Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noela.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand
Speaker 4: most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 4: they don't.
Speaker 3: Want you to know.
Speaker 4: We are returning to an ongoing series about mysterious inventors
Speaker 4: and scientists. You can check out Part one of Mysterious Inventors,
Speaker 4: released on December twentieth, twenty twenty three, as the Humans
Speaker 4: reckon the Calendar. Do you guys remember that one?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it also echoes back to an earlier episode
Speaker 4: we did.
Speaker 3: Who's Killing all These Scientists, which.
Speaker 4: Is about assassinations of like open secret assassinations of scientists
Speaker 4: who are experts in nuclear weaponry.
Speaker 5: Like definestrations, right, people getting tossed out of windows.
Speaker 2: Some of that, yeah, right. But ultimately that one, Kasha
Speaker 2: came out in twenty fourteen, you guys. That was when
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve there were some big stories coming out
Speaker 2: about Iranian scientists being murdered like straight up car bombs,
Speaker 2: explosives attached to a motorcycle, all.
Speaker 6: Kinds of craziness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And in each of those cases, of course, there's
Speaker 4: no real like international justice regime that is trying to
Speaker 4: advocate for a prosecution, And there are a lot of
Speaker 4: dangerous third story windows depending upon which part the world
Speaker 4: you move in.
Speaker 5: Whoops on a banana peel. Yeah, but it's also like
Speaker 5: hard to get motive quickly or intent, you know, I
Speaker 5: mean unless you're absolutely like in on the conspiracy, Like
Speaker 5: who do you report this to? And how do you
Speaker 5: go about reporting it? And like what clues are you
Speaker 5: looking for?
Speaker 6: It's tough.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe I'm just being maybe that's just a
Speaker 5: lazy way of thinking of it, but it does seem
Speaker 5: like it would be difficult to figure this stuff out,
Speaker 5: you know, with any kind of immediacy.
Speaker 4: That's good for the nuclear scientists, we know they were
Speaker 4: the victims of targeted killings entirely because of their work
Speaker 4: leading current non nuclear nations to nuclear weaponry. But in
Speaker 4: the point you raise, which is mission critical for tonight's conversation,
Speaker 4: we're seeing we're seeing a bit of human psychology as well.
Speaker 4: Let's say somebody is working on something controversial, right, non
Speaker 4: nuclear related, something bad happens to them. Are we to
Speaker 4: say that they were the victims of a conspiracy or
Speaker 4: were they the victims of the dark lottery that is
Speaker 4: accidental death?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: We can't say everybody is killed because of their hobbies
Speaker 4: or their career.
Speaker 2: Well, there are also examples that we've come across over
Speaker 2: the years where it is a prominent scientist, Let's say
Speaker 2: a Russian scientist who was on the team that brought
Speaker 2: Sputnik five into being the vaccination against the COVID nineteen
Speaker 2: virus vaccination that was approved before the final trials were done, right,
Speaker 2: and then he ends up dying and like let's say,
Speaker 2: strangled in his own apartment with a belt, which is
Speaker 2: this is an actual example. Somebody like that dies. Is
Speaker 2: it because there was some kind of interpersonal conflict that
Speaker 2: is what is alleged to have happened, or is it
Speaker 2: something bigger in how the heck do you prove it?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: And I guess with cases like that where there's a suicide,
Speaker 5: perhaps there are boiler plate kind of procedures that go
Speaker 5: into clearing it, making it you know, Okay, it was
Speaker 5: their foul play, it was there evidence that somebody was
Speaker 5: here and participated in making this happen, or was this
Speaker 5: somebody that took their own life. So, but beyond that,
Speaker 5: it's hard to you know, it's hard to push for
Speaker 5: like more taking a closer look unless there's like a
Speaker 5: very clear pattern.
Speaker 4: And so tonight we're exploring stories about scientists allegedly or
Speaker 4: in some cases provably removed to not to not because
Speaker 4: they were bad people, but in a larger effort to
Speaker 4: remove their expertise from the grand chess board of Zabag
Speaker 4: New Braznetski. We're zooming in on these scientists. Let's give
Speaker 4: a bit of background. Here are the facts. You know,
Speaker 4: if you listen to part one, we don't have to
Speaker 4: spend too too much time on this invention. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: It's such a superpower. The animals of the world have it,
Speaker 4: not just humans. Otters make tools, corvids make tools. Cetaceans
Speaker 4: as well, like animals get the idea of invention, and
Speaker 4: it's really helpful for the human experiment because it an
Speaker 4: invention addresses problems that human beings cannot solve with their
Speaker 4: starting operating equipment. Like you know, you start with the
Speaker 4: body and the mind. You can't automatically make fire unless
Speaker 4: you figure out a couple of other things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the big difference with humans is we
Speaker 2: figured out, like you said, power fire right as the
Speaker 2: first thing, and then combustion, and then electricity and once
Speaker 2: once you have power tools. Right, if the beavers have
Speaker 2: power tools, oh look out buddy, Sorry forests. But you
Speaker 2: know that is where that is where I think humanity
Speaker 2: becomes dangerous to itself in any of those other animals
Speaker 2: that might figure out some tool making.
Speaker 4: Yeah, has humanity broken the game of evolution? That's part
Speaker 4: of the question.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: Look, also, we're talking about discoveries and inventions. Discoveries and inventions,
Speaker 4: they're closely related. The are kissing cousins, but they're not
Speaker 4: quite the same. A discovery may simply be an observation.
Speaker 4: The idea of an invention is the application of a discovery,
Speaker 4: so it leverages what could be an abstract observation into technology,
Speaker 4: like a great example of this comes from the Nolan film.
Speaker 4: Oppenheimer spends a great deal of time on the difference
Speaker 4: between discovery and invention, theory and application. Multiple points in
Speaker 4: that film adaptation of Oppenheimer's life, we see the legendary
Speaker 4: physicist Oppenheimer saying, I am a theorist. I not actually
Speaker 4: making the thing. I just I understand the mechanics of
Speaker 4: how it would work, and that's why he needed a team.
Speaker 5: Well, someone can discover a thing and not have the
Speaker 5: skill set with which to apply it practically, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly. The discovery that, oh there are atoms,
Speaker 2: and this is how we think they probably work. And
Speaker 2: as you said, been the technology or even the theory
Speaker 2: is maybe someone could split that atom. Could it happen?
Speaker 3: Right? Possible?
Speaker 2: Then you then you invent the thing that could possibly
Speaker 2: split the atom. Then you discover again it can be split.
Speaker 5: And then you parlay that into a world destroying weaponry,
Speaker 5: you know, and then a blockbuster Hollywood film on the
Speaker 5: backs of millions of deaths.
Speaker 3: And on the backs of barbies. Yeah, the world. My
Speaker 3: theory is that movie would not have done as well
Speaker 3: if there hadn't have been the Barbenheimer phenomenon. It's such
Speaker 3: a it's such a long, thinky kind of movie.
Speaker 5: It's kind of wild that it did so much business
Speaker 5: in the box office.
Speaker 6: I kind of fell in love when I saw it
Speaker 6: for the first really dug it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I thought open. I'm write a lot of
Speaker 3: poetry to it. Cool. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I obviously I was not able to make it when
Speaker 5: we all, when you guys went and saw the movie,
Speaker 5: and I still have not seen it.
Speaker 3: So I look forward to catching it at school. You should.
Speaker 4: You should watch it on an old school Nokia flip
Speaker 4: phone with a mono sound, the way Nolan intended letterbox.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So you know, just like in Hollywood brainstorming, a lot
Speaker 4: of inventors have ideas that don't lead anywhere for any
Speaker 4: number of reasons. A lot of times you're a scientist
Speaker 4: and you say, oh, that's interesting, but the concept is
Speaker 4: not immediately applicable nor successful because it needs other discoveries
Speaker 4: or inventions to render it feasible. There's an amazing sketch
Speaker 4: by the criminally underrated group Mitchell and Webb that talks
Speaker 4: about this, and they have like an old school Middle
Speaker 4: Ages Italian esque inventor and he comes up to the
Speaker 4: money guy and he's got a carved wooden mouse and
Speaker 4: it's got a little carved wooden ball inside of it,
Speaker 4: and the money guy is saying, Okay, what is this
Speaker 4: next great invention, and the whole bit is it's worth watching.
Speaker 4: The whole bit is the dude saying, well, I don't
Speaker 4: know exactly how this is gonna matter later, but at
Speaker 4: some point someone else will invent an amazing thing and
Speaker 4: you'll need this little carved mouse and you can you know.
Speaker 4: And he's like, Okay, well what does this mouse do?
Speaker 4: And he's like, well, you can click on it and
Speaker 4: it doesn't have a bunch of wires leading out from it,
Speaker 4: and the money guy's like, yeah, but it's the Middle Ages.
Speaker 4: Most things don't have wires leading out of them. So
Speaker 4: I think that's a beautiful way to show how weird
Speaker 4: invention is, like the vention the flying machine.
Speaker 3: For clicking and dragon, come on, cavemn.
Speaker 2: I think we all, I think we all got it.
Speaker 2: That's a boy. Let's make sure we all understand. It's
Speaker 2: a computer mouse. I had in my mind a tiny mouse,
Speaker 2: like a creature mouse that had a ball inside of
Speaker 2: it somehow, and I was like, what is this thing?
Speaker 5: Early early prototypes for the mouse perhaps looking more mouse like.
Speaker 3: M m yeah.
Speaker 4: And also, I mean with Da Vinci's flying machines, we
Speaker 4: got some amazing sketches his head was in the right place.
Speaker 3: He was onto something.
Speaker 4: But it wasn't until centuries later that the Right Brothers
Speaker 4: made powered flight a reality. Also requisite shout out to
Speaker 4: Charles Chappelle.
Speaker 3: Uh, black Heart in the right place, Ben, that's what
Speaker 3: I want to know. Unclear clear unclear anatomically probably quite possible.
Speaker 4: Possibly, so you can you can also stumble across something
Speaker 4: useful while you're researching a flawed or dead end idea,
Speaker 4: right like, uh, think of the alchemist. They're looking for
Speaker 4: the ability to transmute lead into gold using the Philosopher's Stone.
Speaker 4: They're questing after immortality. They discovered neither of those things,
Speaker 4: but they did invent pesticides along the way, So thanks
Speaker 4: for the roundup, Alchemist of old. And they also sort
Speaker 4: of stumbled into the discipline we call chemistry. And as
Speaker 4: you know, if you listen Ridiculous history, a ton of
Speaker 4: inventors died at the hands of their own inventions or
Speaker 4: as a consequence of their discovery, like everyone from the
Speaker 4: guy who made the creepy horse statue at Denver Airport
Speaker 4: to Marie Curie and radiation poisoning.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and we know how hard it is sometimes
Speaker 5: to get things approved for clinical trials or studies or
Speaker 5: whatever human testing. So a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 5: inventors who are on the verge of a breakthrough will
Speaker 5: be like, Ah, we'll not have time for that. I'll
Speaker 5: just test it on myself.
Speaker 3: Oops, I died.
Speaker 4: Right, right, And that's part of that's one of the
Speaker 4: darker sides too. You know, we mentioned this often because
Speaker 4: we cannot mention it enough. Suppression of technology might sound
Speaker 4: wacka do, but it's very much a real thing. You
Speaker 4: might stumble into an amazing idea, you might win the
Speaker 4: lottery and purposely create an amazing idea. Your initial concept
Speaker 4: might be on the money, but there if it challenges
Speaker 4: the status quo of a system, just like Copernicus, right,
Speaker 4: then you are going to be in trouble. Here in
Speaker 4: the US, we have the Invention Secrecy Act of nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty one, anti democratic, anti free market, very real and
Speaker 4: top secret.
Speaker 5: That's interesting Ben that you liken it to things like Copernicus,
Speaker 5: which often studies or discoveries, or you know individuals like
Speaker 5: that that have theories that sort of flew in the
Speaker 5: face of organized religion or like the governing status quo
Speaker 5: in terms of them holding on to power.
Speaker 3: I guess I think of the Invention Secrecy Act as.
Speaker 5: Being a little more like along the lines of, like
Speaker 5: you've discovered a thing that you shouldn't know about that
Speaker 5: like we it's ours already, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: And if you put this out in the world, it's
Speaker 5: going to compromise national security.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just.
Speaker 5: A modern example, a modern version of that past, you know,
Speaker 5: threatening the religious status quo.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I think that's very interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the comparison I'm hoping to draw here, because
Speaker 4: the threat to the status quo, whether that is a
Speaker 4: secular state power or an ecclesiastical theocratic power, it still
Speaker 4: has the monopoly over violence. Like you, if you try
Speaker 4: to find the you know, if you try to find
Speaker 4: a year by year spreadsheet or markup of things that
Speaker 4: fell to the Invention Secrecy Act, then you're gonna have
Speaker 4: at best mixed success. We know that there is a
Speaker 4: list of compensation. It's kind of like an imminent domain
Speaker 4: of ideas where they can say, hey, your idea is
Speaker 4: worth x amount of money, We're going to pay it
Speaker 4: for this. You can never talk about it again if
Speaker 4: you do any further research on it. You automatically work
Speaker 4: for US democracy in the free market, take a backseat
Speaker 4: every single moment to nation state concerns. I mean, you
Speaker 4: can invent anything you wish in the US until the
Speaker 4: powers that be deem you a threat. And you might
Speaker 4: be saying, guys, it's twenty twenty four. Surely we've evolved
Speaker 4: past burning scientists at the stake, right, We're past these
Speaker 4: barbaric acts.
Speaker 5: Well, you just don't do it in public. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: just don't do it in the town square. It's a
Speaker 5: little more covert than that.
Speaker 4: And you'll see why we find this optimism a bit
Speaker 4: chuckle worthy. After word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: There are tons and tons of inventors and scientists whom,
Speaker 4: depending upon who you ask, depending upon whom you ask,
Speaker 4: ran a foul of great powers. Remember we talked about
Speaker 4: Rudolph Diesel. What happened to that guy? Did he just
Speaker 4: did he just fall overboard?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He disappeared on a ship during a night walk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, people saw him go into his quarters and then
Speaker 2: they were folded.
Speaker 3: There was a watch like left on his night stand
Speaker 3: sort of.
Speaker 5: I believe it was just very much betty By type activities, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: But the big point is nobody saw him leave and
Speaker 5: nobody found his body.
Speaker 6: If he was deceased and.
Speaker 3: He told people he would see them the next morning,
Speaker 3: it's sketch, guys. I mean, we we we We've already talked.
Speaker 5: About it, but it's I would be hard pressed to
Speaker 5: believe anything other than he was taken out.
Speaker 2: It's tough, right, Well, wait, really could what was the
Speaker 2: connection he was potentially going to sell his technology or.
Speaker 5: It was like a bad deal to there was some
Speaker 5: kind of weirdness, right, But wasn't there some kind of
Speaker 5: weirdness about the deal where it was like, really, was
Speaker 5: it really lucrative for him or was it kind of
Speaker 5: like him not getting Delta good hand? It was it
Speaker 5: was something like in one extreme or the other, Like
Speaker 5: it was either a really good deal for him, a
Speaker 5: really bad deal for.
Speaker 4: Him, and he had money problems. He had Zack Duffel bags, yeah,
Speaker 4: cash and stuff with his wife. I mean in each
Speaker 4: of he's a great example because in each of these
Speaker 4: following cases, we're going to see accusations of conspiracy. We're
Speaker 4: going to see a lot of skeptics who say, hey,
Speaker 4: their invention didn't work. It was pseudoscience. And then sometimes
Speaker 4: we're going to see a conspiracy blooming just because of
Speaker 4: what a person was doing before they die, like their career,
Speaker 4: their hobbies, their interests, whatever view you might take, fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist, We're going to see a lot of questions
Speaker 4: that remain unanswered. Maybe we start with a doctor Rodney
Speaker 4: Marx shout out to what happens when someone dies in Antarctica,
Speaker 4: which I think has been on our minds recently.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, especially when someone dies and the death
Speaker 2: isn't even thought to be a homicide potentially right for
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's let's learn a little bit more about doctor Marx.
Speaker 3: Huh. Absolutely.
Speaker 5: Doctor Rodney Marks was an Australian astrophysicist who was employed
Speaker 5: by the Smithsonian Society, and he was a part of
Speaker 5: a research project in Antarctica for the National Science Foundation.
Speaker 5: At the time of his demise on May the twelfth
Speaker 5: of the year two thousand. He was stationed at one
Speaker 5: of these research facilities. Guys, Sorry, I'm just getting mad
Speaker 5: true detective vibes such a it's not Antarctica, it's Alaska,
Speaker 5: but very much revolving around mysterious deaths at research stations
Speaker 5: in the frozen tundra. The station in question here was
Speaker 5: called Ammundsen Scott Station in the South Pole, and upon
Speaker 5: his expiration, his cadaver was flown off.
Speaker 3: Of the continent immediately over to New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go ahead and say he didn't have like
Speaker 2: gunshot wounds, right. It wasn't like one of those things where, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a homicide, we need to get this guy out,
Speaker 2: or this person is not doing well, we need to
Speaker 2: save him and get him out of here. He is
Speaker 2: dead and he is sent somewhere, right, And.
Speaker 4: It wasn't cyanid to the good people of Thailand. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he had this set up there. He had because his
Speaker 4: condition deteriorated incredibly quickly, precipitously. Was he was fine one day,
Speaker 4: as fine as one can be living in that harsh,
Speaker 4: contained environment, and then the day before he dies May eleventh,
Speaker 4: he is incredibly unwell. He's vomiting blood, like starts mourning.
Speaker 6: Fine.
Speaker 4: By the afternoon he's vomiting blood, and he dies. Investigators
Speaker 4: were not able to or still not able to fully
Speaker 4: figure out what happened because the body, to your point, no,
Speaker 4: was moved so quickly. They did conclude an autopsy that
Speaker 4: he died of what's called acute methanol poisoning. No one
Speaker 4: who was around and was a very small group of
Speaker 4: people here, just like the board game Clue, no one
Speaker 4: has come forward to explain exactly how he ran into
Speaker 4: a cute methanol poisoning. Investigators did rule out suicide. They said,
Speaker 4: we don't have any indications that this guy purposely consumed
Speaker 4: this lethal amount of methanol. But then the investigators also
Speaker 4: said they got stone walled at.
Speaker 5: Every turn, So the alternative being that they were slowly
Speaker 5: fed the stuff for no or that it was just
Speaker 5: a hazard of the occupational hazard.
Speaker 2: I think there was a significant amount of it that
Speaker 2: got into something he ingested at some point, so which
Speaker 2: then you know, if you're an investigator, you're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out, well, how did that methanol get in his system?
Speaker 6: Right, That's what Ben was saying.
Speaker 2: And the people who are around him at the time
Speaker 2: didn't seem to have much to say about what could
Speaker 2: have happened or what the how it got into his body.
Speaker 4: And methanol is related to alcohol, but it's it's not
Speaker 4: the alcohol you drink. It's kind of like Prohibition, when
Speaker 4: a poisons government purpose, right, when the US government actively
Speaker 4: poisoned people during prohibition. So the question is, yeah, did
Speaker 4: he get poisoned on purpose? Is this a homicide? And
Speaker 4: if so, why, And if you're an investigator asking that question,
Speaker 4: you have to wonder why the National Science Foundation is
Speaker 4: not helping you at all.
Speaker 3: That is a little odd.
Speaker 5: Also, the immediacy of flying the cadaver off to New
Speaker 5: Zealand of all places, it's a little weird.
Speaker 2: And there's a piece in the New Zealand Herald that gosh,
Speaker 2: it was from two thousand and nine. It talks about
Speaker 2: the well at least it alleges, according to some internal
Speaker 2: documentation from the groups that were running the station out there,
Speaker 2: that there was heavy drug use on the station by personnel,
Speaker 2: heavy drinking by the personnel at the station. And it
Speaker 2: does I don't know again it it's weird because it
Speaker 2: leaves open the door to potential accidental poisoning.
Speaker 4: Right like he because he was a binge drinker, had
Speaker 4: he accidentally consumed methanol right, possibly while already inebriated. And
Speaker 4: that's from there's a there's a another there. There was
Speaker 4: another update to that from Jared Booker, we're talking about
Speaker 4: the same article where where where. They also point out
Speaker 4: he was one of fifty people on the site. There
Speaker 4: were there were a lot of people there, but they're
Speaker 4: all clearly identified.
Speaker 3: They're all clearly if you.
Speaker 4: Were an investigator, you should be able to find and
Speaker 4: question them. And even the even the assigned coroner out
Speaker 4: of New Zealand had a problem with this. He said,
Speaker 4: I don't think New Zealand police and authorities are being
Speaker 4: given the information they need.
Speaker 5: So no, yeah, I'm sorry, no shade on New Zealand.
Speaker 5: But why New Zealand? He is Australian. Was it just proximity?
Speaker 2: This is just this was an outfit reporting on it.
Speaker 2: It's David, It's by David Fisher.
Speaker 5: By the way, ask why they flew the body of
Speaker 5: New Zealand. Yeah, apparently, I guess, like what for them
Speaker 5: to do an investigate?
Speaker 3: Like who? Who? On whose authority? I guess is my question?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Proximity would would be the answer, their proximity and available
Speaker 4: investigative okay facilities. Yeah, but we we also don't know
Speaker 4: what he was working on, which is the next question.
Speaker 6: No, we don't.
Speaker 2: Just part of the weird stuff here and again that's
Speaker 2: just why it's weird to me when you think about
Speaker 2: it as either a covered up homicide or an accidental
Speaker 2: homicide or accidental death right within a close knit organization
Speaker 2: like that. It was stated, but at least according to
Speaker 2: this article, it was stated that this should be investigated
Speaker 2: as a homicide immediately upon the body being found and
Speaker 2: then moved to New Zealand. They said the investigator said, hey,
Speaker 2: this should be looked at as a homicide, the medical examiner,
Speaker 2: but that it was not treated that way, and the
Speaker 2: organization that was running the facility, basically whether they whether
Speaker 2: they had anything to do with it or not, people
Speaker 2: were able to go into his room and actually move
Speaker 2: things around, get rid of evidence if they had wanted to,
Speaker 2: and everything was tainted, there was no way to prove
Speaker 2: what actually happened to him at that point.
Speaker 4: Potentially, Yeah and A police were still wondering whether there
Speaker 4: had been US agencies carrying out a full investigation and
Speaker 4: whether they in New Zealand would be able to have
Speaker 4: access to that investigation. At this point, it seems like
Speaker 4: the answer is not really And if we were to
Speaker 4: say this was a case of conspiracy, then we ourselves
Speaker 4: would need much more information. We would need to know
Speaker 4: what exactly Marx was working on. The closest we can
Speaker 4: tell you is that he was running the Antarctic Submillimeter
Speaker 4: Telescope and Remote Observatory or wait for it, ASTRO with
Speaker 4: a forward slash between the T and the R, which
Speaker 4: I think is just a very cool name. I'm trying
Speaker 4: to keep it positive. Yeah, he's working for Harvard Smithsonian.
Speaker 4: But we know the cause of death, but we don't
Speaker 4: know the circumstances leading to it. The crime scene or
Speaker 4: if crime it is is absolutely fubar. This is going
Speaker 4: to remain a mystery unless one of those forty nine
Speaker 4: people comes forward with legitimate information.
Speaker 3: So what do you guys think? Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it possible that he ran a foul of somewhat?
Speaker 3: It's just hard to say.
Speaker 2: If, like imagine, you're in that isolated place, you've got
Speaker 2: some kind some kind of personal conflict with somebody else,
Speaker 2: and it's only it's getting worse and worse because you're
Speaker 2: so isolated yet stuck together. Methanol poisoning would be a
Speaker 2: way to do it if you knew that the people
Speaker 2: or the person was around you that drank a lot,
Speaker 2: or you.
Speaker 4: Could put it in, right, you could put it in
Speaker 4: a familiar container or something. We would just need to
Speaker 4: know more about how the how acute methanol poisoning works,
Speaker 4: and what the timeframe is. It's also possible that they
Speaker 4: this person drank from the wrong container. It's also possible
Speaker 4: they were dosed in a way that didn't involve recreational
Speaker 4: alcohol consumption whatsoever. It's just tough. But we see again
Speaker 4: this thing we're talking about earlier, which is the fact
Speaker 4: that this guy is a scientific luminary, and the fact
Speaker 4: that his death is and probably will remain so mysterious
Speaker 4: naturally breeds speculation.
Speaker 2: It's a big problem. There were forty nine other people
Speaker 2: at the station, right, Yeah, so like that's a lot
Speaker 2: of suspects. That's what what is who's that the detective
Speaker 2: who's doing all the movies lately, Like, let's doing all
Speaker 2: the investigation? Oh man, why can't I think of this?
Speaker 2: The one about the glass onion?
Speaker 3: Oh not pero, No, it's like a I can't remember Daniel.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's excellent.
Speaker 3: God, what a cool character. He's so funny.
Speaker 2: Just imagine that movie, except there are forty nine suspects,
Speaker 2: right right?
Speaker 4: Oh, and we are getting a message from mission control,
Speaker 4: Ben wi Blanc. Thank you, Thank you, Paul. Let's move
Speaker 4: on to doctor Don Craig Wiley. He had all the
Speaker 4: makings of a future Nobel Prize winner until his body
Speaker 4: was recovered from the Mississippi River on December twentieth, two
Speaker 4: thousand and one. Tennessee and Arkansas police forces in collaboration
Speaker 4: rule this death a homicide. He is a biophysics expert,
Speaker 4: and he had been missing for more than a month
Speaker 4: before his body was discovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a weird case. It's a really weird case.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest Well, I guess let's talk about
Speaker 2: it because it's a bridge, right that he must have
Speaker 2: gone over, right, But there's this bridge, allegedly or not allegedly,
Speaker 2: according to the investigation, was pretty protected from somebody going
Speaker 2: over that bridge unless they really wanted to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it has a two meter fence that's like six
Speaker 4: and a half feet on either side.
Speaker 2: Which is not easy to get over unless you want to.
Speaker 2: If you're somebody throwing a body or something, probably not
Speaker 2: gonna happen. It's gonna be a lot more difficult. It's
Speaker 2: just a weird place, especially after being missing for.
Speaker 4: So long, Yeah, and they found his car on that bridge.
Speaker 4: He had a rental car that they found on the bridge. Also,
Speaker 4: abandoned vehicles are going to play a big role in
Speaker 4: a future episode we're doing. But the FBI does become
Speaker 4: involved in this case, and controversially they're the ones who
Speaker 4: say he had an accidental death. Somehow he stopped this
Speaker 4: rental car on this bridge, looked at the fence and
Speaker 4: said challenge accepted, and somehow fell over to his death.
Speaker 4: This another interesting thing here to this pattern we're establishing, folks.
Speaker 4: His death comes in the wake of the anthrax scare
Speaker 4: in the United States, and according to his peers, he's
Speaker 4: one of the few people who would have been able
Speaker 4: to accurately trace where the anthrax had originated to find
Speaker 4: the providence of the anthrax, which remains part of a
Speaker 4: heated debate and conspiracy theories today in twenty twenty four, So.
Speaker 2: Your mind reels, right, oh wow, did someone did someone
Speaker 2: kidnap him and take him away? How did he get
Speaker 2: a hold of a rental car? It was fifteen days,
Speaker 2: But your brain you want to go into investigative mode.
Speaker 2: At least I do, I know, I do. Who would
Speaker 2: have motivation? To take him away from that. Do you
Speaker 2: think he would have motivation to want to escape himself,
Speaker 2: right to disappear for a while because of whatever pressures
Speaker 2: he's getting. There's so many different avenues that you could
Speaker 2: go down with him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it would have been convenient if we're
Speaker 4: playing the fin game. It would have been convenient to
Speaker 4: certain people if he were no longer a factor. But
Speaker 4: then we would also be assigning a lot of agency
Speaker 4: and ability to people who who would be able to
Speaker 4: track someone down if they're off the grid via probably
Speaker 4: like credit slips, rental car stuff, whatever kind of technology.
Speaker 4: It just seems like it's asking a lot of that conspiracy,
Speaker 4: but it also is asking a lot. It's asking an
Speaker 4: almost equal amount. To accept the FBI's official explanation, a
Speaker 4: guy stops his car, climbs over a fence, and drops
Speaker 4: to his.
Speaker 2: Death right by a hydro electric plant.
Speaker 4: Apparently, no no indications of suicidal ideation, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Ah, feels like a dumping, like a body dumping to me,
Speaker 2: but a difficult one somehow for some reason.
Speaker 3: Oh it's spoiler, folks. We're not giving the ad.
Speaker 4: We don't have the answers for no of these we
Speaker 4: want to hear from you at the end of the show.
Speaker 2: We have no idea you but one last thing nobl
Speaker 2: reads really quickly. I think there is potential for someone
Speaker 2: to have gotten to him before he disappeared. Right, So,
Speaker 2: like weve been we were talking about like having to
Speaker 2: track him down with rental car stuff and in credit slips.
Speaker 2: I think there's potential that somebody got to him and
Speaker 2: then the disappearance occurred because he was with somebody, but
Speaker 2: then they's.
Speaker 4: Been held and then transported perhaps uh perhaps put to
Speaker 4: the question, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was going to ask if if you guys
Speaker 5: thought there was any indication of like some mysterious third party,
Speaker 5: you know, like and I hear when I think of
Speaker 5: like dumping bodies, I'm like, well, you gotta have help.
Speaker 3: To do that.
Speaker 2: So little has been released.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even now, Yeah, it's it's it's tough. It is
Speaker 4: a good question, you know, because to to approach an
Speaker 4: answer here, conspiratorial or mundane, we would need to know
Speaker 4: at least a little bit of what happened in that
Speaker 4: half month, in those fifteen days, right, is it possible
Speaker 4: like when someone gets abducted, for example, if they're being interrogated.
Speaker 4: Then the idea is you always want them to feel
Speaker 4: like they can escape the situation at some point, right
Speaker 4: if they pay obedience and they comply, then maybe they'll
Speaker 4: get away with a few broken fingers or whatever. And
Speaker 4: we're not saying that happened here. We are saying that
Speaker 4: it is a very mysterious death. And you cannot blame
Speaker 4: friends and family for refusing to accept the FBI's explanation
Speaker 4: like that. You know, you you would need an accomplice
Speaker 4: or a perpetrator for a body to be thrown from
Speaker 4: a bridge, And if someone just decides to jump off
Speaker 4: of a bridge, you would to make that story stick,
Speaker 4: you would need to have some indications of their mental
Speaker 4: state up to that moment, and in both cases, we
Speaker 4: simply don't have that information.
Speaker 2: No, it's a weird one.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it is, indeed, And I think we got
Speaker 5: a couple other weird ones on our hands as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's one to that point. Here's one that I'm
Speaker 4: a little skeptical about. Eugene Malov m A. L.
Speaker 3: L ove.
Speaker 4: At the time of his death in May of two
Speaker 4: thousand and four, he was a leading scientist in a
Speaker 4: being diplomatic here a controversial concept the field of free
Speaker 4: energy he had been. I think his death though, was
Speaker 4: probably unrelated to whatever his research was. I think it's
Speaker 4: I'm like, not one hundred percent, but it looks like
Speaker 4: it was just other bad actors being bad people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, it's a problem where if you are involved
Speaker 2: in something that sounds super cool and potentially dangerous, like
Speaker 2: free energy, right, could you actually build something that would
Speaker 2: rival the big energy companies? And would they want you
Speaker 2: dead because of that? Even if you're doing all that stuff,
Speaker 2: no matter how successful your inventions are and your pursuits are,
Speaker 2: you can still have problems with other individuals that enter
Speaker 2: your life that have nothing to do with your research
Speaker 2: that could cause your demise. I think this might be
Speaker 2: an example of that.
Speaker 4: I'm tempted to agree, Yeah, because, like, imagine when you
Speaker 4: hear what happened to folks, Imagine if this guy had
Speaker 4: just been really into fly fishing. Imagine if instead of
Speaker 4: researching free energy, he was researching better ways to build
Speaker 4: fishing lores.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, you know so, and then hear this.
Speaker 3: And then hear this, all right, so let your minds diverge.
Speaker 3: We're going multiverse.
Speaker 4: Malav's been renting out his former childhood home to a family.
Speaker 4: The name of the family is the Schaefer family and
Speaker 4: later the son of the Shaffers. Chad along with one
Speaker 4: of his friends, Mozelle Brown, and along with Chad's girlfriend
Speaker 4: Candace Foster, they get charged with this scientist murder in
Speaker 4: May of two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: Apparently what happened.
Speaker 4: What occurred was that these two guys Brown, Brown and Schaeffer,
Speaker 4: Chad Shaffer, Mazel Brown, they beat doctor Malav to death.
Speaker 4: And they didn't do it because of problems with free energy.
Speaker 4: They did it because he was evicting Chad Shaffer's parents
Speaker 4: from that rented home because they hadn't paid their rent
Speaker 4: in a couple of months. And you can see testimony
Speaker 4: with Candace Foster. You can see where these folks got booked.
Speaker 4: The investigation looked pretty solid. It's still it took even then,
Speaker 4: no allegations and conspiracy. It took police years to make
Speaker 4: the connections and the arrest.
Speaker 2: Which seems insane. Welve was there cleaning the home that
Speaker 2: night at like eleven PM at night, cleaning the home
Speaker 2: after the eviction, and police didn't think to imagine that
Speaker 2: those who had been evicted could have been a part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 6: It does.
Speaker 2: It makes me wonder if even detectives can get taken
Speaker 2: down the wrong path when you introduce something like, oh,
Speaker 2: this guy was working on free energy. Oh man, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just how do you not make
Speaker 2: that connection almost immediately because they they would, These are
Speaker 2: people who would who would have the perception that they
Speaker 2: are victims of this guy, right, despite whatever their actions.
Speaker 4: Were, Which makes you think too, you know how easily
Speaker 4: the course of an investigation may be altered because you're
Speaker 4: looking for anomalous, unusual things things of note, research into
Speaker 4: free energy is one of those things, more so than
Speaker 4: fly fishing. But you have to consider all of these aspects.
Speaker 4: So for those of us played along at home, we
Speaker 4: have we have two cases where we can't say for
Speaker 4: sure what happened. We have one case where it does
Speaker 4: seem like a tragedy, an egregious an egregious act of homicide,
Speaker 4: but not related to scientific pursuit. Do we want to
Speaker 4: take a break for a word from our sponsor? I
Speaker 4: have the feeling we got a couple more to get
Speaker 4: to here, it seems right.
Speaker 3: And we have returned.
Speaker 4: Here is another death without an answer what happened to
Speaker 4: the physicist and nuclear research scientist. We had to do
Speaker 4: at least one named John Mullen.
Speaker 2: Just one John, or one one one nuclear research scientist
Speaker 2: named John Mullen, named John Mullen out out of the
Speaker 2: very many. Right, Oh yeah, this case is whoo this
Speaker 2: one again. If you're just I go so speculative on
Speaker 2: these and I play the if then game, ben, I
Speaker 2: think to my own detriment here. But let's let's just
Speaker 2: do the facts of this one. Doctor John Mullen died
Speaker 2: of arsenic poisoning, and according to authorities, it's believed that
Speaker 2: that poison somehow found its way into a drink that
Speaker 2: he consumed, and they couldmit they made that connection. And
Speaker 2: initially who did they think maybe was the culprit?
Speaker 4: Yeah, his girlfriend at the time is romantic partner Tamara Rallo.
Speaker 4: This was also in two thousand and four, and they
Speaker 4: thought they thought that she would be the top person
Speaker 4: of interest. She was actually going to be arrested on
Speaker 4: suspicion of homicide.
Speaker 6: But then what happened, m then she ends up dead.
Speaker 5: And then at the time, investigators on the case didn't
Speaker 5: really give up much information to the media as to
Speaker 5: whether or not she'd committed suicide or there had been
Speaker 5: some foul play suspected. There has, at the time of
Speaker 5: this episode that we're recording right now, been no conclusive
Speaker 5: answers to these questions.
Speaker 2: So your primary suspect ends up dead, there's no trial.
Speaker 2: Isn't that convenient? I'm just saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also considering two weeks after the murder of Mullet, and
Speaker 4: they do conclude, by the way, investigators conclude that he
Speaker 4: was drinking. He was a mineral water guy, so he
Speaker 4: drank some mineral water and it had been laced with
Speaker 4: a fatal dose of arsenic. Two weeks after the murder,
Speaker 4: his girlfriend Rollo, who's fifty two at the time, she
Speaker 4: leaves a message with one of Mullen's children, one of
Speaker 4: his two sons, and in the message, this is per
Speaker 4: Mullen's son. In the message, she says, quote, don't be
Speaker 4: surprised if you find my body floating in your dad's
Speaker 4: swimming pool.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: See did he did? Did doctor Mullen know something? And
Speaker 2: he even divulged to tomorrow that he knew something, as
Speaker 2: you know, connected to his contract with Boeing. But but
Speaker 2: just the fact that he did have a contract with Boeing.
Speaker 2: He's working on stuff that could be potentially highly secretive
Speaker 2: and dangerous, like genuinely secret, secretive and dangerous compared to
Speaker 2: you know, the free energy or something like that.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just thought that was interesting because it is convenient.
Speaker 2: Do you have someone the main suspect die before there's
Speaker 2: any trial or discovery or anything like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the best way to keep a tomb secret is
Speaker 4: to kill the people who dig their grave, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean shout out to tengus Khan. But also, you know,
Speaker 4: if we were exercising skepticism, we can do a couple
Speaker 4: of counterpoints. One, Boeing has a lot of contract workers,
Speaker 4: right and uh, And two is Boeing's Does Boeing have
Speaker 4: the operational capability to execute a homicide?
Speaker 2: They just put a hole in a fuselage right right right?
Speaker 4: So like the more conspiratorial thing would be he had
Speaker 4: some he had some disturbing whistleblower knowledge of some sort,
Speaker 4: whether that's croket funding, whether that is poor engineering oversight,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And that he was silenced and that his
Speaker 4: girlfriend was silenced as a result. But again no proof,
Speaker 4: no proof, and police did interview her before death, and
Speaker 4: they said she was talkative, she wasn't defensive, but I don't,
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know. Later, Rollo's daughter found a
Speaker 4: book under her mother's mattress that talks about how to
Speaker 4: kill people with poison. Most folks are most folks are
Speaker 4: kind of sloppy on this stuff. Your phone searches aren't secure,
Speaker 4: and honestly, a VPN is not going to help you.
Speaker 5: Just to be clear, you guys, I've had a sick
Speaker 5: family for the last couple of weeks, so I've had
Speaker 5: a lot of opportunities to hang out at Walgreens and
Speaker 5: I couldn't help but notice a giant display of I
Speaker 5: guess it's like defrosting kind of fluid.
Speaker 3: It's that blue fluid that.
Speaker 5: Comes in the giant jugs and there's massive warnings on
Speaker 5: the back about what happens if you ingest it. But
Speaker 5: my sick conspiracy brain immediately jumped to man, what a
Speaker 5: way to get to someone who's a big fan of
Speaker 5: Blue Power Aid?
Speaker 3: Am?
Speaker 1: I right?
Speaker 3: Dogs love it too because it's as sweet. It's sweet apparently,
Speaker 3: And that's the problem.
Speaker 5: Right, You could put it in power Aid, just not
Speaker 5: one hundred percent, and if someone drinks that stuff five
Speaker 5: times a day, they'd probably never notice it. If they
Speaker 5: didn't notice it had been tampered with. But yeah, sorry,
Speaker 5: that's just These are the kind that's been always says
Speaker 5: we're fun at parties.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you guys. Okay, So I I go through
Speaker 2: way too many cans. I'm a bad citizen of the art.
Speaker 3: You recycle though you're not that bad.
Speaker 2: That true, but but I'm still I think in the
Speaker 2: in the end, I'm probably not a good I'm not
Speaker 2: good to myself because of the stuff that's on the
Speaker 2: insides of those cans and all the everything we've done,
Speaker 2: all the stuff we talked, all the good ones, and
Speaker 2: sometimes they don't get recycled, depending on where I am
Speaker 2: and if I can gain access to a recycling bin
Speaker 2: or not. Right, I am so paranoid about the click
Speaker 2: and the pop you get if I open up a
Speaker 2: can and that's supposed to be carbonated and it doesn't
Speaker 2: have just the exact sound that I'm looking for, I
Speaker 2: dump that baby out.
Speaker 3: Pop right?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, you really do that? Yeah?
Speaker 5: You do know?
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it's not because I actually think anyone's trying to
Speaker 2: poison me or I think about the manufacturing process, and
Speaker 2: I think about like a flaw that could have happened
Speaker 2: in one They got so.
Speaker 3: Many steps along the way where things could go wrong.
Speaker 6: I'm just like, I'm not gonna take the risk.
Speaker 5: Well, guys, remember back in the day where it was
Speaker 5: so much easier to tamper with even like medicine, and
Speaker 5: there were all these scares of like people like poisoning
Speaker 5: aspirin and stuff, and that was literally what led to
Speaker 5: like child safety caps and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that. I mean, we're better than we used
Speaker 3: to be, but it is still kind of scary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, both the good and bad actions of the world
Speaker 4: are easier than you think, folks, And that's something that
Speaker 4: should stick with all of us. And speaking of questions
Speaker 4: that remain, We've got got a couple more examples for you.
Speaker 4: As we said, this is a continuing series because there
Speaker 4: are a lot out there. Do you guys remember the
Speaker 4: story of Aaron Salter Junior.
Speaker 2: This one, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know slightly rings a bell, but no, I don't
Speaker 3: think so either, know.
Speaker 4: So, Aaron Salter Junior, like so many people in the
Speaker 4: United States, falls victim to a mass shooting and a
Speaker 4: frankly terrifying thing about the US then, as of now,
Speaker 4: is that the mass shooting's happen so often here right,
Speaker 4: far more often than in many other countries. Aaron Salter
Speaker 4: Junior is not an inventor by trade. He was a
Speaker 4: career police officer in Buffalo and in his retirement he
Speaker 4: took a security guard job at a place called tops
Speaker 4: Friendly Markets. He also picked up a hobby, which is
Speaker 4: one of his late primary drives. At this point, he's
Speaker 4: working on an invention of fuel cars with water electrolysis.
Speaker 3: So he's making a water powered car.
Speaker 4: In fuel cell yeah yeah, And he's in a lot
Speaker 4: of interviews where he's talking about the invention. You can
Speaker 4: see compilation clips of him on YouTube quite easily. He
Speaker 4: dies when he's fifty five years old and he's trying
Speaker 4: to defend people at the tops Friendly Market. There's an
Speaker 4: eighteen year old mass shooter. Salter ends up being one
Speaker 4: of ten people who are shot to death by this guy.
Speaker 4: This guy is a white mass shooter and according to investigators,
Speaker 4: his attack was racially motivated. He was aiming to kill
Speaker 4: black people. So there we see a tragedy that is unfortunately,
Speaker 4: heartbreakingly all too common in the US. But then we
Speaker 4: also see that one of those ten victims is a
Speaker 4: guy who's actively working on a hydrogen fuel cell a
Speaker 4: water powered car. So people start putting the dots together.
Speaker 6: It's ben.
Speaker 2: It says here that police say Salter actually had a
Speaker 2: weapon himself and fired back at the gunman.
Speaker 4: Yes, he died attempting to defend people. Yeah, wow, this
Speaker 4: was This was quite recently too. This mass shooting occurred
Speaker 4: on May fourteenth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: Kind of wild because this guy wasn't like some sort
Speaker 5: of funded, you know, researcher. He was just kind of
Speaker 5: working on this stuff like as a hobby almost right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was independent, he was self starting. This feels
Speaker 3: like a coincidence to me.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it feels relating, because especially to
Speaker 5: your point of the motive of the shooter in the
Speaker 5: first place.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, and we don't want to give the shooter
Speaker 4: too much air time. But no, that was his motive.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right. The guy's name was Peyton s. Jendron
Speaker 4: or Gendron geen Dron. Got sentenced last year, actually almost
Speaker 4: exactly a year ago today. Got sentenced to eleven consecutive
Speaker 4: life sentences, which consecutive means one after the other, so
Speaker 4: he can't serve him concurrently, he's not getting now, got it?
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm kind of with you, with you guys
Speaker 4: on this one, because there's there's a Facebook video from
Speaker 4: the Facebook account called nineteen Keys, number one, number nine
Speaker 4: keys that links Salter's death to his earlier claims of
Speaker 4: this water powered car invention. And the concept here seems
Speaker 4: to be that this mass murder might be some sort
Speaker 4: of elaborate cover story or cover up meant to silence
Speaker 4: yet another inventor who poses an existential threat to the
Speaker 4: established energy and transit industries, and looking into it, I
Speaker 4: don't see it. You know, we're not the end all
Speaker 4: be all arbiters of the truth here, but it feels like, again,
Speaker 4: because of what he was interested in in his life
Speaker 4: in his retirement, that maybe there's a little bit of
Speaker 4: red string from points that may not actually be connected.
Speaker 3: And he did he did die defending people. He was
Speaker 3: a hero.
Speaker 6: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: He was a former police lieutenant for the Buffalo Police
Speaker 2: Department and he was the security guard at the place
Speaker 2: where the shooting. Where where the shooting took place, Aaron
Speaker 2: Salter Junior was was a security guard. Yeah, I didn't really.
Speaker 3: You're saying, yeah, at Top's Friendly Market.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize he was a security guard. But I
Speaker 2: don't know why that left my brain as we were
Speaker 2: talking about it and I was trying to connect dots here,
Speaker 2: I missed that. So that was just his side gig,
Speaker 2: or his maybe primary gig, and then doing the other
Speaker 2: thing on the side in retirement. I don't see how you.
Speaker 2: I don't see how you target the security guard in
Speaker 2: a mass shooting like that on purpose, right, If you're
Speaker 2: just going to take out the security guard, I don't
Speaker 2: know why anyone would come up with a plan in
Speaker 2: any darkened room, no matter how illuminati you are to
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the plan.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There are much more efficient ways to try to go
Speaker 4: through that kind of assassination, right. You know, you could
Speaker 4: target the car, you could target any other weak points.
Speaker 4: And it does sound like this guy from what we
Speaker 4: know about the mass shooting. The assailant was streaming on
Speaker 4: Twitch dude, and he went into the parking lot and
Speaker 4: opened fire, yelling racial slurs. And so the response here
Speaker 4: is the response you would have if you were a
Speaker 4: security guard. It doesn't sound like it just doesn't make
Speaker 4: sense for that to be the kind of cover story
Speaker 4: of cover story there is. It sounds like an absolute tragedy,
Speaker 4: yet again familiar to American discourse, that has nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the idea of water powered car.
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say? I think so?
Speaker 6: That's how I feel.
Speaker 4: Ok, we have and you know if we are incorrect,
Speaker 4: if there's information we're missing, please let us know for
Speaker 4: any of these cases, because survivors, families, and friends still
Speaker 4: want answers, and often the investigators want answers too. We
Speaker 4: were thinking we could end with an update from a
Speaker 4: person that we mentioned previously in Mysterious and Veterans Chapter one.
Speaker 4: We didn't give the full look at it, but ning
Speaker 4: Li Ninglee is anomalous in these cases. Ningle, Chinese American scientists,
Speaker 4: shook popular media in the West back in the nineties
Speaker 4: and early two thousands because of her seemingly credible work
Speaker 4: with anti gravity.
Speaker 2: And if you are searching for doctor Lee, you aren't
Speaker 2: going to find a ton written about well, actually no,
Speaker 2: you will find a lot written about her on various
Speaker 2: websites and blogs, but it's tough to come by anything
Speaker 2: written about her that you might take as Oh, this
Speaker 2: is a credible source, right that I could cite and
Speaker 2: I would feel comfortable with that, except for one Popular
Speaker 2: Mechanics like magazine article that you tracked down, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 4: We had to go through some German sources. But also
Speaker 4: you could see Lee being cited, interviewed, examined in popular
Speaker 4: science magazines of the day like Discover and Popular Mechanics.
Speaker 4: In the article talking about specifically there matt is Taming
Speaker 4: Gravity by Jim Wilson, you can see Lee in the
Speaker 4: center of a photograph at the top with two of
Speaker 4: her colleagues, doctors Campbell and Smally. And what she's holding
Speaker 4: there in the middle that looks sort of like a
Speaker 4: bunt cake meets a record player. That is the that
Speaker 4: is the superconductor disc she made or discovered or invented
Speaker 4: that purportedly purportedly against gravity.
Speaker 2: It's really dope. When you read about her on those
Speaker 2: other places it people think that doctor Kningley was on
Speaker 2: the cusp of something huge when it comes to what
Speaker 2: do they call it, gravitometric fields. I mean, it's really cool.
Speaker 2: It's straight out of the science fiction novels that we love, Right,
Speaker 2: somebody has a breakthrough in this science and now we
Speaker 2: can actually build that UFO type craft that we've been
Speaker 2: trying to make all these years. And the weird thing
Speaker 2: is maybe we should should we go through actually what
Speaker 2: she found, or should we just talk about her her
Speaker 2: quote disappearance.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's sum it up real quickly.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like nineteen nineties, two thousands, she is not
Speaker 4: just appearing in popular science magazines. She's doing science. She
Speaker 4: co authors a number of papers publishing these various journals
Speaker 4: that are arguing the discovery of a practicable method of
Speaker 4: fighting gravity. And what she says, or what the theory
Speaker 4: is is that you can is.
Speaker 3: A deep water we'll keep it brief.
Speaker 4: You can rotate ions through a gravitometric field perpendicular, so
Speaker 4: at an angle to their natural spin, and this will
Speaker 4: nullify some of the effects of gravity. So to break
Speaker 4: it down by analogy, we could say she figured out
Speaker 4: that you can push ions in a different way that
Speaker 4: will change the direction in which gravity pushes.
Speaker 1: So you're just kind of.
Speaker 4: Like leveraging the force differently possible. She thought so, and
Speaker 4: a lot of her peers did, and then it seemed
Speaker 4: like she was onto something. She was working at the
Speaker 4: University of Alabama for a while. She left, she created
Speaker 4: a limited liability corporation called ac Gravity, which is active today.
Speaker 4: Found that like any good company, they're based in Delaware
Speaker 4: for tax purposes.
Speaker 2: Of course, but the labs in Huntsville, Alabama, if you
Speaker 2: ever wanted to check it out. So there was a grant, right,
Speaker 2: there's there's quite a bit of money that was given
Speaker 2: to this organization that she started to check and see
Speaker 2: if there's any sand here could we do that? That
Speaker 2: sounds great, amazing, talk about something that would go straight to,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the big defense contractors if this
Speaker 2: technology existed, if it's.
Speaker 3: Not already there Tonton Ton Ton.
Speaker 6: In nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: But the grant, how much was the grant for it.
Speaker 4: Was under five hundred thousand dollars, so big to individuals
Speaker 4: at the time. But Chump changed, Uncle Sam, oh, we
Speaker 4: got the actual number yet, it's four hundred forty eight thousand,
Speaker 4: nine hundred and seventy dollars. I don't know why they
Speaker 4: couldn't spring for the extra thirty bucks.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. I think it was actually for four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: But that forty eight nine seventy was like a salary
Speaker 2: that somebody got for a year. I think that I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 4: Awesome, it is a specific number. We know the grants
Speaker 4: went from to get in two thousand and one, like
Speaker 4: you're saying, and it ends in two thousand and two.
Speaker 4: What did they do with all that money? We will
Speaker 4: never no, no.
Speaker 3: Never know.
Speaker 2: Doctor Lee kind of disappeared. You can find several videos
Speaker 2: of her speaking at various places for various functions, talking
Speaker 2: about the potentials of her research and the science that
Speaker 2: she and her team are doing, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, boop, she's gone. But there is something that
Speaker 2: occurred that I was not aware of last time we
Speaker 2: were recording this the first episode, Ben, and that's something
Speaker 2: that happened to her in her personal life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So in twenty fourteen, she is still like she's left
Speaker 4: the University of Alabama but still definitely has connections and
Speaker 4: the lab is in Huntsville. She is walking down the
Speaker 4: street in the University of Alabama campus when she is
Speaker 4: struck by a vehicle. Her spouse is nearby. Her spouse
Speaker 4: sees the accident and so terrified that he suffers a
Speaker 4: heart attack permanently damages him. He passes away just a
Speaker 4: year later. As a result, doctor Lee does not die immediately.
Speaker 4: She suffers what some have called a fate worse than death.
Speaker 4: She has lasting significant brain damage, which quite likely led
Speaker 4: to her contracting Alzheimer's.
Speaker 6: Yes, and there is.
Speaker 2: You can go online. You can find an obituary for
Speaker 2: a doctor ning Lee, and it states that she was
Speaker 2: born January fourteenth, nineteen forty three, and that she passed
Speaker 2: away on July twenty seventh, twenty twenty one. Then I
Speaker 2: wasn't able to verify if this is in fact a
Speaker 2: real obituary for the actual doctor Ningley that we're talking about,
Speaker 2: but it certainly does seem like that. At the top,
Speaker 2: it describes her as a seventy nine years old and
Speaker 2: quote one of the world's leading scientists in superconductivity and
Speaker 2: anti gravity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it is.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately this person's obituary as far as I can tell,
Speaker 4: as well, she passed away. We don't know how far
Speaker 4: this scientist anti gravity research actually went. We don't know
Speaker 4: why the DoD threw five hundred grand at it. We
Speaker 4: don't know what would have happened. We don't you know.
Speaker 4: And also to be clear, we're saying we don't know
Speaker 4: or not try to necessarily imply there was some huge
Speaker 4: overarch and cover up, but we can say the information's
Speaker 4: just not out there. I mean, also, people just get
Speaker 4: hit by cars all the time.
Speaker 2: It's true, It's very true. One thing we would say is,
Speaker 2: like the whole falling out of windows thing, an accidental
Speaker 2: death is a likely choice for someone who is a
Speaker 2: professional looking to hide that a hit is occurring. Just
Speaker 2: putting that out there doesn't mean doctor Lee's death had
Speaker 2: anything to do with that. It is just it is
Speaker 2: a I would say, a likely way to go about
Speaker 2: killing someone you want dead if you're an organization that's
Speaker 2: a little more sophisticated if.
Speaker 4: You're Yeah, and there's also you know, there's the fact
Speaker 4: that if this person had not encountered this tragedy, they
Speaker 4: would have lived justified through the span of their natural life,
Speaker 4: and the research that they did could have still been
Speaker 4: kept secret. So yeah, there's also the possibility that the
Speaker 4: DoD ponied up the money, which is chump change for them.
Speaker 4: That's just a few pony bones for Uncle Sam, and
Speaker 4: then I think that's for you. And then they looked
Speaker 4: into it and they said, oh, this actually isn't either
Speaker 4: applicable or it Isn't you know there's some error in
Speaker 4: the methodology or something like what is this story of
Speaker 4: the em drive? Remember that from a few years back
Speaker 4: that garnered a similar level of interest, and we haven't
Speaker 4: heard much about it since. Makes you think, I just
Speaker 4: I feel like this just goes to show that it's
Speaker 4: scratching the surface. It tells us a lot about human
Speaker 4: psychology and the need to see patterns. But we also
Speaker 4: still have a lot of unanswered questions. How much of
Speaker 4: this is sheer accident, terrible luck? How much of it
Speaker 4: might be the result of this stuff they don't want
Speaker 4: you to know.
Speaker 2: We would highly recommend you read the article in Popular
Speaker 2: Mechanics that been found.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh, the article itself is in English. It's just
Speaker 4: easier to find in German, which also makes you think,
Speaker 4: does it not?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 4: Nine, indeed, maybe we call it a day here, because
Speaker 4: the next part of this, the next part of this
Speaker 4: exploration depends on you, constant listeners, fellow conspiracy realists. Let
Speaker 4: us know if any of these cases are familiar to you.
Speaker 4: Let us know if you have new information, Let us
Speaker 4: know if there are whether there are other inventors or
Speaker 4: scientists you want us to look into can't wait to
Speaker 4: hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: Correct to Mundo.
Speaker 5: You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook.
Speaker 3: Where we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 5: We are also Conspiracy Stuff Show on YouTube where we
Speaker 5: have weekly video delights rolling out for your viewing pleasure,
Speaker 5: as well as on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and
Speaker 5: TikTok Piers Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, we also have a phone number. But guys,
Speaker 2: I'm going to put one last quote in here from
Speaker 2: that popular mechanics article because I missed it while we
Speaker 2: were going through this. This is a quote from doctor
Speaker 2: Ning Lee when asked about why she continues to turn
Speaker 2: down money from investors.
Speaker 6: Quote.
Speaker 2: Investors want control over the technology. This is too important.
Speaker 2: It should belong to all the American people.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, No, yeah, she was murdered.
Speaker 2: I just mean that. I in my opinion, that sentiment
Speaker 2: is dangerous because there are people who do want to
Speaker 2: control it, who maybe even already control something like it
Speaker 2: and don't want anyone else to have it. Just putting
Speaker 2: it out there. Hey, we've got a phone number. It's
Speaker 2: one eight to three three std WYTK. When you call in,
Speaker 2: you've got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname and
Speaker 2: let us know if we can use your name and
Speaker 2: message on the air. If you don't want to do that,
Speaker 2: why not instead to send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We can't emphasize the importance of the email, folks, we
Speaker 4: read every single one we get. A shout out to Trent,
Speaker 4: who introduces us to the importance of pronunciation, saying I
Speaker 4: wanted to address the pronunciation of guy Anna and Siquibo
Speaker 4: talking about our Venezuela Guiana episode or guy Anna episode.
Speaker 4: You pronounced them like most people would and do, but
Speaker 4: neither a Spanish words. Pronouncing them in a Spanish sounding
Speaker 4: way only helps give credence to Venezuela's claims. Guyana is
Speaker 4: pronounced like die anna, si Quibo is pronounced with the
Speaker 4: qui like in quit. It's an Amerindian word, and although
Speaker 4: it looks Spanish, it is not pronounced that way. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much, Trent, you are absolutely correct about the pronunciation.
Speaker 4: Please please please send us any and all messages you
Speaker 4: feel your fellow conspiracy realist no conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want You to Know is a production
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