Transcript of Shipwrecked (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

In the early morning hours on a Saturday in 2013, a man dressed all in black, hidden the shadows on a side street in downtown Antwerp, Belgium. The man had lost track of how long he'd been there, but he didn't care. He'd hide in the shadows for as long as he had to, waiting patiently for the perfect moment that he knew was going to arrive eventually. And then finally, stumbling footsteps approached, and the man crouched down and got ready. But before we get into today's story, three, you may be wondering why you're getting a new episode on a Wednesday. Well, I am now going to be uploading four episodes to the Mr. Ballon podcast each week. Now, Mondays and Thursdays won't change. But beginning today, you're also going to get new exclusive episodes on Wednesdays. And on Fridays, you'll get a mix of news stories and also fan favorites. And these Wednesday stories, they aren't just going to be true crime. In fact, many of them will be based on the stories that you already love if you're a fan of my YouTube channel. I call this series, Places You Can't Go and People Who Went There Anyways, or maybe more accurately, Things You Really Can't Do, but People Who Did Them Anyway, and Here's Their Story.

These stories are insane. And I'm telling you, if you've not heard this series before, you're really going to like it. So make sure you check them out here each Wednesday, and you can also watch me tell these stories on my YouTube channel each week. So if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right show because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons house and lay hundreds of mousetraps inside of their bed. Okay, let's get into today's story. After midnight on Saturday, October 19th, 2013, a 23-year-old man named Ode Eguilus stood at the bar in a packed dance club in Antwerp, Belgium. The bartender slid two shot classes across the bar towards Ode, and he grabbed both of them, he held one, and he handed the other to his friend, Kevin Rodriguez Fuentes, who was standing right behind him. It was Kevin's birthday. So Ode raised his shot glass and shouted Happy birthday in Spanish over the pounding dance music, and And then the two young men slam back their drinks. Ode had moved to Antwerp, Belgium, from Spain about six months earlier when he had gotten a job as a computer engineer.

When he'd arrived, he hadn't known anybody, but he'd met Kevin at a beer festival, and the two of them had gotten along right away. And Kevin was from the area, so he'd introduced Ode to a bunch of his friends and shown him the best spots to hang out in the city. And the two had gotten very close very quickly. Now, standing at the bar after taking their shots, Kevin tapped on Oday's shoulder and he pointed out at the dance floor and he grinned because there was a group of young women about their age all dancing together out there. And so the two young men, they headed out to the dance floor to go speak with these girls. And from this point on, the night really became a blur for Oday Oday, who kept going back and forth from the dance floor back to the bar for more drinks. But despite that, Oday was having a great time. It was really nights like this that made him feel like Antwerp was his new home. But he also knew if he stayed out much longer here, he might end up passing out right on the dance floor.

So Oday and Kevin and some friends they had just met on the dance floor stumbled out of the club and into the city. When they got out there, the streets were pretty empty, and so Oday reflexively pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. Now, his vision was fuzzy, but even still, one-eyeing it, he could see that it was close to 4: 00 AM. And given the fact that it was so, so late, basically, it was the next day at this point, he just told the group, Good night, and then he turned around to start walking home to go to bed. The next morning, Oday's friend, Kevin, woke up with a pounding headache. His eyes flutter open and he looked around and he let out a sigh of relief because he was safely in his bedroom, in his apartment in Antwerp. He had been so drunk by the end of his birthday celebration the night before that he literally didn't remember getting home. And so now, painfully, he rolled over and grabbed his phone off the night stand and reflexively texted Oday, along with another friend that had been out with him the night before.

Or asking how they were feeling. The other friend texted right back, but Oday did not respond. But this didn't really worry Kevin that much. I mean, he's horribly hung over. Oday has to be as well, and so he likely is just sleeping it off, and he'll be in Dutch when he wakes up. However, all day that day, Kevin did not hear from Oday. And then the next day, October 20th, when still Kevin has not heard from Oday, he really started to get worried. But when Kevin called Oday check on him to make sure he was okay, when he put the phone to his ear, it didn't ring. Instead, it went straight to Oday's voicemail, like his phone was turned off. And to Kevin, this was pretty unusual. Oday was usually very responsive, even with a hangover. And by this point, Kevin had given him a full day, 24 hours to recover. He should be in touch by now. What's going on? So Kevin called the other friend who they'd gone out with who had texted him back the day before to see if Maybe Oday had checked in with him. But that friend said he also had not spoken to Oday.

And so at this point, Kevin hung up and just decided to go to Oday's house and literally physically check on him. However, when Kevin arrived at Oday's house, he found Oday's roommates, but no Oday. Oday's roommates did not know Oday very well, so they didn't know what was normal and not normal behavior. So when he had gone out for Kevin's birthday party and didn't come back, they just figured he was crashing at a friend's place or something. But to Kevin, this was unusual. To hear that he had not come back, that was not normal, he would know if Oday was at a friend's house. And so Kevin was starting to panic. But then Kevin remembered one of his and Oday's mutual friends had recently gone out of town for a wedding. And so Kevin thought, maybe that's where Ode is. He's gone with her to the wedding, and that's why he's not here, and that's why he's not answering his phone. So Kevin left Ode's house and called this friend, a young woman whose name was Oiane. He was hoping that she would have an explanation for everything. But instead, when she answered the phone, it was obvious from her voice that she was also freaking out about Ode.

Oiane said she also had been calling Ode nonstop over the past day or so, and she couldn't get in touch with him. And so it was becoming clear that nobody had seen Ode since the night of the birthday party when he set off around 4: 00 AM to walk home drunk from the bar. Kevin had no idea what he was supposed to do, but he felt like his friend was in trouble. So he contacted the police and officially reported Ode missing. The following day, Monday, October 21st, Kevin sat in a small room across from members of the missing persons unit of the Belgian National Police. And as soon as the officers started asking Kevin questions, it became clear that this was going to be a very frustrating meeting for everybody because no matter how hard Kevin tried, he literally couldn't remember much at all. His memory of his and Ode's night out on his birthday were really just blurry images and pieces of random conversations because he was drunk. But Kevin did manage to remember what Oday had been wearing. He had a gray hooded sweatshirt and a black and white checkered scarf. He also knew the area of town down, specifically where they had gone out.

But really, that was it. And so by the time Kevin left the police station, he felt like he was really letting his friend down, and he just couldn't handle the idea that now he would just have to sit around and wait and hope police magically found him When right now, Oday, wherever he was, could be in trouble or hurt or something. He just felt like he had to do something. So that afternoon, Kevin met up with some of Oday's other friends, and together, they began hanging posters all around the city that had pictures of Oday on them. Antwerp was a very busy city, filled with bars and restaurants that stayed open very late, so they were sure that somebody had to have seen Oday while he was walking home. He couldn't have just disappeared into thin air. People don't do that. Meanwhile, detectives in the missing person's unit got to work. Now, Kevin had not given them a ton to go on, but knowing where in the city he and Ode had gone out and what Ode had been wearing did actually turn out to be quite helpful, because with this basic information, police were able to collect CCTV surveillance camera footage from outside of the bars, restaurants, and street corners where Kevin and Oday had been.

And it didn't take them long to pick up on Oday's trail. The investigators were hoping to find footage of Oday getting into a cab or some other vehicle or maybe wandering into a building or even evidence that he'd been attacked in some capacity. And at first, they thought that is exactly what they'd found. Because on camera footage around 4: 00 AM on the morning Ode disappeared, the police saw him wandering down this dimly-lit side street on his own. His black and white checkered scarf really jumped out on the footage. And the police watched on video as this man suddenly came out of the shadows and rushed Ode. The man attacked Ode and stole what looked like Ode's wallet right out of his pocket, and then the man took off running. And as disturbing as it was, the footage did not actually surprise the investigators very much. While Antwerp was not a particularly violent place, it was a big city, and drunk people wandering home at night did occasionally get mugged. However, what the investigators saw next on the surveillance footage did completely shock them because after the mugging, Ode had pulled himself together and kept heading down the street.

And on footage taken a few minutes later from a different camera, the police saw Oday still wandering on his own when suddenly two new men rushed up, attacked Oday, took his phone, and then they ran away. Meaning in the span of just a few minutes, Ode had been mugged twice by three different people, and none of the investigators had ever seen anything like that. It was like something you'd to see in a movie or a TV show about a guy cursed with bad luck or something. But as bizarre as this was, investigators now had something to go on. They didn't know if these muggers, the three men, were connected in some way or if this had truly been two random, unconnected muggings. But Ode's cell phone and wallet had been stolen by these guys. So they could track Ode's cell phone data and also his credit card info, and the investigators hoped that would then lead them right to Ode's attackers, and they could figure out what their affiliation was and why they targeted Odey, and hopefully, where Oday is now. The investigator's plan took a few days, but it did pay off in a big way.

By tracking Oday's credit card, investigators discovered that somebody had attempted to use one of his cards at an ATM in the city, and so they pulled surveillance footage from that ATM to identify the first mugger. Then, Then by using cell phone tower data and CCTV footage along the route where they saw his cell phone was taken, investigators were able to identify the other two attackers involved in the second mugging. And so now, they believe they just needed to talk to these thief to figure out where Ode was. Fast forward to October 29th, 10 days after Ode's disappearance, and he still is nowhere to be found, officers from the Missing Persons Unit interviewed these three muggers separately. The police made it clear that they had a pile of evidence here that showed they mugged Ode shortly before he vanished, so there's no point in trying to deny it. They know what they did, and none of the muggers did try to deny it. In fact, all three men admitted that they had jumped Ode on the street, and they told the police exactly what they had stolen. But they insisted their attacks, the two muggings, were not coordinated at all.

They just happened to have gotten to Ode within a few minutes of each other. And then even more importantly, they also all insisted that they had nothing to do with Ode's disappearance. All they did was rob him. That's it. As the investigators listened to these muggers talk, all they could do was stare in disbelief. The idea that three muggers had randomly committed two attacks on the same man within minutes of each other and that their victim had then disappeared in what? Yet another unrelated incident? Seemed almost comical. But no matter how hard the police press these guys, they all completely stuck to their stories, which was, We mugged him, and then we ran away, and we never saw him again. The police arrested and held all three men in connection to the robberies that they admitted to doing. But their goal despite what these men have said, was to find enough evidence to still charge them with the kidnapping or maybe even murder of Ode. But then a new piece of surveillance footage surfaced from a new camera, and this new footage actually showed Ode Oday moments after the second mugging. And on this footage, investigators didn't see any of the muggers dragging Oday away or something.

Instead, just like the muggers said, they really did take off after that second mugging. And just like he done after the first attack, Oday dusted himself off and just kept on walking down the street and out of the camera's range. But he was alone. And so now, to their complete astonishment, the police had to admit that the muggers might be telling the truth and that Ode could have just kept wandering the streets of Antwerp for hours after he'd gotten attacked. They didn't know. But they know the muggers ran away and Ode was alone, at least briefly after the second attack. And also this new footage made them realize that to really conduct this investigation, they were going to need to search the entire city to see if anyone, anywhere, had seen Ode. So in early November of 2013, about two weeks after Ode's disappearance, appearance. Belgium National Police conducted a massive investigation throughout all of Antwerp. They visited all the bars, all the restaurants, all the clubs in the area roughly where Ode and his friends had been out partying. But no matter who they spoke to, no matter where they went, nobody knew where Ode was or what happened to him.

But as they hit all these dead ends, the investigator's search continued, and it slowly migrated north through Antwerp in the rough direction where Ode had been last seen walking, away from the city center and towards the banks of the River Skelte, which runs right through Antwerp on its way to the North Sea. On the evening of November seventh, so by this point, it is 19 days since Odey was last seen, several detectives from the Missing Persons Unit stepped onto the deck of a very unique structure that literally floated on the River Skelte. The structure was called the Bod Boat. That morning, police boats had been dragging the river itself and were searching the riverbanks with dogs, looking for any signs of Ode. But the search of this river couldn't be completed without a stop at the Bod Boat. So the Bod Boat was basically a massive club, bar, and high-end restaurant that had been built into a converted ship that was moored right in the middle of the stretch of the river that police were dragging. But the biggest attraction of the Bod Boat was not the food or the dancing. It was the almost Olympic-sized swimming pool that had been built into the deck of the ship, and it looked like it was floating right on top of the river.

People referred to it as the world's largest floating swimming pool, and it was always packed. The bod boat had a very good, very wide, unobstructed view of the city and the river. And so the detectives were hopeful that if Ode had passed by, someone on the bod boat likely would have been able to see him. So now the detectives split up and began interviewing the bod boat staff and the patrons, asking if any of them remembered seeing a young man in a distinctive black and white checkered scarf on the morning he went missing. Now, at this point, pretty much everybody in the city had already heard of Ode. I mean, his face was plastered on posters everywhere and people really wanted to help. But As detectives talked to everybody at the bod boat, in the pool, in the bar, in the restaurant, everybody. As much as people wanted to help and thought they might have tips that could help, nobody had anything that was meaningful. And so eventually, The investigators had to leave the bod boat, and they just spent the rest of the afternoon on the banks of the river watching the Marine unit do its work.

But just like on the bod boat, there was nothing found in the river itself. On November 19, 2013, so now one full month after Odey's disappearance, friends and family gathered publicly, both in Antwerp and his hometown in the Basque country of Spain. In In Spain, his family made it clear that they still hoped Ode would be alive and that this gathering was not a memorial. It was instead to show their love for Ode and to bring continued attention to his story so he could be found. In Antwerp, Ode's friends tried to convey the same message with their meetup that Ode had to be out there somewhere and he might be okay. We just need to keep looking. However, by the end of 2013, so now over two months after Ode's disappearance, it became clear that the police investigation was really not making much headway at all. Police still had those three muggers in custody in hopes that maybe they would crack and they would admit that they had done something to Ode after the muggings. But the three men had not changed their stories at all. Also, after over a month of canvassing the entire city, no new evidence had really surfaced at all.

And so, Odey's friends and family really began to worry that the police might just abandon the search because there was nothing they could do. But then, Starting in the early summer of 2014, so a little more than seven months after Ode first disappeared, something incredible happened. Ode's story went viral, and not just in Belgium or in his native Spain, but all across Europe. And this really is not how things typically played out. Thousands of people go missing in Europe every year, and most of those cases go relatively unnoticed by the media and the general public. It just is what it is. But the story of this young man who had moved to Antwerp to start his career and a new life, only to vanish without a trace after being mugged twice in the middle of the night, it just seemed so unbelievable and also resonated with people everywhere. It just felt so tragic. And so as the police, who by this point really had throttled back their search quite a bit, it's been seven months by now, as police were showing signs of just basically dropping the case, people all across the continent demanded the police not just continue, but But increase their scrutiny.

Look everywhere. Triple your efforts. Find Ode. And so there's all this unbelievable international outpouring of support from this viral story. I mean, you had poets all over the world writing poems about Ode, and you had musicians writing music about Ode. You had charity groups coming out in Belgium and doing their own search for Ode. I mean, it's like the whole world was rallying to get the Belgian government to act. Like, triple your efforts. Find Ode. He's out there. And then what pushed it over the edge was in October of 2014, as the first anniversary of Ode's disappearance approached, one of the most famous soccer players in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, played a game with images of Ode on his jersey. I mean, his story really had reached basically everyone. And it was at this point that Belgium did act. The Belgium National Police literally doubled down on their efforts to search the entire country for Ode. They're not just looking in Antwerp anymore, they're going to look everywhere. They also enlisted the help of Interpol, an international police organization, to expand the search to other European countries. And so throughout 2014 and into 2015, investigators in Antwerp revisited bars, restaurants they had gone to during their initial canvas, and they re-interviewed people connected to Ode.

They also made public announcements to let people know they were still looking for Ode. But despite all this effort, despite really doing their absolute best to find Ode, They couldn't find him. But then on September 18th, 2015, so one year and 11 months after Oday's disappearance, something happened with the bod boat that changed everything. So to understand what happened, you need to take into account the literal design of the bod boat. So the bod boat really was this entertainment hub that had been installed in this decommissioned boat. But the boat is not like a boat that we think of when we think of huge ship or something where there's multiple stories and a huge deep keel that goes beneath the surface of the water. Instead, it was more like a big floating dock, almost like a catamaran-style boat, where it's one level, this big rectangular square, and there really is nothing below the surface. It's more like a big floating dock. That was the bod boat. And on September 18th, 2015, the swimming pool on the bod boat began to leak. Now, remember, you're looking out at the bod boat from land, and it basically looks like a big floating dock with all these attractions on it, including a pool.

And so even though you'd see the surface of the swimming pool being at level with everything else, basically right at the top of the river, well, there's a recessed portion that effectively touches down into the river. And so at some point, there's a leak that formed on the base of this pool, and the pool began taking on all this extra water, and the pool literally broke off from the bod boat structure, and it sank to the bottom of the river. Now, luckily, no one had gotten hurt when this happened, but the story had taken over the news. The bod boat was a huge attraction for people in Antwerp as well as for tourists visiting the city. And So the city immediately began working to come up with a plan to resurface the swimming pool and rebuild the bod boat. Finally, on February 11th, 2016, so almost two and a half years after Odeya's disappearance and five months after the swimming pool sunk, two cranes attached to a boat were brought in to latch onto the base of this pool at the bottom of the river and try to resurface it. And on that afternoon, a member of the work crew stood on the boat, watching the water and helping oversee everything as the cranes slowly did their work.

And as he kept his eyes trained on the water, eventually, the bod boat swimming pool, which was still actually mostly intact, broke the surface. And as this happened, a few of the workers let out a cheer, but something in the water caught the crew member's attention. At first, he couldn't tell what it was, but when he leaned down to get a better look, he immediately shouted for the crane operator to stop. The cranes fell silent, and with shaking hands, the crew member took out his phone and called the police. Eventually, once they put all the evidence together, this is what police believe happened to Oday on the early morning of October 19, 2013. At around 4: 00 AM, after leaving his friends, Oday began his walk home. And like the police already knew, he was mugged twice in a matter of minutes. But after the second mugging, he really did pick himself up and collect himself, and very likely He was hurt, he was scared, and he was very drunk, so likely disoriented, doesn't know if there are more threats coming, doesn't really understand what's even happening, but he needs to get home. We know he continued trying to walk home for some time because eventually, came in contact with a group of strangers who would eventually come forward and confirm this.

But they apparently saw this guy who looked beat up and disoriented. It was Ode, and they called out to him and tried to convince him to let them book him a cab to get him home. But he was so disoriented and so drunk, he didn't even answer him, and he just walked off. But at that point, he had moved fairly far north in the city, and he was getting near the banks of the River Skelte. So for reference, he had walked pretty far off course. He was not near his home. He was clearly lost. And at some point in his disoriented, scared, drunken state, he tripped and actually fell into the river. Now, the shock of landing in the water likely potentially sobered him up a little bit, but he was really, really drunk. And so even if he had tried to swim and get to shore, there was a strong enough current that it would have been fairly difficult to get out of the water. And so the current ended up pulling him all the way up against the side side of the bod boat. And so once he was there, pinned against the side of the bod boat, right on the side of the bod boat where that swimming pool was, he was too weak and drunk to swim out of the current.

And so he was just being pressed up against the wall of the side of the bod boat until he had no more energy left to fight. And he was slowly pulled under the surface and forced underneath the bod boat, specifically to the bottom of the recess of the swimming pool, where there's not much space between the bottom of the pool and the bottom of the river. And so he basically got pulled down and got wedged right in that space underneath the pool of the bod boat. And there he drowned. And for more than two years after his death, Odey's body remained wedged underneath that swimming pool. And so for all that time, people are swimming in the pool, not realizing they're a couple of feet away from a dead body. But then finally, the swimming pool sunk to the bottom. It was pulled back up by those cranes, and attached to it at this point was Odey's body, and that was how they found him. The muggers who attacked Odey were ultimately convicted of robbery, and they all served approximately four years in prison. Now, the muggers were never actually shown to have any direct connection to Odey's death.

And while authorities believe the most likely scenario is that Odey simply fell into the water, they were never able to officially rule out foul play. Odey's parents have called for further investigation. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballen podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysteria's Stories, is hosted and executive-produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zack Levet. Produced by Jeremy Bone. Story editing by Evan Allen. Research and fact-checking by Sheli Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beemer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Eer. Audio editing and Closet was produced by Whit Lacassio and Cole Lacassio, Perry Kroll, and Jordan Stittam. Mixed and mastered by Brenda Cain, production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production Support by Antonio Monada and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kyner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugdon. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballon podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballon YouTube channel that very same day.

And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballon. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to Serious XM Podcasts podcast plus on Apple podcasts or visit siriusxm. Com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See you.