Transcript of Top 5 Bingeable SCARY STORIES • Strangest of the Strange Edition (*MATURE AUDIENCES*)

Today, we have a special video for you guys. It's a collection of five stories, and the very first story you'll hear is a brand new story, and the other four are fan favorites that are all a good reminder that sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Now, those four fan favorites have all been reedited for today's episode. So even if you've seen or heard them before, this will feel like a new viewing experience. And just a reminder, I'm actually on tour right now. Not literally, because I'm actually filming this in advance. But by the time you hear this, I'm going to be on tour. And if you want to follow along and see some behind the scenes footage, make sure you follow my Instagram account. My handle is just Mr. Balin. But before we get into today's Five Stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. If that's of interest to you, the next time the like button is writing something very important, go up and nudge their elbow. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

Okay, let's get into today's stories.

On the evening of January 13th, 2002, a 42-year-old man named Ronald Huff walked in the door of a studio apartment in the city of Newark, Delaware.

He had just come back from visiting his grandmother, and now he was feeling really sick. Inside of his apartment, it was blazing hot, but that was by design. That's how he kept the temperature. Ronald took off his coat and threw it over one of the many handmade wooden cages that were strewn about his living room. Then he dragged himself over to his house phone, picked it up, and he called to her auto dealership where he worked. When the office manager answered, Ronald told her that he would not be able to come into work the following day because he was feeling so unwell. He hung up the phone and then leaned on the counter for a second, feeling light-headed. Then suddenly, from behind him, he heard a this. Right away, Ronald turned around and walked over to his fridge, and instinctively, he reached out his right-hand to open the door. But as soon as he grabbed the handle and squeezed, he felt a shot of pain in his right-hand. He had forgotten that his right-hand was all bandaged up because it was injured. And so grimacing, Ronald reached out with his left hand and he opened up the fridge that way.

Then after shutting the fridge, he walked over to the kitchen counter and he reached into a jar and he pulled out a whole fistful of live cockroaches. They were about two inches long each, and they wriggled around inside of his hand. He threw the cockroaches onto the ground and then watched as they scattered. Now that Ronald's chores were finished, he decided he would just go lay down because, again, he's feeling horrible. But as he walked across the kitchen towards his bedroom, that dizziness he was feeling he earlier, came back. And suddenly it was like the whole world was spinning around him and he could barely stay on his feet. He kept trying to walk towards his bedroom, but he just couldn't do it. And eventually, he stumbled and began to fall. Ronald lurched sideways and blindly stumbled to the right trying to catch himself. And the first thing he touched with his outstretched arm was the door to his apartment. And so he grabbed it and he tried to stay on his feet, but he couldn't. And so he turned his body around and pressed his back up against the door to steady himself. But he was just so woozy and weak that eventually he just slouched down to the ground, back against the door, feet out in front of him.

Slow, he let his eyes close. As Ronald passed out, all he could hear were the sounds of roaches scurrying and chicken bones crunching. Three days later, Ronald's neighbor heard the crackle of police walkie-talkies out in the hallway. He opened his door and he saw two police officers and the superintendent of their building standing in front of Ronald's door. So this neighbor liked Ronald and knew him to be a nice, quiet guy, and so he couldn't imagine why police would be at his door. But then he thought about it, and he actually hadn't seen Ronald in several days. The neighbor watched as the police officers knocked on Ronald's door, waiting for Ronald to come out, but the door never opened. After a few minutes of knocking, the police finally stepped back from the door and gestured for the superintendent to step forward and use his key to open the door. Then after the superintendent had done that, the neighbor watched as the police officers tried to open the door but couldn't. It was like there was something really heavy blocking the door from opening. Finally, both police officers leaned hard enough on the door that they got it to open up just a little bit.

The neighbor watched as the officer stuck their heads into the apartment and then jumped back with their hands on their guns. Then one of the cops grabbed their radio and began frantically talking into it. Then the neighbor watched as the officers and the superintendent quickly walked down the hallway out of sight, leaving Ronald's apartment door partially open. As the neighbor heard the sound of sirens wailing outside, he took a cautious step into the hallway and realized he could actually see into Ronald's apartment through the open door. What he saw inside of there was so horrifying that for a second, the neighbor just froze. Then a second later, he backed to his own apartment and slam the door behind him. Hours later, this neighbor could not get the image of what he had seen in Ronald's apartment out of his head. So he grabbed a piece of paper and just began sketching the bizarre scene. It would turn out Ronald had a secret. And on the evening of January 13th, 2002, right after Ronald had called in sick to his work, that secret killed him. Here is the picture that the neighbor drew of what he saw inside of Ronald's apartment.

On the floor is Ronald's dead body. His face, his ears, his hands, and his internal organs had all been eaten. And surrounding Ronald were the giant monitor lizards that he was secretly keeping as pets. He had seven of them, which he fed roaches and raw chicken, and allowed to just free roam his apartment. They ranged in size from 2 feet to 6 feet long. These are massive lizards. And unfortunately for Ronald, not only are monitor lizards carnivores, but also their mouths are filled with deadly bacteria. The reason Ronald's hand was bandaged up, his right-hand, is because one of his lizards, a week prior to his death, had bit his hand and the bacteria had given him this horrible staff infection. It was that staff infection, a week later, that very likely caused him to pass out inside of his apartment. Then after that, he was eaten by the lizards. Now, it's assumed he died from the staff infection and then was consumed. However, the autopsy He couldn't prove that, and so it is possible he may have been still alive when they began to eat him. After Robert's death, his lizards were taken from his apartment and placed in the Catocton Wildlife Preserve and Zoo in Thurmont, Maryland.

Both of them have been shot multiple times, drenched in blood.

I can see in the basement, there's a lot more person who is

From the time Gareth Williams was a young boy, his parents knew he was extremely gifted. When he was just 17 years old, he achieved a first class honors mathematics degree from a university in his hometown of Wales. A couple of years after that, he had his PhD from the University of Manchester in England. And after that, he was accepted into a postgraduate course at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Cambridge. But he wouldn't finish that degree because his incredible academic achievements had got the attention of Britain's intelligence agencies, and they began recruiting him. In 2001, when Gareth was 23, Britain's Communication headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, which is one of Britain's main intelligence agencies, offered him a job as a codebreaker. He eagerly accepted the job, dropped out of Cambridge, and then moved into a modest apartment in Cheltonam, which is the resort town about 88 miles away from London, where GCHQ is located. And there, he would live and work for the next 10 years. Despite being an intensely private and shy person, Gareth was a highly valued team player who's genius in mathematics and technology, helped his group win a number of Britain's highest awards for international code-breaking.

In 2009, one of Britain's other main intelligence agencies, the famous Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 for short, they were so impressed with Gareth that they offered him a job to come over and work for them. This was a very rare chance for Gareth to go operational and become a spy in the Hollywood sense of the word. He would effectively become a real-life James Bond, and so he jumped at the chance. But shortly after taking the job and moving to London, he regretted his decision. He hated the intense competitiveness within MI6, the flashy cars and flashy lifestyles, and the pressure to go out and party with your coworkers every weekend. Gareth just wanted to do his job and then be left alone. At GCHQ, nobody cared he felt that way. But at MI6, this behavior made him an outsider. Before he left MI6, he took his annual two-week vacation. But when the vacation was over, he didn't come back to work at his office in London. For some reason, MI6 never checked in on him to see where he was. It wasn't until his sister called police after not hearing from him that anybody looked into his disappearance.

On August 23rd, a uniformed officer went to Gareth's apartment in London to do a welfare check. After knocking When he opened the door and not getting an answer from Gareth, the officer got the key to the apartment from the landlord and went inside. He yelled out for Gareth. There was no sign of him on the first floor. He went upstairs to see if maybe Gareth was up there. He's yelling for him the whole way as he's going up. He gets the second floor. There's nobody up there, but there's a closed door. And what he finds on the other side of that closed door would make international headlines for weeks. When he opened the door, he walked into a bathroom, and there was nothing unusual about the bathroom, except in the bathtub, there was this big red duffle bag. And inside of that duffle bag was the badly decomposed body of Gareth Williams. The zipper of the bag was padlocked shut on the outside, and the key to this padlock was underneath Gareth's body inside of the bag. There were no fingerprints on the rim or inside the bathtub. There were also no fingerprints on the bag itself or on the two zippers or on the padlock or on the keys.

Gareth's iPhone had been found nearby sitting on a table, and it had been factory reset. And later, investigators would determine it had been reset on August 15th, which was the last day Gareth was seen on CCTV footage, and it was also the day that they believe he died. According to the coroner, Gareth's body had no injuries on it. There was no sign of a struggle, and his toxicology report showed that he had no drugs or alcohol in his system. The thermostat inside of Gareth's apartment was jacked way up, so it was very hot inside of his apartment, despite the fact it was summer, and it was the height of the summer in August. But regardless, the excessive heat in his apartment sped up the decomposition process and made it impossible to precisely determine a cause of death. Despite a lengthy investigation by police, there was never a conclusive determination as to what exactly happened to Gareth, although there are many theories. Some say the Russian Mafia killed him because right before he died, he had been focusing on money laundering in Britain that was tied to the Russian Mafia, which would have made him a target.

Another theory is MI6 had something to do with Gareth's death, which is why they were not so eager to go looking for him when he didn't come back from his vacation. In fact, one former MI6 agent has come out and said he believes there was a cover-up. He was interviewed by CNN and said that it looked like MI6 had gone into Gareth's apartment ahead of the police and wiped it all down, removing fingerprints and DNA evidence. The last prominent theory is that Gareth did this to himself. It was discovered that he made occasional online visits to bondage sites, and at least one time, he had to yell out to his landlord to help get him out of his bed because he had tied his wrist to the bed frame and couldn't get himself undone. But when two experts who were a part of the investigation attempted to put themselves inside of a similar size duffle bag and lock it with the padlock on the outside, they couldn't do it despite trying over 400 times. Even if Gareth could have somehow physically got himself inside of this bag and locked it from the outside, how How would he have done that without leaving fingerprints all over the bag, all over the lock, the zippers, all over the tub?

Because when he was found, he didn't have gloves on. Ultimately, despite the red flags, Gareth's death was determined to be probably an accident and was closed three years after his death. Growing up, Pauline Daken always suspected that there was just something off about her family. Years later, she would find out she was right. In 1970, when she was five years old, her parents, Ruth and Warren, separated. To Pauline, it wasn't that much of a shock because her father, Warren, was a heavy drinker and he was extremely violent. But after they separated and Pauline, her mother and brother, had moved into another house on the other side of Vancouver, Canada, Pauline noticed her mom started to act really anxious all the time, but she never knew why. When Pauline was nine, her mother told her and her brother that they were going to go on a vacation Winnipeg, which is 1,000 miles away from Vancouver. And so they loaded up the van, they hopped in, and they drove all the way to Winnipeg. And when they got out, they went inside their new vacation home, and Ruth informed her children that they were actually never going back to Vancouver.

And when Pauline and her brother said, Why? Dad's still back in Vancouver. I want to see dad. But Pauline said, Sorry, kids, this is the way it has to be. And when you're old enough, I'll explain everything. Confused and sad, Pauline and her brother began starting a new life in Winnipeg. Over the next four years, Pauline never saw her her father, and so she lost touch with him. But she started making a couple of close friends in Winnipeg, and she was starting to feel like this was home. But right as she was starting to feel normal, her mother told her and her brother that they needed to move right now all over again. This time, they were going to go all the way to New Brunswick, the far east side of Canada. Their mother made them swear they would tell no one about this move. But later that day, when Pauline was with her best friend, Wendy, she let it slip that she was moving. And so when Ruth came to pick Pauline up from Wendy's house, the two girls had to affect these breezy goodbyes to each other so that Pauline's mother wouldn't suspect anything.

Once in New Brunswick, the family did put down roots, and they stayed there for many years. But Pauline's mother still was just incredibly anxious and paranoid about something. The kids just had no idea what it was. Fast forward to 1988, when Pauline was 23 years old, she had moved 2 hours away from the family home in New Brunswick and was living with her boyfriend and was working as a reporter at a local newspaper. And during During that time, her mother called her and said, Hey, I'd like to meet you at a motel. I'm finally ready to tell you everything about your childhood. Pauline was really intrigued and excited. This was a conversation that was literally decades in the making. Pauline eagerly went to the motel. She saw her mother waiting outside, pacing around, looking very anxious. She walks up to her mom and she waves and she's about to speak when her mother just looks up at her and puts her finger over her lips telling her to be quiet. Then she jams an envelope into Pauline's hands. On the envelope, it just says, Don't say anything. Put your jewelry inside of this envelope. It's probably bugged.

I will explain everything inside. Just please don't speak. And so now Pauline's really confused, but she did as she was told. She took her jewelry off, put it in the envelope, and gave it back to her mother. Then the two of them silently walked into the motel, into the room where Pauline's mother was staying. When they went inside, there was a man sitting in the middle of the room that Pauline immediately recognized. It was the Reverend of their church when they used to live in Vancouver. His name was Stan Sears, and Pauline's mother had his secretary the whole time they'd gone to that church. Pauline always knew her mother and Stan were close friends and in fact had kept in touch after they left Vancouver and were in Winnipeg and then New Brunswick. In fact, Pauline remembers periodically seeing Stan show up in Winnipeg and New Brunswick to visit with Pauline's mother. So it was a surprise, but not a total shock when Pauline's mother confessed to her that in fact, she and Stan had fallen in love, and in fact, they had had a secret relationship from the time they lived in Vancouver. But this revelation was nothing compared to what Pauline heard next.

Her mother explained that the reason they had had to move so many times during her childhood was because Pauline's father, Warren, was actually a mobster and was a key member of an organized crime syndicate in Vancouver. Right after they separated, Pauline's mother found out she had a hit put on her head because the mob now believed that the husband could not control her anymore, and she knew too much. Stan also found out that he had a hit on his head because Ruth discovered that the mob wanted to kill him, too, because they knew about their relationship. Then also, apparently, Stan was counseling a man that was in his congregation that wound up being a mobster, and so the mob believed this man had given up critical information to Stan, making him even more of a liability. At first, Stan said he didn't believe any of this, but when he found out the man he had been counseling had been assassinated, he knew it was true. They decided not to tell the police and instead go into hiding together because Pauline's mother knew what happened to families that snitched on the mob. They were made examples of.

When Pauline Pauline and her family moved to Winnipeg and then to New Brunswick, Stan actually moved there as well in tandem, which is why Pauline had seen him periodically showing up at their house to visit with Pauline's mother. Pauline was understandably completely shocked, but at the same time, she was happy to have some explanation for all the strange things that had happened in her childhood. And so over the course of the next several hours, Pauline sat in this motel room with her mother and Stan and asked them every question she could think of. And she discovered that whenever she came home from school and she found her mother furiously pulling all the food out of the fridge and the pantry, throwing it all away with no explanation, that was actually because they found out the mob had tried to poison them. Or the six different times Pauline was unenrolled from the school she was at and then moved to a different school across town, that was because there was a credible threat the mob had discovered where Pauline was going to school. And so by the end of the weekend, Pauline not only learned about this totally crazy path she had, but she also learned that she was still in danger.

And so before Pauline headed back home, she asked her mother and Stan what she should do to stay safe. Pauline's mother said, Well, that's actually the reason we called you here now, because after all these years, we were just tired of being in hiding. And so we've already spoken to the authorities, and they've moved us into a special witness protection program for families connected to the mob. When you enter this program, it's referred to as Entering the Weird World, where basically you're not really safe, but you have agents that follow you around that are undercover that track what you're doing and make sure there's no assassination attempt on you. Before Pauline could even ask, her mother told her that as a measure of her and Stan entering the weird world, they asked that a couple of agents monitor Pauline and her brother, even though they didn't know they were being monitored. At this point, Stan reached forward with a radio and he said, Here's a radio that actually broadcast to the agents that are following you pretty much all the time. But you should only use it if you're truly in a desperate situation, because as soon as you call out for help, there are going to be people that are risking their lives to come save you.

As Pauline is holding this radio, she looks at her mom and Stan, and she says, Well, what What happened to dad? Is he in jail? At this point, Pauline's mother says, No, he's not. He's in the weird world, too. She handed Pauline a letter that was from her father, addressed to Pauline, and it basically spelled out that he had been moved into the weird world, and he was looking forward to Pauline joining them at some point when she was ready. So now Pauline has this radio and this letter, and she's looking at her mother and Stan, and she's just totally overwhelmed. And her mother just tells her, Go home, think about what you want to do next. And if you want to join the Witness Protection program and join the weird world with us, just let me know and we'll make it happen. Pauline, who's in a total state of shock, gives her mom a hug and gives Stan a hug and says, Okay, bye. I'll be in touch. Then she leaves the motel and she gets in her car and she's about to back up when she looks and sees Stan running outside holding something in his hand.

Pauline stops, Stan runs up to the window, and he says, Hey, I forgot to give you this. He held up this round piece of metal that he told her was a GPS transponder. It was magnetized, and she should put it out of sight underneath her car. What it What it does is it constantly gives off her location to the agents that are following her. So if she was in trouble, it would be easier for them to find her. And so Pauline thanked him, put the transponder under her car, and Stan went back into the motel. And so Pauline went back home with the intention of just digesting this information, knowing that she was being watched. She had this radio. She was relatively safe. And her plan was to just give it a couple of days before she committed to joining the Witness Protection Program and joining the weird world. But after only a couple of days, her paranoia was so high that she dumped her boyfriend, she quit her job, and she moved out of her house into a separate apartment, and she called her mother and said, I can't take it anymore. I feel totally unsafe.

I want to join the weird world. Her mother and Stan were delighted at her decision, but they told her it wasn't a simple process getting into the weird world that a lot of people were involved in her basically giving up her old life and entering this new one. Pauline's mother told her that she would be in touch with one of her agents, and they would contact Pauline when it was time for her to go. In that time, Pauline met a boyfriend, Kevin, who became her husband. And in conversations with him, Pauline started to doubt this whole mafia thing was even true. And so she decided in order to find out if this really was a real thing, that the mafia was actually after them, that Pauline would need to set up a sting operation on her mother and Stan. And so Pauline called her mother and very convincingly told her that, Oh, my goodness, someone just broke into my apartment. I think it was someone from the Mafia. I don't know what happened, but can you tell me what to do? Should I call the police? What do I do? And her mother said, No, don't call the Whatever you do, don't call the police.

I'm going to get in touch with Stan and see if he knows what to do. Just a couple of minutes later, Pauline's mother called back and said, Okay, honey, I spoke to Stan, and he spoke to the undercover agents that sit outside your house and have been watching you for all these years. They said that, yes, unfortunately, not one, but two men from the Mafia broke into your house today. But luckily, they went up, they grabbed them. They're in custody, so you're safe now. Pauline said, Mom, I made that up. No one's been in my apartment. I've been here the whole day. I lied to you. No one broke in. It was at this point that Pauline realized her mother and Stan had been living a lie since she was five years old. There was no Mafia. Her father was not a mobster in some Vancouver crime syndicate. It was all made up. It would turn out Stan was suffering from something called delusion syndrome, where totally normal people that are totally lucid and have normal lives have one distinct delusion. Sometimes that delusion is not a big deal. But sometimes it is like they believe the Mafia is after them.

During his relationship with Pauline's mother, he passed on his delusion to her through something called folly ado, which translates to madness for two, which is shared delusion syndrome, where someone who's delusional, who's a dominant personality, can pass that on to a subordinate personality. After confronting her mother and then also confronting Stan at a later date, neither of them said, This is a lie. You're right. You caught us, because they believed it, and they took to their graves the belief that the Mafia was after them. Their biggest concern after Pauline said, This isn't true, was not that they had been exposed as potential frauds. It was that, Oh, no, Pauline is going to expose herself to the Mafia because she's not using her GPS transponder or her radio or living in the weird world with us. She's going to get assassinated by the Mafia. And so even though Pauline never got an apology from her mother or got to really talk about the insanity of this whole situation, because, again, her mother and Stan took to the graves theief that the belief that the Mafia was, in fact, after them, Pauline ultimately made peace with the situation by writing a best-selling memoir called Run, Hide, Repeat.

It is linked in the description below. Check it out. On September 15th, 2010, a 55-year-old man named Greg Flenican checked into the Elegante Hotel in Beaumont, Texas, to start his work week. As a young man, Greg had worked as a chief engineer on ocean-going vessels spending months out at sea, but in his middle age, he had reinvented himself as a landman. It was Greg's job to secure leases of mineral rights and land for drilling. Greg was slender and fit-looking despite the fact that he never exercised and he smoked constantly. He kept a close-cropped white beard, and he had the leathered skin of a lifelong outdoorsman. Every Monday morning, Greg would make the two-hour commute in his pickup truck from Lafayette, Louisiana, all the way to Beaumont, Texas, where his company would always rent him a room. The hotel itself was neither good nor bad, but to Greg, he didn't care. He just needed a bed and a TV. Once Greg walked inside, he had a bathroom immediately to his right, and then a little bit farther in was the main section of the hotel room, which was very basic. Straight ahead, there was a window that looked down onto a small pool that was lined with potted plants.

Then in the main space was a queen-size bed tucked up against the right wall, and then on the left wall was a TV. Greg wheeled his one suitcase into the hotel room, and he at the foot of the bed, and he opened it up. He pulled out the shirts that he wanted to keep wrinkled free for the week, and he hung them in his closet. Then he pulled out his toiletries that were kept in a cloth bag with a hook, and he hooked those onto a towel rack. Then he took off his very worn brown boots and his fated blue jeans, and he slept on some pajama pants. Anytime Greg stayed at the Elegante, he rarely left his room. There was a bar downstairs, but he wasn't a big drinker or socializer. He preferred to just have quiet nights alone in his room watching TV. So that night, Greg cranked the air conditioning to make sure it was as cold as it could get. He liked to sleep in a very cold room. And then he hopped on his bed and he put two big pillows behind his head, and he rested up against the headboard.

And then he took a towel, and he laid it out next to him. And on the towel was his ashtray, his cigarettes, his lighter, his phone, the TV remote, and a candy bar. Then he picked up the TV remote, turned it on, flicked through the channels until he landed on one that was playing Iron Man 2, and he thought, Good enough. Put the remote down, picked up his candy bar, opened it up, he ate a piece of his candy, and then he grabbed a A cigarette, lit up a cigarette, and he began smoking. The following morning, Susie, Greg's wife, did not get a call from her husband, and he always called her every morning that he was gone. That was their routine, and this was a big break from their routine. She tried calling him in his phone rang and rang and rang, and he never picked up. And so then she called his Beaumont office, and he didn't pick up. But after the second or third time she called, his coworkers picked up the phone, and they said, Hey, Greg's not here. He hasn't come into work yet. Susie felt concerned. She felt like something wrong.

And she said, Do you guys mind just going to his hotel room and knocking on his door and making sure he's okay? And they said, Sure, we'll go over there. So the two coworkers head over to the hotel. They knock on Greg's door. He doesn't answer. And so they go down and get the manager who comes up and opens Greg's door, and right away, they find Greg lying dead in the middle of his hotel room. The way Greg was positioned when they found him, it looked like he had fallen to his knees and then fallen again onto his face, and his left arm got tucked underneath his body, and still in his two his left fingers was a cigarette that had not fallen from his hand that had burned down to the wick. The room was exceptionally warm, and Greg's skin was grayish blue. Immediately after seeing Greg, the two coworkers called 911. Shortly after the ambulance arrived at the hotel, Detective Scott Apple arrived in his cruiser. Apple was a short guy, very, very fit. He had silver hair that he spiked up. He looked 100% cop, and he worked basically 24/7. When he got up to room 348, there was no sign of a break in.

Nothing had been disturbed inside of the room, and there was no blood or obvious wound on Greg, with the exception of a slight abrasion on his cheek when he came down and hit his face on the rug. He looked around the room and he found Greg's wallet that was sitting in the back pocket of his jeans, and there was hundreds of dollars in his wallet that had not been taken, so he ruled out robbery. He went out into the hall and he began interviewing the other occupants of the surrounding rooms, and no one had heard anything and no one had seen anything. He went back into the hotel room and he began looking around for drugs of any kind or any substance that Greg might have taken that could have contributed to his death, and there was nothing, no prescription pills, no alcohol, nothing. Later that day, after the family had been notified of Greg's passing, his grief-stricken wife, Susie, called Detective Apple, and she said, My husband did not take good care of himself. He had a terrible diet. He's been smoking like a chimney since he was a young teenager, and he never saw a doctor.

I always told him that if he wasn't careful, something like this was going to happen. I always worried that he might have a heart attack or something. So this At this point, not only does Greg's family think he died of natural causes, Detective Apple also thinks the same thing. He's thinking about what he saw in the hotel room, and there's no sign of any foul play. It just looks like a guy whose lifestyle caught up to him. Greg's body was sent to Dr. Tommy Brown, who in Beaumont, Texas, he was like the medical examiner. He had been doing this for years and years. Dr. Brown had read ahead that they believed Greg had died of a heart attack or something like that. When his body was wheeled in in front of him, there was nothing he saw right away that contradicted that theory. The only two marks that the doctor noted on the outside of Greg's body was the small abrasion on his face from where he landed on the rug, and then he also had another small abrasion on his crotch. But beyond that, the rest of his body was completely unblemished. When he looked inside of his body, it looked like someone had literally just crushed his insides.

His torso was full of blood. Food from his intestines had been ripped outside. He had ribs broken, internal organs were lacerated, and there was a hole in his at heart. Dr. Brown was really confused at what he was looking at because the severity of Greg's internal injuries were more consistent with someone who had been in a severe car crash or who had had a really heavy object land on them. But Greg didn't have any significant external injuries that would support either of those two things happening to him. And he was found in the middle of a hotel room where there was nothing disturbed and no one had apparently seen or heard anything. And so Dr. Brown says, Look, I don't have all the answers here, but this was not natural. This is a homicide. And my best guess is he was beaten to death. I know it doesn't really make sense because there's not any external injuries, but he suffered some significant trauma from somebody else, and that's what killed him. When Detective Apple got this report from the medical examiner, He was just as confused as Dr. Brown was, but his attention turned to, Okay, well, if he's been murdered, who would want to murder him?

He began digging into Greg's background, and he found that he was universally liked. He was known for being incredibly courteous and polite. He kept to himself. He was in love with his wife, and his wife loved him back. There was no evidence of some scandal in the background. He was just this really nice, normal guy, and it didn't make any sense why anybody would want to kill him. After a few months of getting nowhere, and in reality, he hadn't really even gotten started because there wasn't any good starting point. The only thing he could find that was odd about the crime scene was that the room was particularly warm when they walked inside, which was not in keeping with how Greg would have kept the room. But that doesn't explain why his insides were crushed. And so he's gotten nowhere, and then he makes a discovery. He found in the hotel's maintenance logs on the night Greg died, he had been making popcorn in his microwave and managed to blow a fuse. And it wasn't just his power. Maybe Greg didn't know this, but he cut the power to both the room next to him on his right and on his left and below him.

And so he calls down to the front desk, and a maintenance guy came up and he reset the breaker. This opened the door to two theories. The first theory is the maintenance guy who did have a criminal record, when he came up to fix the breaker, he attacked Greg. But that was wildly speculative, and there was no evidence to suggest that the maintenance guy would do that, and so that was quickly ruled out. The other theory was Greg's neighbors in room 349 were these two electricians who were big partiers and drinkers. And so Detective Apple suggested that maybe when Greg accidentally cut the power to their room, they were really annoyed, and they went outside in the hall, and they saw Greg, and they somehow realized he was to blame for this. And in a drunken rage, they attacked him and killed him. And that's what killed Greg. And even though it was a stretch, it was the closest thing to a motive Detective Apple had found in anyone. And so Detective Apple put on a hidden camera, and he went and interviewed these two electricians that were still staying in room 349. He said when he spoke to them, they were very forthcoming.

They seemed very honest. They were appropriately curious about what happened to Greg. All they said was, Look, we had no interaction with him. We did hear him coughing when we came back from the bar. We were at bar that night. But honestly, that's the extent of our interaction with him. The electricians offered up their cell phone numbers, their email addresses, and said, Anything you need from us, we'd be happy to help. We're really sorry this happened. At this point, Detective Apple is back to square one. No one knows what happened to this guy. The one big lead he had, the maintenance records, proved to be a total dead end. And so unfortunately, this case went cold. Seven months after Greg's death, where there had been absolutely no traction on figuring out what happened to him, Susie, Greg's wife, decided wanted to hire a private investigator. And her friend suggested she call Ken Brennan, who was a famous private detective who was well known for being able to solve really complex cases. And so on a whim, Susie calls Ken Brennan, not expecting to get through to him, thinking he's probably super busy and has other cases because he's on TV and he's this really famous guy.

But he picked up the phone and he was like, Hey, how can I help you? And Susie couldn't believe it. She had a chance to tell him about what happened to her husband. And Ken said he was really interested in that he would take on the case. Ken was a former Long Island cop, and he was a DEA special agent. He spoke with a really thick New York City accent, and he wore T-shirts that were a little bit too small to show off his muscles, and he usually had a big, gaudy gold chain on. Once Ken agreed to take on this case, he flew right to Lafayette, Louisiana, where Susie lived. He sat down and he asked her a lot of really difficult questions about their marriage, about whether she thought he might be cheating on her, if he had a secret life she didn't know about. After feeling satisfied that all those avenues been explored and we're not going to lead to the answer. He said, Okay, well, can you tell me anything about the crime scene that stood out to you? Is there anything about it that seems off? And Susie said, Yeah.

Greg always kept the air conditioning on very cold at night. He never slept in a room that wasn't freezing cold. And so I thought it was really odd when his coworkers discovered him that the air conditioning was off and it was really hot inside of the room. That's incredibly unlike Greg for his air conditioning to be off. Ken made a note of this, and then he left Lafayette and he went to Beaumont, Texas, to meet up with Detective Apple. And Detective Apple and he actually got along really well. They agreed to work together on this case because Detective Apple feels like he's reached a dead end anyways. Apple brought Ken to the crime scene. He showed him the hotel room. And then afterwards, he turned over all of the documents he had on the case, from the autopsy report to the photographs, to anything he'd collected over the seven months he'd been working on it. So that night, Ken diligently looks through all of the documentation, all of the photos. And the next day, when he goes into Apple's office, he says to him, I think I figured it out. And Apple's like, Oh, really?

You figured it out one day after being here? And Ken's like, No, seriously, I think I figured it out. I have to confirm something with his wife, but I think I have a theory. And so Ken calls Susie right in front of Apple. And when Susie picks up, Ken's like, Hey, did your husband ever smoke with his left hand, or did he smoke with his right-hand? And Susie said, Oh, no, he only smoked with his right-hand. Then Ken goes, Thank you very much. He hangs up and he goes, Apple, I got it. And so Apple is like, Okay, what's your theory? And Ken says, Okay. So I spoke to Susie, and she told me it was very strange that his room was not air-conditioned when they discovered his body, because Greg was known for always turning on the air conditioning to as cold as it can get, especially at night when he went to bed. And so when his power went out the night before, his air conditioning would have gone out. And so the maintenance guy comes up, turns the power back on, but it doesn't trigger the air conditioning to turn back on.

The room is still cold from having been air conditioned all evening to that point. And so the TV is back on, and so perhaps Greg turns and just starts watching TV because the room feels air-conditioned, he hasn't realized that he hasn't turned the air conditioning back on again. Now, this is Beaumont in the summer, so it's going to get really hot in his room really quickly. And as soon as it starts to warm up in there, he's going to realize, Oh, I didn't turn the AC back on, and he would go over and turn it on again. And so because the air conditioning wasn't on, and we know that the power was restored at 8:30, then he must have died after the power was on, but before it got warm enough in the room for him to recognize he did not turn the AC on, which means he would have died somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 PM at night. And so Apple's like, Wow, that's pretty impressive. Except that doesn't really help us figure out how he died or who killed him. And Ken puts his hand up and he says, I know. I'm just building the whole picture here.

Okay, so we have him dying between 8:30 and 9:00, and I don't think he was beaten to death. I think a lot of people want that to be what killed him because it's the only thing that might make sense. But I say it It definitely doesn't make sense because of the cigarette. Now, we found that cigarette in his left hand, and I talked to his wife, and she said he only smokes in his right-hand. What I think happened is the power came back on at about 8:30, which is what the report says. The TV turns back on, Greg doesn't turn the air conditioning back on. He sits on his bed, he's watching TV, he lights up a cigarette, and he's smoking with his right-hand. Then something happens to him, which I'll get into my theories on that, and he jumps off the bed and he starts making his way to the door to get help. He transfers the cigarette from his right-hand to his left hand so he can use his right-hand to turn the door knob and open the door to safety. But he doesn't make it. He falls to his knees and he falls to the ground and his cigarettes still in his fingers and he dies.

And Apple's like, You know what? That's pretty good. It makes a lot of sense. But the crucial missing piece here is, well, what was the trauma he suffered that caused him to jump from his bed and run to the door and then ultimately die? Ken's like, I got a theory on that, too, but I got to be in the hotel room to see if it's true. So Apple and Ken go back to the hotel room. When they get there, Ken goes inside and he starts walking around, looking at the ceiling, the wall, the ground. And then finally, he stops when he's looking back towards the front door leading back into the hall. And he points at the wall and he says, There. And Apple looks at what he's pointing at, and it looks like there had been some patchwork on the wall in the same spot where the door knob, when it swings open, would hit the wall. And so Apple's looking at it and he's like, That's just from the door knob. And so Ken takes the door and he opens it all the way to where the door knob is pressed against the wall, and it's to the right of this patchwork, meaning this patchwork is not connected to the door knob.

Apple was confused and was about to ask questions, and Ken was on a roll, and he said, Hold on. And he goes outside. He goes next door to room 349 to go inside. And Apple walks in the room and he's watching Ken do his work. And Ken's rubbing his hands all over the wall. And eventually, he stops, and he looks up at Apple, and he takes his finger, and he pushes on one spot in the wall as Apple is watching, and his finger goes right in. And what he pushed on was this little chunk of toothpaste that had been wedged in this little tiny hole in the wall, and he pushed it through. Apple brought in a crime scene investigations unit who carefully excavated both sides of this wall, and they shined a laser from 349 into Greg's room, and the trajectory of the laser going through this hole lined up perfectly with where Greg would have been sitting on the bed smoking cigarettes, eating candy, watching a movie. So Ken and Apple go back to the medical examiner, Dr. Brown, and they say, Look, you missed something because Greg got shot. And unfortunately, Greg's had already been cremated, but they did have the pictures to look at from the autopsy.

And sure enough, they find that little tiny laceration in his crotch was actually an entrance wound. And then when Dr. Brown pointed out, there was a hole in the heart, and it lined up with the trajectory that bullet would have been traveling through his body. Dr. Brown realized he had made a mistake, and he changed the autopsy report to reflect a gunshot wound. Ken and Detective Apple re-interviewed one of the electricians that had been in room 349 that was in the room where the gunshot had originated from. His name was Lance. When they brought him in, they said, This is totally routine. It's been seven plus months since Greg's death, and what we're doing is any of our witnesses, we want them to sign a statement, basically, attesting that this is what I saw or didn't see. They had prepared a statement that basically lined up with the first thing he had told police, which was, I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. They said, Is there anything you want to change about your story, or is this exactly what you saw and heard? Lance said, Yeah, that's exactly. I don't know anything. I wish I knew more.

I'm sorry. I'm like, All right, well, then can you sign this document saying that you don't know anything and you didn't see anything? He said, Yeah. He signs the document, and then Ken's like, All right, got you, because we know a gunshot was fired from your room, and that's what killed Greg. You need to tell me who shot the gun. Otherwise, I'm taking you to jail for submitting a false police report. At this point, Lance crumbles and the truth comes out. He said that he and the other electrician in the room with him, whose name was Muller, they were goofing around and drinking that night, and Muller went out and got his pistol from his the car, and he brought it in, and he was goofing around with it. Lance was saying that he was trying to get him to stop doing that, but he kept goofing around with the gun. At one point, he aimed the gun at Lance, and Lance batted it away from him. He dropped the gun, it landed, and it went off. They saw where the bullet hole was. They saw it was into Greg's room, and they both froze, and they listened to see if anybody had reacted to this gunshot.

He said they didn't hear anything for a long time, and that made them believe that no one was in the other room, that no one was in Greg's room, and that they were in the clear. And so they left and went to the bar. They didn't even think to check on whoever was in that room. And when they came back, they said they heard Greg coughing in his room, and that further confirmed that he must not have been in there when they fired the shot, and he's totally fine, and they are totally in the clear. The next day, Lance said when they saw his body being taken out, at first they did think, Oh, my goodness, this is us. We did this. But they overheard Detective Apple walking around interviewing people, saying out loud that, Yeah, we think this is natural causes. Yeah, looks like a heart attack. This is probably nothing. I'm sure it's nothing. And they were like, Oh, few. It's not us. And so they actually believed it was just a coincidence that on the same day, they're firing a rogue bullet into Greg's room that Greg had a heart attack and died separately.

But Lance would say that somewhere in the back of both of their minds, they knew they probably had something to do with it. And so they covered their tracks, and they put toothpaste in the wall to cover up the hole, and they hid the gun, and they intentionally kept information from the police. And so ultimately, the owner of the gun, the one who really instigated that night, weaving the gun around, and the one who actually dropped the gun, he was charged with manslaughter and was given 10 years in prison. On April 27, 1997, a farmer in Indonesia was walking his livestock through a thick sugarcane field near his house when he tripped on something. After he regained his balance and looked down, he noticed a strange mound of dirt that seemed totally out of place. He wanted to dig it up just out of curiosity, but he wasn't on his property. So instead, he walked back to the village and he told the village leader about this strange pile of dirt and suggested he see what's under it. So the village leader and some other men headed back out to the field. They find this dirt pile, and the first thing they do is they poke it with a stick.

The stick went right into the pile. It was a soft pile of dirt. And when they pulled it out, this horrible stench filled the air was coming out of this mound. Worried about what they might find underneath this pile, the men decide to leave it alone and go back to the village and tell authorities about it. The authorities promptly tell them to go back out there and uncover this thing and tell them what they find. And so the village leader and some more men head back out to the field and they start digging. And pretty quickly, their shovel strikes something that's fairly soft inside of this mound. And so after delicately removing some more dirt, they discover a woman's face is looking right back at them. It appeared she had been buried up to her neck, and then someone had just thrown dirt on top of her head. At this point, the authorities did come out, and they were able to identify the body as belonging to a 21-year-old local woman named Deewe. After asking around the village about this girl, the police determined the last time anyone had seen her was three days earlier when she had left her house to run an errand.

But after that, no one knew what happened to her. Just a few hours after D. Wee's discovery, a 15-year-old rickshaw driver came to the police with additional information. He said three days earlier on the evening of April on April 24th, so the same day that people had seen D. Wee last, he said she had come to him to ask for a ride. When she got into the rickshaw, he asked where she wanted to go, and she said she did not want to tell him specifically where she was going. Instead, she just wanted him to drive in a particular direction, and she would give him more information about how to get where she wanted to go as they got closer. This really intrigued the driver. After he began going in this direction, he turned to her again and said, Can you tell me anything more about where we're going? This is really that you're not giving me any more information. And so finally, D. Wee relented, and she told him she was going to see the shaman. A shaman, in simple terms, is someone who uses magic to cure the sick. The driver did think it was odd that this girl was going to see the shaman in the middle of the night, and she was being so secretive about it.

But after he dropped her off, he hadn't given it much thought until he found out she had died. The police approached the shaman, who was 45-year-old Ahmad Souraj, and they asked him if he had been with D. Wee on the night of April 24th. Initially, Souraj said no, he had not been with her, and he had no idea what happened to her. But after police searched his house and found Diwe's belongings inside, Souraj said, Okay, I've been lying, and I have a confession to make. And he would very nonchalantly tell police that not only had he killed Diwey, he had also killed dozens of other women the same way and buried them in the sugarcane field. And so the police went out to the field and started looking around, and they found all these mounds of dirt all over the place, and under them were women buried up to their neck. After the excavation was all done, the police believe they found the bodies of 42 different women. But truthfully, that was just a guess. They believe there could be more. During his trial, Sriraj explained in detail why he did the things he did.

He said back in 1986, so 11 years earlier, he had this vivid dream where his deceased father came to him and instructed him to drink the saliva of 70 women. If he did that, he would become immortal. When Sriraj woke up, he didn't chalk up this experience as just a strange dream. He believed he had just had a real interaction with the spirit of his dead father, and so he decided he would do as he was told. But his father didn't explain to him how he was going to extract the saliva from these 70 women. After thinking about it for a couple of Anyways, Sriraj decided the most efficient way to do it would be to just kill the women and then forcibly take their saliva. To find his victims, Souraj began telling people in his village that he had supernatural powers, that he was able to grant women, specifically, everlasting beauty and riches, and many people believed it. As this rumor spread not only around his village, but to surrounding areas, lots of women heard about it and came to him and requested his services. He would tell them to come back later that night when it was totally dark and to not tell anyone where they were going.

Once they arrived, they would come inside of Srirachi's house, and they would pay him a fee that was roughly equivalent to US$300. Then he would tell them he needed to perform a ritual to give them their beauty and their riches. They would leave his house, they would cut through a cemetery, and they would enter into that sugarcane field, and they would walk for a while until Srirachi stopped them. He would hand the woman a shovel, and he would tell her to dig a hole in the ground. He would assure her this is part of the ritual. He would stand there as she dug the hole until it was about waist deep. Then he would tell her to get in the hole and put her hands by her side. If she was at all nervous, he would just reassure her again that this is all part of the ritual, that lots of people have done this before, that it's totally safe. She'd get in the hole, she'd put her hands by her side. Srirachi would take the shovel, and he would fill the hole back in until she was completely immobilized. Then at this point, Souraj would pull out a cable, he would wrap it around their neck, and he would strangle them to death.

Then once they were dead, he would pull their body out of the hole, and then he would forcibly extract their saliva. Then after that, he would take the shovel again and dig the hole a little bit deeper, and then he would put the body back inside the hole, making sure their head was still sticking out of the ground. He would orient them so their face was looking towards his house because he believed having these women constantly looking at him at all hours of the day, gave him more power. He said, As for Dwi, when she first came to his house and she had paid that fee, she was worried about leaving and going and doing this ritual. It scared her. And so, Souraj told her to wait, and he went into the other room where his wife was, and he told her that, Hey, I'm going to go kill this girl, and I need your help. I need you to calm her down. And his wife, who had no idea her husband was a mass murderer, just immediately went along with it. She came back into the room, and she assured Dwi that everything was totally fine.

They had done this before. It was all going be perfectly safe. And she even said she would come with them to do this ritual. And so at this, Dewey was much more calm, and she agreed to go. And so the trio left the house. They went to the cemetery, out to the field, and then only two people came back. Souraj was executed in 2008 by firing squad, and his wife was sentenced to life in prison. On July 20th, 1968, a small fishing boat called El Fausto took off from their port on La Palma Island, which is part of the Canary Islands, which is a Spanish archipelago, and they took off for El Hiero, which was another island about 50 miles to the south. On board El Fausto were three very experienced fishermen and sailors. They were the brothers Ramón and Eliberto Hernández, as well as their cousin, Miguel Acosta. Their trip to El Hiero was uneventful. It took about seven They arrived at the port in the early evening hours, and they unloaded their cargo onto the island, which was actually explosives used in agriculture. So they unloaded all that, and then the three of them went to get some food and relax for a few minutes before they came back to the dock and began preparing to leave.

So that evening, as the three men are standing on their boat, repacking the ship and getting ready to leave in the next few minutes, they see this man running down the dock who's frantically waving at them, trying to get their attention. And so they stop what they're doing and they beckon him over and say, What do you need? And the man introduced himself as Julio Garcia. He was clearly very upset. He was talking really quickly, and they had to slow him down a couple of times to try to understand what he was saying. But he communicated that his wife had called him earlier that day, and she said their two-year-old daughter was very sick and he needed to come home right away. He ran down to catch the ferry back to his home island of La Palma, the same island these three men are from, and he missed the ferry. The next ferry going to his home island was not for another two days. And so Julio was running up and down the dock, trying to flag anybody who owned a ship that might be willing to take him to La Palma, even if it was out of the way.

He was prepared to pay for it. And so, of course, the El Fausto crew said, We're actually going to La Palma. We lived there, too, and we'd be happy to take you. You don't need to pay for this. And so Julio begins to help them load the rest of their equipment onto the boat, which included some food. They had 22 pounds of fruit, and they had some fresh water. And then once everything was loaded up, they undid their lines, and they sail for La Palma. They took off at about 2:30 in the morning on July 21st. The water was very calm during their return trip. The only thing they had to contend with was a light mist that formed over the water in the early morning hours right after the sun came up, but it really wasn't enough to affect their ability to navigate. But even if the mist was more severe than people realized, Ramon, Eliberto, and Miguel were very experienced sailors that, in fact, had been sailing on this particular stretch of water ever since they were teenagers. And they had navigated these waters in far worse conditions and had always managed to get through it.

But at 10:00 AM that morning when the Fausto crew was supposed to arrive at La Palma, they didn't. And the owner of the boat itself was waiting at the dock for them, and when they didn't show up, he wasn't overly concerned because he knew these three men. He regularly went out on this particular boat with them. In fact, he normally would have gone on the trip to El Hierro with them, but he had commitments on La Palma, so he didn't go. And so he's not particularly really worried about them. He figures they ran into some mechanical issue, and they're getting it figured out, but they're just late. But after a little while, the families of the El Fausto crew started to ask the owner, Where are they? Why aren't they here? And so the owner, who, again, is not overly concerned, but wants to make sure the families are not worrying, says, You know what? I'll send a search boat that will take the exact route El Fausto was on, but in reverse, and I'm sure they can just drive straight out there, and they'll run into them, and they will help them whatever issue they have, which is more than likely mechanical.

That's an old boat, and we've certainly run into other mechanical issues in the past. So this search boat goes out, and for hours and hours and hours, they're looking along the exact same charted course that El Fausto was supposed to be on, and they're nowhere to be found. And so they radio back in to the owner of the boat, and they say, Look, we can't find them. What do you want us to do? And he called them back in, and he realized that, You know what? If we can't find them anywhere near the route, that probably something more sinister has happened to them. It was at this point that he got in touch with authorities, and they launched a much more formal search and rescue effort. Planes and boats spilled out over the sea to look for El Fausto and her crew, and everybody who was looking was operating with an enormous sense of urgency. Because anybody who was looking had been told, these guys don't have much in the way of supplies. They have 22 pounds of fruit, and they have a very limited freshwater supply. And so if we don't find them within a couple of days, there's a very good chance that we're going to find four corpses.

But despite searchers' motivation to find these guys, a couple of days passed and there was no sign of them. And unfortunately, people did start to think, I think it's more likely we're going to find four dead bodies than four sailors waiting to be rescued. But on July 25th, four days after El Fausto left El Hierro on their way to La Palma and then, of course, got lost. Four days after that, a British ship called Duquesa radioed in an incredible message. They said they had found this fishing boat that was drifting along and there was four people standing in the deck, and they were waving flashlights around to try to get their attention. And as this British ship moved up closer to the fishing boat, they were able to read on the hall the call sign of the boat, and it was, of course, El Fausto. Where El Fausto had been found was 120 miles west of La Palma, so they had drifted way, way off course. But once they pulled up alongside of them, they could see that not only were the four crew members alive, they actually seemed like they were in pretty good spirits.

They certainly were and were very thankful to get some water, and they were starving, and they were obviously pretty freaked out because they had just been adrift in the middle of the ocean and probably were realizing that this could end really badly for us. But beyond all that, they seemed okay. And very quickly, that message was passed to friends and family of the El Fausto crew back on La Palma, who's waiting anxiously to hear any news about their loved ones. And when they were told they had been found and they were alive, they were overjoyed because they thought they were dead. But after the initial transmission had been sent out by Duquesa saying, Hey, we found the crew, and they're alive, and they're good, well, a couple hours went by, and the Duquesa sent another transmission that was very strange. They said the crew of El Fausto was refusing to be towed back home. They were saying that, Our boat's just fine. We're good. We just need a couple of supplies, and we'll be on our way. And so the captain of Duquesa says to the men, Then why are you out here? How did you get 120 miles west of La Palma.

Something had to have gone wrong with your boat. So what happened? But the men didn't really answer his question. They just said, Oh, no, there's nothing wrong with our boat. There's no mechanical issues. Everything's fine. We appreciate your offer, but We just need a couple of supplies and we'll be on our way. Even Julio, who had made this special effort to get home to his sick daughter and to see his wife, even he is saying, No, we don't need a tow. We're good. And so the captain of the Duquesa is looking at these guys thinking, What Why am I missing here? You just drifted 120 miles away. You probably should have died. You're very lucky that we happened to find you in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Had we not found you, you probably would have died of dehydration in the next couple of days. And so we found you. We're offering to bring you to shore to guarantee that you will get to see your sick daughter and to see your wife and for you all to see your families and your friends. And you're telling us to leave, and you're telling us that there's nothing wrong with your boat when clearly something happened.

But the captain of the dukeessa could not convince them to get towed in. They were totally not going to do it. Apparently, they were very polite about it. They said, Look, we really appreciate the offer, but really, our boat is just fine. We just need some food, water, cigarettes, and some fuel, and we'll be good. And so ultimately, the crew of the dukeessa obliged their request, and they gave them 18 hours worth of fuel, along with a whole bunch of cigarettes and water and food. And they watched as the four men sailed east towards La Palma, and they were waving the whole time. Everything seemed fine. And then they vanished over the horizon. And the captain of Duqueso would call in over the radio that based on where they were and how close they were to La Palma, they should expect to see them arriving at port at about 07:00 PM that night. Back on La Palma, friends, family, and hundreds of other people from the island went down to the dock and were drinking wine and having a big party, celebrating the imminent return of their friends and their loved ones. But unfortunately, 07:00 PM came and went, and they didn't show up.

And so, of course, the family of the crew became very worried that, Oh, my gosh, this nightmare is starting all over again. And the owner of El Fausto came over to them and reassured heard them, that he's been in touch with the authorities who were speaking to the captain of the Duquesa, who were speaking to our friends and family and loved ones on El Fausto, and everything's fine. They have all the supplies they need. They have all the fuel they need. I'm sure they're just running a little bit late. Everything is totally fine. Friends and family and some diehard supporters stayed down at the dock for several more hours until it became clear that something's gone wrong, and unfortunately, this nightmare is not over. The next morning, after El Fausto and her crew were once again labeled missing, Spain kicked off their largest ever search for missing people. They had bombers flying overhead. They had military and civilian ships all over the area where the duquesa had made contact with El Fausto. They had so many people combing the water, so many planes overhead. For two weeks, they looked everywhere, and they couldn't find anything.

Finally, they had to call it off, and they said, Look, we don't know what happened to them. They declared them lost at sea, which basically meant we think they're dead, but we'll probably never know for sure. Two months later, on October ninth, an Italian merchant ship called the Anna de Mayo, who was on their way to Venezuela, spotted a small fishing boat way off in the distance that was just bobbing aimlessly. The first thing they noticed was this ship is far too small to be making a cross-oceanic voyage. They shouldn't be out here. As they got closer, they could tell that there was no one standing on deck or in the cabin. There's no one driving this boat. And so finally, they got so close, they could read the hall and it says El Fausto. So the Anna DiMio pulls up right alongside El Fausto. They tether themselves together so it doesn't float away. And two of the Italian sailors get on board El Fausto, and they're yelling out to see if anybody's there, but no one's responding. And they're looking around and the ship is in great condition. There's no sign of obvious damage or any violence that might have taken place on here.

They go into the cabin where the steering wheel is, and they're looking for some logbook that would have documented what happened on the ship, but there's no logbook. The Italians were left scratching their head thinking, How could a perfectly seaworthy boat wind up abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Where's their crew? But they still needed to go down below into the little space that was the engine room. The two sailors that had boarded to look around, they make their way over to the section of the deck where there's this hatch that they open up and they look down, and they smell this horrible smell, and they turn on their light, and they're met with this horrible and inexplicable scene. Laying on the ground inside of the engine room on his back was a dead man who was partially mummified. He had no clothes on, and he was clutching a transister radio. The two Italians that found him, they stepped back and they had to compose themselves. And then one of them actually went down to look around for clues and see if perhaps there's other bodies down there. And so when he went down, it was just the one body, and he could only find one other clue.

And it was this small notebook that was positioned right behind the dead body that they didn't see when they first looked down. So the Italian sailors leave the engine room and they take the notebook back to their ship and they open it up. And the first thing they see is the middle section of the notebook has been torn out. In fact, 28 pages were missing, and all they were left with was a couple of pages at the beginning and a single page at the end. The first couple of pages just were a couple of notes and some simple math calculations. Nothing significant. The last page appeared to be a farewell of sorts, but the language that was used was a little bit confusing, and it was difficult to read, and so the Italians were not entirely sure what any of it actually meant. And so they figured it would be best to just give the notebook to authorities and they could figure out what it meant. And so the captain of Ana de Mayo radios in to Spanish authorities that they found El Fausto, and that they intend to tow it back to Venezuela, where they were already going, at which point they'll turn over everything they found, and authorities can take it from there.

So the Italians put a tow line on the bow of El Fausto and began towing. Two days later, Spanish authorities receive a crushing telegram. Apparently, the night before, as El Fausto was being towed, it suddenly lurched forward and went bow down into the water and sunk so rapidly that it ripped the tow line off of the back of the Ana de Mayo and was underwater well before they could do anything to try to stop it. The crew of the Ana de Mayo swore they had followed procedure and they knew what they were doing, and this was just a freak thing. But regardless of how or why it happened, the ship was now gone, and so too was the dead body. They couldn't even positively identify whoever that was. All they had was that notebook they were covered from inside the engine room. The notebook was sent to La Palma, where it was put in front of the family families of the four men who were on El Fausto. And very quickly, Julio's wife was able to identify his handwriting. He apparently had a unique way of writing, and she was used to reading it. And so she said, That's definitely his writing.

And in fact, I recognize that notebook. He kept that notebook to track payments because he was a mechanic and people requested his services, and that's what he used to track payments. This, of course, meant the dead man inside of the engine room was almost certainly Julio. Julio's wife examined the notebook, and she was able to decipher that last page, at least most of it, and she said it was this very detailed description of exactly what she needed to do once he died, because clearly, based on the way he was writing, he knew he was about to die. At first, it says, Here's how you access my insurance policy, and here are the different properties I own and how you go about selling them. And then in his final moments, he scrawled one last message at the very bottom of the last page that said, Don't ever tell our son all that has happened to me. You know that God wanted this fate for me. Love you. If Julio was so sure he was about to die that he would take the time to write out a detailed list of instructions for his wife to follow when he died, well, then why didn't he take the time to also offer a small explanation as to what happened to he and the other crew members of El Fausto?

He had to have known that whoever was going to find his dead body in this notebook was going to have an awful lot of questions. Unless he did know that and did write a description, except it was in those 28 pages in the middle of the notebook that had been removed. If that's the case, then who removed them and why? Where's the rest of the El Fausto crew? Why did they tell the duquesa that nothing was wrong with their ship? And why didn't they take the tow into shore, which would have guaranteed their safety? There's just so many questions that have never been answered in 50 years. The most widely accepted theory is the crew of El Fausto experienced a series of small but compounding setbacks that, combined with panic, led to really bad decision making and ultimately their death. Others say there are just too many anomalies and oddities about this case to just be a product of bad decision making, that there has to be something else going on. And so there are lots of alternative theories about what happened, ranging from abduction to illegal trafficking gone wrong, to perhaps they saw something they shouldn't have.

But sadly, no one will know for sure what happened to these guys until there is a major break in the case. And at this point, people are just hoping those missing 28 pages turn up and that those will be able to explain what happened to El Fausto and her crew.

Before I became a professional, strange, dark, and mysterious storyteller, I served in the military. During my time in the military, I had some pretty wild experiences. But what I remember most about my time in service was not my own stories, but rather the stories I heard from other service members. Keep in mind, service members are sent to some of the most isolated and treacherous places in the world that very few people go to. And so some of the stories that come out of those places are totally creepy and weird. And even more than that, a lot of these stories stay in-house. They stay in the military just because it's a cultural thing. People don't necessarily want to go out and tell the world about the totally unsettling and inexplicable thing they saw while they were deployed. It's like people might think they were crazy. But There's lots of stories like that. And so if hearing some of those crazy military stories appeals to you, well, boy, do I have a podcast for you? It's called Wartime Stories, and it's hosted by Luc LaMana, who himself is a veteran. He was a reconnaissance Marine, which I can tell you is a big deal.

And so because he has access and placement, he's been able to extract some of these stories from the military, and he shares them on the show. And if you wanted to generalize the types of stories you're going to hear on this podcast, it's like the Strange, dark, and mysterious meets the battlefield and beyond. The Wartime Stories podcast is free, and it's available on any podcast platform. So all you have to do is go to your favorite platform and look up Wartime Stories, or you can search for Balin Studios because it's produced under Balin Studios. You click on the show, give it a follow, and boom, you can start your bitch. New episodes drop every Monday. So if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, well, you got yourself a brand new weekly show. So that's going to do it. If you're looking for more Strange, dark, and mysterious content, remember, we have a whole slew of Strange, dark, and mysterious shows. We have the Mr. Balin podcast, Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries. We have Runful, Bedtime Stories, and Wartime Stories. They are all excellent. They are all free and available on all podcast platforms.

All you have to do is just look up Balin Studios wherever you like to listen to podcasts, and boom, you can find them all and start your binge. Thank you very much. Until next time.

See you. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more Strange, Dark, and Mystierious videos, click here.