of see their name a little bit because it's not very well scratched out. It says they don't recommend it. Perhaps it's new, the unofficial Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast. And it's not even a full sentence. It's just two very ignorant and delusional people.
Which I just imagine everyone in their Facebook feed was like, I've never even heard of that. What? Obscure podcast. Okay. I guess I won't listen to it. That's the person who made Matt on Instagram. But yeah, I love it on a bookmark. It's great. You can really treasure that. These are the gems you get if you sign up for our top tier on Patreon. Which not enough people are getting these whimsical presents. Okay. Was there anything else that we needed to say? I don't know. I don't think so. I think that's fine. I think we're good. Oh, you should be sure to slam that subscribe button. What if Samantha's favorite phrases? Do me a solid. Slam that subscribe button.
Yes. Okay. Keep barking, everyone. We will kill you with our voices next week. Bye.