Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. It is not brought to you by spoons. Instead,
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Speaker 1: Sideways to learn more Thinking Sideways. I don't stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey there everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome again to the podcast. I am Steve, of course,
Speaker 1: as always, joined by Joe. And that's it. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: antern didn't work out. Yeah, it turns out, get a
Speaker 1: visa problem. Um. So, as always, this week we have
Speaker 1: another mystery for you. Today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the disappearance of Ben McDaniels. And uh been dispired after
Speaker 1: he entered a he was diving, and he disappeared after
Speaker 1: he entered a underwater cave on the eighteenth of August,
Speaker 1: and he never came back out, and he never came
Speaker 1: back out, well that we know of, he was never
Speaker 1: seen again. Who was never seen again? Now, if you
Speaker 1: are at all a claustrophobic or be afraid of the water,
Speaker 1: or worse both, you're gonna get the Bejesus scared out
Speaker 1: of you with this story to just warn you up
Speaker 1: ahead of deep water, deep water. Yeah, hopefully none of
Speaker 1: our listeners have babies. That's so weird that I get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally get that weird. We need to stop doing
Speaker 1: the podcast because you're understanding my logic all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: It's not good. It's creepy. Yeah, well, how does this
Speaker 1: story go? Well, before we get into the story, actually,
Speaker 1: this is a listeners suggestion, So I do want to
Speaker 1: say thank you to both Eden and Emily. They are
Speaker 1: currently the only ones listed as suggesting it. You very much.
Speaker 1: Anybody else suggested and we forgot to put journalists. Sorry
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, because this was a great story, wild
Speaker 1: right you two. No, I've been working on this for
Speaker 1: a month or more now, Yeah, good story. So taking
Speaker 1: it from the beginning, Ben McDaniels was a thirty year
Speaker 1: old man. He was originally from Tennessee and the year
Speaker 1: two thousand nine was a really bad year for Ben.
Speaker 1: He uh, he got divorced, which I imagine took a
Speaker 1: lot of his things. His business went under, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure took a lot of his things as well, and
Speaker 1: then he lost his home, which would have taken one
Speaker 1: of his big things. So he had a really bad year.
Speaker 1: This was also one single year, and he had some
Speaker 1: tax problems too. Yeah, the business going under his I
Speaker 1: think it was a construction business, if I remember correct.
Speaker 1: And when it failed, he had a tax bill between
Speaker 1: the state of Tennessee and the Feds of somewhere around
Speaker 1: fifty thousand, which is a hefty, hefty bill. So he
Speaker 1: didn't really know what to do. So, doing what a
Speaker 1: lot of people do, he moved back in with his parents.
Speaker 1: His mom and dad were very gracious and they took
Speaker 1: him in and after a while they said, well, listen,
Speaker 1: you need to kind of figure your stuff out. You
Speaker 1: need to get your act together. Tell you what, and
Speaker 1: as they called it, why don't you take a sabbatical?
Speaker 1: What a sabbatical from unemployment, from life, from life as
Speaker 1: Actually it's okay. They have a home in Florida since yeah,
Speaker 1: their second home. It's in Santa Rosa. It was a
Speaker 1: condo if I remember correct, And they said, go to
Speaker 1: the condo, live in Florida, will pay your expenses, will
Speaker 1: cover your living costs. And imagine they gave him money
Speaker 1: to you know, spending cash. Absolutely have some money though
Speaker 1: they did have money. They have by the way, Santa Rosa,
Speaker 1: just to spare having to look at Google Earth. It's
Speaker 1: on the Gulf coast of Florida. Yeah, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: on the Atlantic coast. Yeah yes, um so yeah, Ben, Ben,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, be hard to turn that down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really would. So he went to he went to Florida,
Speaker 1: and while he was there, he began to indulge an
Speaker 1: old hobby, which was scuba diving. From the stuff that
Speaker 1: his family has put out, Ben began diving at the
Speaker 1: age of fifteen, so he seems to have been an
Speaker 1: experienced diver. He wasn't a professional, but he was, you know,
Speaker 1: an amateur diver. And I don't have a sense of
Speaker 1: if how you know how frequently that continued. One he
Speaker 1: don't in Florida, it was he was definitely diving, like
Speaker 1: all the time. That was pretty much all he was doing.
Speaker 1: It seemed like, and it seemed like when he was
Speaker 1: a kid, he really enjoyed it. So he kind of
Speaker 1: got maybe he picked up an old hobby. But I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have the sense that this is something he'd
Speaker 1: been doing avidly the entire time. I would not disagree
Speaker 1: with that at all. In a place like Tennessee, it
Speaker 1: might be tough to find good places to go because
Speaker 1: I know, I know people around here who are scuba divers,
Speaker 1: and there's really not much of any place to scuba
Speaker 1: diving if we don't yeah deep deep lakes or what
Speaker 1: really make good or beautiful underwater landscapes or what you're
Speaker 1: after interesting things. So I understand why he might not
Speaker 1: have done it so much, because you don't want to
Speaker 1: jump in the river and scuba dive. Yeah, not so fun. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: also like a waste of resources. You can snorkele in it.
Speaker 1: You should just snorkle in it. Um. So well, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Ben, he's scuba diving, and he evidently didn't like
Speaker 1: diving in saltwater, which I can't hold against him. Saltwater rashes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna it's gonna take a little physical toll
Speaker 1: on you. Plus the buoyancy issue. I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: the buoyancy issue. Yeah. Ben was not a small guy.
Speaker 1: I think he. I think Ben was like six foot ballpark,
Speaker 1: which would and I think it was something like a
Speaker 1: hundred eight to ten. Okay. I knew that he wasn't
Speaker 1: a skinny guy by any means, So, but he didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't like to go there. So he liked freshwater dive.
Speaker 1: So what's he do. He finds a place near him
Speaker 1: called Vortech Spring because it's freshwater. It's absolutely beautiful and
Speaker 1: it is fresh for those who are going to pull
Speaker 1: a Joe and go to Google Earth and look for
Speaker 1: Vortech Springs. It's just outside of Pasta Leon, Florida, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't too far away from where he lived. And
Speaker 1: as Devin said, it's really pretty. I mean it's a giant,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a natural spring. So it is cool
Speaker 1: water upwelling out of the earth. Yeah, that's not really
Speaker 1: cool in my book. Well, when it's a hundred percent
Speaker 1: humidity and a hundred degrees that way right, we're not
Speaker 1: talking Oregon Coast cool. Correct. It is very nice to
Speaker 1: swim in, and in fact, its main draw is for
Speaker 1: people to swim in it. They've got zip lines and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean it looks like a fun
Speaker 1: place to go. Oh yeah, I'd like to go. But
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the water was just all fresh and
Speaker 1: clear because it get getting changed out. I mean it
Speaker 1: was up well from the aquifer. And then that is
Speaker 1: exactly why it is so popular with divers because open
Speaker 1: water divers can go there. The water temperature is consistent,
Speaker 1: the current is gentle. It's consistent but gentle, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's not dirty. There's lots of aquatic life to check out.
Speaker 1: So it's really really interesting. And let's keep talking about
Speaker 1: the cave because there's a couple of things that I
Speaker 1: want to go over, one of which is the shape
Speaker 1: of the cave. So the vortex springs. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, it's a giant hole in the ground. There's
Speaker 1: a big basin. It's fifty to sixty ft deep, which
Speaker 1: equates to about fifteen and sixteen so it's fairly deep
Speaker 1: a ways down and if you look at it in profile,
Speaker 1: if you look at it, there's maps available which you
Speaker 1: should look up because we're not ever going to be
Speaker 1: able to describe it. Well no, no, but it almost
Speaker 1: to me from the side, looks like a semi deflated
Speaker 1: pastry bag, you know, the thing that like that you
Speaker 1: decorate cakes with, because it's it's kind of triangular and
Speaker 1: then it's zig zags back and forth and it's really skinny.
Speaker 1: Devon's laughing, but she gets it, she totally gets it.
Speaker 1: But so it goes down for for quite a bit,
Speaker 1: nobody knows how deep the cave is and by or
Speaker 1: how long the cave is. Is the the appropriate way
Speaker 1: to say that, we know basically how deep it is
Speaker 1: at the back correct. What they need to do is
Speaker 1: is like dress up a small child in a wet
Speaker 1: suit with tanks and everything and send it to that
Speaker 1: skinny part. Think you're supposed to do that? I think, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, I know, Joe. But okay. For the length
Speaker 1: of the cave, we know that the cave is over
Speaker 1: seventeen feet long, which again for our folks that are
Speaker 1: to the same measurement system, it's law. At least at
Speaker 1: least that's it's probably farther, but that's as far as
Speaker 1: anyone has gone that we know of, and that that number,
Speaker 1: by the way, is self reported. It's from prett reliable source,
Speaker 1: but it's self reported for the distance. If anybody's ever
Speaker 1: gone into a cave, as we were talking about, they
Speaker 1: get harder and harder to go into because they get
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller as they go, they get narrower, and
Speaker 1: this cave is no different as it dives down the
Speaker 1: walls and expand and contract and change shape. But they
Speaker 1: generally continually get closer and closer together. They call them restrictions,
Speaker 1: I think is what they call them. And I'm sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: bottleneckt So it's like, you know, it's a wide open
Speaker 1: cave and then there's this like part that you have
Speaker 1: to squeeze through and then it opens up again and
Speaker 1: it's narrow and that can be horizontally or vertically or both. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are caves near us called the Caves
Speaker 1: which do this. Um, if you've ever been in any cave,
Speaker 1: you know what we're talking about. Yeah, there's not Ape Cave.
Speaker 1: There's not too much of that though. It's i mean
Speaker 1: it's good to the very end, well at the very end. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's another one that's only a couple of miles away
Speaker 1: from there, called Little Red River Cave. Yeah. Have you
Speaker 1: been there. Yeah, it's a gated cave, but but you know,
Speaker 1: you go all the way to the end. He didn't really, Okay,
Speaker 1: when you get it goes downward and there's a there's
Speaker 1: it's it's a difficult, more difficult than Ape Cave, but
Speaker 1: it keeps going downward and there's some climbing and stuff involved,
Speaker 1: and as you get down towards the end, water starts
Speaker 1: coming in because you go below the water table and
Speaker 1: so there's water dripping from the ceiling and running running
Speaker 1: down the floor and everything. And then you finally get
Speaker 1: to this end, then it's just a lake. It's like
Speaker 1: it ends in water, which it may continue. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you put scoopy gear on and went down that,
Speaker 1: I'm not about to, but if you wanted to, you
Speaker 1: can see how far that thing goes. But I had
Speaker 1: my creepiest cave experience in there. One time. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was caved with three friends and we got to
Speaker 1: the and then we turned around and started heading back
Speaker 1: to the entrance and I was bringing up the rear
Speaker 1: and suddenly way back and this is this is like
Speaker 1: actually a distance away from the end of the cave,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I heard this. I heard this thud coming
Speaker 1: from behind me in the cave, and I stopped and
Speaker 1: I looked. I never found out what it was. Definitely,
Speaker 1: if I was looking over my shoulder a little bit
Speaker 1: more than I normally would, butt like something heavy dropped,
Speaker 1: like one thing dropped, like something something, and yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of something to look on Devon's face. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was just a real soft just just sort of
Speaker 1: a way off of the distance kind of. And I say,
Speaker 1: I don't like somehow it lived through it. Well back
Speaker 1: to vortex springs. Yeah, okay, So at the end or
Speaker 1: the farthest reach that we know of the cave is
Speaker 1: only about ten inches high, which is really be the
Speaker 1: really small, especially if you got a bunch of gear on. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's and we're gonna we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the diving and styles that are required. But people
Speaker 1: are squeezing themselves through these cracks a while carrying their
Speaker 1: oxygen supply. So it's it's not something to be taken lightly,
Speaker 1: and it is definitely something that you need to know
Speaker 1: how to do before you do it. Still, don't do it. Well,
Speaker 1: We've read enough, I know all of us have read
Speaker 1: enough stories of people getting lost in caves. Some of
Speaker 1: them were lucky enough to be found alive. And this
Speaker 1: is cave diving, not just people lost in in caves
Speaker 1: that are filled with air. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's dangerous,
Speaker 1: crazily dangerous. I think the only way I'd do that,
Speaker 1: I'd take some fluorescent some fluorescent green cord with me
Speaker 1: or something like that. So I got to just run
Speaker 1: a line the whole way. Cave divers do typically run
Speaker 1: a cord. They tend to run a cord behind them
Speaker 1: so they can turn around and easily retrace their path
Speaker 1: out because it's very easy in a pitch black environment
Speaker 1: to lose your way. Breaks or something like yeah, anything
Speaker 1: like that. Now, for Vortech Springs, what they've done is
Speaker 1: there was a there was a string of people who
Speaker 1: drowned in the cave, got lost and out of air
Speaker 1: and drowned, and so the state said we're gonna shut
Speaker 1: you down. Probably, So what the owners of Vortex Springs
Speaker 1: did is about three hundred feet in they put in
Speaker 1: a gate. And that gate has it's a keyed gate.
Speaker 1: If you present identification and certifications saying I can cave dive,
Speaker 1: they will give you the key and let you in. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: it's meant to stop people from going into the cave
Speaker 1: and getting lost and dying. Now, the how effective that
Speaker 1: gate is, it's not really high tech. It looks like
Speaker 1: a bunch of pieces of rebar that are jammed into
Speaker 1: the stone and happens to have a lock and a
Speaker 1: hinged gate on it. You know, my sense of it
Speaker 1: was that it is more to discourage than to actually
Speaker 1: stop people. I mean, I think that if you're a
Speaker 1: diver and you're kind of inexperienced and you're just thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: just go to this cave blah blah blah, and you
Speaker 1: encounter a thing that looks like that and there's a
Speaker 1: stop sign, and it's just it's just sign that's got
Speaker 1: the grim Reaper on it. Right, Yeah, you're you know,
Speaker 1: instead of just the sign, which would be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to just kind of ignore, it's fun. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's more meant to be like that symbolic, hey, don't
Speaker 1: go pass here unless you want to die. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: problem with the gate is it is easy to bypass,
Speaker 1: or it is not difficult to bypass, I should say.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's easy, but people have been known
Speaker 1: to get around. Well, there's a video. Actually, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of videos by this this guy um that
Speaker 1: I watched, and I just wanted to bring it up
Speaker 1: real quick. Actually, let me do real quick. Just I
Speaker 1: just want to finish just two little bits of detail
Speaker 1: about the cave and then we can talk about that,
Speaker 1: because that's really important and interesting. But the only other
Speaker 1: thing that I wanted people to know about when it
Speaker 1: comes to the cave itself is that the depth of
Speaker 1: the cave that we know is around a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: feet deep. That's underwater, which would equate again that's forty five.
Speaker 1: And that's a significant number because divers who tend to
Speaker 1: go to a hundred and thirty feet or below typically
Speaker 1: have to breathe not just straight a normal gas mix
Speaker 1: of what's in the atmosphere, regular air mix. They've actually
Speaker 1: got to do a special gas mixtures, and that's to
Speaker 1: help stave off things for decompression issues, to bends exactly.
Speaker 1: That was. I've been told that most divers actually always
Speaker 1: turn around. Most A hundred thirty is the depth that
Speaker 1: you can go. But if you want a safety cushion, correct, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for a safety cushion, it's somewhere in that, in that range,
Speaker 1: but that's the bottom. After that you have to be.
Speaker 1: You should be if you well, if you don't have
Speaker 1: if you yeah, But and then you were gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this the gate, I know because you were looking
Speaker 1: at the video. Yeah, I was just going to bring
Speaker 1: up a little bit um. There's some really really interesting
Speaker 1: videos that you should watch if you can stand to Um,
Speaker 1: it's a little I mean, it's a little creepy. I
Speaker 1: you know, told I was telling you guys that I
Speaker 1: have developed a new fear um. But one of these videos,
Speaker 1: it's not totally clear what's happening. But in one of them,
Speaker 1: it was filmed by a guy named Nick. He and
Speaker 1: he has a diving partner and they do these deep
Speaker 1: water cave videos just all the time. They have a
Speaker 1: bunch at Vortex Springs. One of them is Nick showing
Speaker 1: how easy it is to get over the gate um
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take a about a minute. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a little spot where you can just do. You
Speaker 1: have to push your tank in before you um, and
Speaker 1: then you climb over and then you put your tank
Speaker 1: back on um. And he does it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: But that's it's really interesting. It's very easy. It looks
Speaker 1: very easy once you know how to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks very very easy to me, very very easy
Speaker 1: to get caught on that thing. It's ground, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be pretty easy to snag something
Speaker 1: on it too. Yeah. Yeah, this is not something that
Speaker 1: we're saying lightly to just go do what we're saying, don't.
Speaker 1: This is yeah, please don't. It's just this is at
Speaker 1: the from the videos we've seen from that time possible.
Speaker 1: And I haven't heard anything at the gates ever been upgraded.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I suspect it has, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope probably since then. Yeah, I mean, that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: And I have more about the videos that the guys
Speaker 1: posted later, but I'll talk about that one. It's relevant. Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds perfect, So let's get back to the story because
Speaker 1: that's enough about the cave itself. Yeah. Um, and there
Speaker 1: are maps available on the internet, so to look at
Speaker 1: one of those, we will probably have been postal link
Speaker 1: might be one of the links. So Ben could have
Speaker 1: been diving at Vortex Spring for up to four months.
Speaker 1: He probably was. He probably was because he moved into
Speaker 1: his parents house in Florida in April of that year,
Speaker 1: and so I imagine not to long after that, I
Speaker 1: would I'm going to guess several weeks after that started diving.
Speaker 1: He was. It was kind of a regular around there.
Speaker 1: He was a total regular. They knew him. He was
Speaker 1: there almost every day, absolutely, But what he did that
Speaker 1: is a giant no. No. From everything I know about
Speaker 1: diving and everything I've ever read about diving is he
Speaker 1: was so low diving now, you know, even even above
Speaker 1: ground caving. He really don't want to do that alone. No,
Speaker 1: there's because if something that's any kind of adventuring you
Speaker 1: don't want to do alone, you don't. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a no. It's you know, you always have you
Speaker 1: dive buddy, you always go down with somebody else. But
Speaker 1: according to accounts that came out after the fact, Ben
Speaker 1: was either a little bit unapproachable, maybe came off as
Speaker 1: a jerk, or people have described him as overconfident, and
Speaker 1: so maybe that came through in a negative way. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody just read that wrong, and so he never got
Speaker 1: a he never made a friend to his dive. But
Speaker 1: I almost wonder if the overconfidence really kept people from
Speaker 1: wanting to be his dive partner. In that it read
Speaker 1: as reckless. You don't necessarily want well not just cocky,
Speaker 1: but I mean genuinely reckless. You don't want to have
Speaker 1: a dive partner who's always saying, hey, let's break the
Speaker 1: rules and do all these things. And I don't you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not as trained as I should be, but we're
Speaker 1: going to do this thing anyway. That's not what you
Speaker 1: want from a dive partner. You want somebody that you're like,
Speaker 1: very confident in their abilities. I assume he he did.
Speaker 1: He did seem to come off by some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that I've read and watched. He said that his
Speaker 1: skills were much more than they were in terms of
Speaker 1: his experience. Um, because there's a movie that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about where he had he was trying to pass himself
Speaker 1: off almost as a dive instructor, which he was in
Speaker 1: no way, shape or form qualified to be. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be, he wanted to he did, he wanted or later.
Speaker 1: But the point is that he was acting as if
Speaker 1: he was one, and I imagine that for people who
Speaker 1: knew what was going on, that was really off putting.
Speaker 1: So that that worked against him. That absolutely did not.
Speaker 1: That behavior didn't work in his favor. Whether whether that's
Speaker 1: what he did or not, I don't know. Well, the
Speaker 1: point is he wanted in by himself. Yeah, you never know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, Ben. Obviously, he had only been there
Speaker 1: for four months, so he maybe didn't have enough time
Speaker 1: to really meet people, or maybe he just liked to
Speaker 1: dive alone. No, that's that's absolutely possible. Absolutely good idea. No. Um,
Speaker 1: So he was like we said, though he's he's certified
Speaker 1: to dive in open water, he's not certified to dive
Speaker 1: in caves. Uh. And as we said, he had he
Speaker 1: decided that what he wanted to do was become a
Speaker 1: dive instructor. He had also expressed to his family that
Speaker 1: he wanted to learn to cave dive and then he
Speaker 1: wanted to open his own dive business. Yeah, I didn't want.
Speaker 1: One way to learn the cave divers to do it
Speaker 1: with the qualified instructor. Another way to do it is
Speaker 1: to read a lot and then just do it. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I should be clear. I'm making a joke. Yes, please
Speaker 1: do not do that. Do not do that. Okay. So
Speaker 1: if you want, I want people who are interested in
Speaker 1: this to do this, which is to look up technical
Speaker 1: diving and look at the certifications that you have to get.
Speaker 1: And it is a huge list with a certain number
Speaker 1: of hours of every one of them before you can
Speaker 1: be and have that to your technical diving record. You
Speaker 1: can have that and say I can do this, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's all hours based. Ben wanted to do this thing.
Speaker 1: So he was going underwater and logging tons and tons
Speaker 1: and tons of hours at a breakneck speed to say,
Speaker 1: so if a certification takes a hundred hours, He's like, well,
Speaker 1: if I go six hours a day every day, I'll
Speaker 1: be there in no time flat. You know, take me
Speaker 1: less in two weeks. I can totally make this happen. Well,
Speaker 1: that's not the way that you're supposed to do it,
Speaker 1: because the reason that it takes hours is so that
Speaker 1: you learn how to do certain things. They become automatic
Speaker 1: reactions and automatic functions so that when you're in a
Speaker 1: catastrophic situation, you automatically react in the proper way. And
Speaker 1: that wasn't what he was doing. He was just piling
Speaker 1: on the hours based on his log books anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is do you want to explain real quick what
Speaker 1: a log book is? Oh, that's a very good question.
Speaker 1: So it just seem so s logbook is quite literally
Speaker 1: a book where you write in a log of your activities,
Speaker 1: something like a time card. You say, when in the
Speaker 1: water at did x y Z exited the water at
Speaker 1: so for a total of time of underwater I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's it. And then it's a tally and you're
Speaker 1: just keeping a record of everything you're doing and practices,
Speaker 1: then to go back and reread your log books to
Speaker 1: think about things that you did. And this is why
Speaker 1: you don't do things. It's such a high speed. Say
Speaker 1: once a week you go die for three hours and
Speaker 1: then you reread your logbook three weeks later, like I
Speaker 1: totally don't remember. Oh that's ride. And then I do
Speaker 1: this like you know, I equated to the same thing
Speaker 1: as taking a final. Did you guys ever do this?
Speaker 1: You had cram like mad before the final and then
Speaker 1: take the test and remember none of it the next
Speaker 1: day after the test. Yeah, that's how I did finals
Speaker 1: for sure. But I mean, I think what you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do that? No, And I think you also in
Speaker 1: your log book you take notes and draw diagrams and
Speaker 1: you know any important information. I suspect you also say
Speaker 1: things like, here's what my oxygen tank was at when
Speaker 1: I went in, Here's what it was at when I
Speaker 1: came out, how long it cooked decompressed. Here's how I'm feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, here's how I'm feeling the next day. Well
Speaker 1: that's more of a dear diary, but I'm making But
Speaker 1: I mean, I think those are all very important things
Speaker 1: to be keeping track of as well, probably he probably
Speaker 1: should be paying attention to how your body reacts to
Speaker 1: all that crap. Your body time to react is the
Speaker 1: really important part, right, because if it turns out that
Speaker 1: the next day something is going to negatively affect you,
Speaker 1: if you just keep doing it and doing it and
Speaker 1: doing it and you haven't given your body time to
Speaker 1: do that reset, you're done for. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's
Speaker 1: what a log book is. Yes, Okay, So let's go
Speaker 1: to the eighteenth of August two, which was a Wednesday.
Speaker 1: By the way, Ben McDaniels went in the early part
Speaker 1: of the day. He took a dive in Vortech Spring
Speaker 1: and went down and afterwards he was seen by people
Speaker 1: hanging around. So it wasn't like he did his dive,
Speaker 1: came out, went home. He hung around, he was writing
Speaker 1: his log book, he's adjusting his gear. We know that
Speaker 1: at one point he went and filled his tanks because
Speaker 1: of some security footage. We don't know what he filled
Speaker 1: his tanks with, whether it was just a regular air
Speaker 1: mix or some specialized mix. We don't know. By his tanks,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were other tanks that were found that didn't.
Speaker 1: This is the question. We don't know about that we
Speaker 1: don't know which tanks he put the air in, whether
Speaker 1: they the ones that he was wearing and disappeared with,
Speaker 1: or the ones that were subsequently found after the They
Speaker 1: also we also don't know for certainty that the ones
Speaker 1: that were found after the fact were actually Ben's. It's
Speaker 1: it is pretty strong strong, but we we don't. They
Speaker 1: don't say Ben McDaniels edged into them. They do now,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. Yeah. Yeah, And also another thank it's
Speaker 1: frustrated about this mystery is I would like to know
Speaker 1: exactly how many tanks been owned. That would be useful.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a way to find that out. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess you could call his family, but the problems
Speaker 1: they might not even know. They probably don't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know that they have an accurate number, And I
Speaker 1: don't know that anybody's ever said that. That's a really
Speaker 1: good thing. And I thought the same question, but it's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe that if the tanks that were
Speaker 1: found were bends, then he had at least four tanks,
Speaker 1: if not more. But he had to have the three,
Speaker 1: so he would have had to have had at least four, yes,
Speaker 1: actually five, Because you don't cave dive without two tanks, right,
Speaker 1: Well you shouldn't. Well, yeah, I guess you could, but
Speaker 1: keep going for an all time record of some kind.
Speaker 1: But that was what my face was was that, you know,
Speaker 1: we they found the tanks, and they found at least
Speaker 1: two of them had the X the special mix in it,
Speaker 1: the regular air, regular air in them. They weren't a
Speaker 1: special mix at all, two of them, that's right, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I had them switched. Two of them were normal air
Speaker 1: and one of them was the special mix, right, but
Speaker 1: one which was weird. Right, It's weird because, as I
Speaker 1: said before, if you're going to dive in that cave
Speaker 1: and you're going to go to that depth, you should
Speaker 1: be using the special gas, the gas mix, not just
Speaker 1: regular air for the decompression issues. So that questionable judgment
Speaker 1: in terms of the way he went about it. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought that normal air was used when they were
Speaker 1: coming up during decompression, that they would be your cans
Speaker 1: for like when you're coming up slowly once you were
Speaker 1: above a certain No, I may have made that up.
Speaker 1: I think I actually don't know enough. I remember reading
Speaker 1: so much about it, and there's so much technical details
Speaker 1: that I will be honest, I do not remember the
Speaker 1: writing answer to that, So I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would just think that if you're using something special below
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty it means that you can't use
Speaker 1: that something special above a hundred and thirty feet. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Yeah, you can use it above. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: totally doesn't stop using it to set. But I imagine
Speaker 1: it's probably cheaper to buy just regular compressed air than
Speaker 1: it is to buy that special mix, So that might
Speaker 1: that might account for that, that's true, But I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know that that he was really concerned with
Speaker 1: cash either. I don't like that sense. Given some things
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about in a little bit here, Actually,
Speaker 1: let's let's leave those tanks where they are. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean that is a pun. But so he filled
Speaker 1: his tanks. He fills his tanks, and then Vortic Spring
Speaker 1: closes at four o'clock at night, So everybody who's swimming
Speaker 1: and having good time goes home, but Ben goes for
Speaker 1: a dive at some time around seven or seven thirty
Speaker 1: that night. So did you sort of have a browth
Speaker 1: thing on with the people, the people that owned it?
Speaker 1: Is that how you could do that well, the divers
Speaker 1: could stay and finish their dives. So swimmers, the people
Speaker 1: that are using the zip line everything, Hey hey guys,
Speaker 1: pools clothes get out, you know, to get all those
Speaker 1: people out of there. But if you're a diver and
Speaker 1: you go in at three o'clock and you've got two
Speaker 1: or three hours worth of air, you're gonna stay under
Speaker 1: And so I I don't know how it was that
Speaker 1: he would wrangle the I'm gonna go in after the
Speaker 1: pool is closed thing. It's not as if the pool
Speaker 1: was gate it off. If you looked at pictures, you
Speaker 1: could walk in anywhere. You really could. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: an entrance with stairs for divers, but he could have
Speaker 1: literally gone in at any point. I had a sense
Speaker 1: that the owner of Vortex Springs, Kelly, really liked Ben,
Speaker 1: or at least after the fact, seemed to like Ben.
Speaker 1: I think the clarification, I think he just didn't care,
Speaker 1: and Ben was kind of at least amicable with the
Speaker 1: people who ran it, given the bit we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about a second here. So I think I mean,
Speaker 1: I think he just was doing it. It was against
Speaker 1: the rules, but they were kind of like, well, he's
Speaker 1: going to do it either way, so we can't stop
Speaker 1: in yeah, or he paid people off, also possible. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely a possibility. So here's the thing. We know
Speaker 1: that he's in the water because somewhere around seven thirty
Speaker 1: that night, as he's going down through the entrance of
Speaker 1: the cave heading to the gate, he passes two other
Speaker 1: divers who were exiting the cave who also happened to
Speaker 1: be a employees of Vortex Spring and their names are
Speaker 1: Chuck Cronin and Eduardo Tehran and ed where those stops,
Speaker 1: I mean they passed him, He stops, He signals to Chucks,
Speaker 1: you know, wait, goes back to Ben and he unlocks
Speaker 1: the gate for Ben. And that is because they were
Speaker 1: convinced that Ben had been going into the cave and
Speaker 1: however he was doing it, he was bypassing that gate.
Speaker 1: He was wearing his helmet and life he was wearing.
Speaker 1: He's wearing his all of his gear to go into helmet.
Speaker 1: That's the important bit, right, He's wearing a helmet. You
Speaker 1: could go down it's called the Piano room. Is that
Speaker 1: is this big open cavern right before the gate um,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of the last stop for any basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think you can go down there without a
Speaker 1: helmet correct into the piano room, but when you go
Speaker 1: deeper you need a helmet. So that was I thought
Speaker 1: why they thought he was definitely and going for a well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if he's if he's in that area, then it's pretty
Speaker 1: obvious what he's doing, well, you know. And the thing
Speaker 1: about it is he's been hanging around so much, you
Speaker 1: gotta figure he's pushing the cave, you know, ever deeper
Speaker 1: all the time. But and one other reasons. It's not
Speaker 1: just the whole going around thing, but they he figured
Speaker 1: that if you let him in, that would save been
Speaker 1: five minutes maybe of air. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the only logical reason that I can think of. Now.
Speaker 1: At first I thought, well, I mean, it only takes
Speaker 1: a minute or so to get into who cares. But really,
Speaker 1: where it's important is what he's getting out. If he's
Speaker 1: running low on air and now he's got to stop
Speaker 1: and do something that takes two or three minutes, that's
Speaker 1: two or three minutes of air that he may not have.
Speaker 1: And I think that Edwardo even said that he said
Speaker 1: he thought that Ben was jumping the fence anyway, and
Speaker 1: he would try and save him sometimes, so he unlocked
Speaker 1: the gate even though he knew we should make it
Speaker 1: very clear. He knew that Ben was not certified and
Speaker 1: not well trained to be cave diving, and actually, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to speak to Ben's talent as a diver
Speaker 1: aptitude if he will. Um that guy was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: Nick who records all these videos. There's lots and lots
Speaker 1: of videos out here there that he has, and I
Speaker 1: believe and I'm this is just me putting a couple
Speaker 1: of things together. So I'm not sure on this, so
Speaker 1: please don't cristify me if I'm wrong on this. But
Speaker 1: Nick has a video called, uh, the Lost Diver in
Speaker 1: the Piano Room, and it's like a three part thing
Speaker 1: and it's him and his diving partner are going down
Speaker 1: on a routine swim. They record the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: then when they're swimming around the piano room, they encounter
Speaker 1: a diver who I guess is maybe lost. I don't
Speaker 1: know who I believe is Ben. Didn't they say they
Speaker 1: thought it was him after the fact, Um, I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Here. The way that I put this
Speaker 1: together was this guy who films these videos named Nick Um.
Speaker 1: And then in this movie that we watched, Nick's or
Speaker 1: Ben's Vortex, they show a Facebook post that Ben had
Speaker 1: made a couple of days before he went missing that said, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I interrupted a video shoot today when I
Speaker 1: was down training. Uh, Nick was down there and he
Speaker 1: was he was, you know, filming, and I think that they,
Speaker 1: you know, they helped me find my way out or
Speaker 1: something like that. So I believe that this is the case.
Speaker 1: And I again, I don't know that for sure, but
Speaker 1: I think if it is Ben. So the way that divers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do this side tank thing where you think of
Speaker 1: a normal scupid Ever, they have the tanks on their
Speaker 1: back instead when you're cave diving, you mount them to
Speaker 1: your side so that you're slimmer behind your armpits. They
Speaker 1: run along the sides of your body so that you
Speaker 1: are a when swimming horizontally, you're not a thick Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're flatter so that you can maneuver yourself in
Speaker 1: into and out of crevices easier. Um, So it looks
Speaker 1: like Ben is really struggling. Well, it's hard to say.
Speaker 1: I saw the same video and it could be that
Speaker 1: or he could just be fool around. I mean, he
Speaker 1: could have been. I really don't know. It looks like
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what what the hell exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. It's hard to see too, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to say except for the two beams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those guys need to work in their lighting. Well it's hard.
Speaker 1: So it's hard for a number of reasons. One, you know,
Speaker 1: back to the buoyancy issue. It seems like he's kind
Speaker 1: of floating. He's having a hard time diet, he's not
Speaker 1: using the right amount of weighty compensate for. It does
Speaker 1: look like that a lot. And it looks like he's
Speaker 1: moving more awkwardly than the videos of people who are
Speaker 1: trained with the side mount system that I've seen. And
Speaker 1: he's also doing the hand signal for like which way, Um,
Speaker 1: so he's trying to signal to which partner and which
Speaker 1: way down? I think, well, I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: all the hand signals is which way? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: when you're scupinaving, you can't say like which way which
Speaker 1: way down. The hard part about that video, though, is
Speaker 1: I agree with Joe's At times I thought maybe he
Speaker 1: was screwed round. But the other part that's really difficult
Speaker 1: to tell what's going on and potentially wrong is that
Speaker 1: everybody is spinning in space, and there are times where
Speaker 1: you can tell the camera is upside down and the
Speaker 1: person in frame is upside down because you know, the
Speaker 1: bubbles should be going above them and I stand there
Speaker 1: heading towards their feet, they're standing on the ceiling. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's hard. It's hard to tell, but um, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see if that is indeed Ben. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like he's very confident or moving as fluidly
Speaker 1: as you would hope somebody who's attempting dives like the
Speaker 1: ones that I think he's attempting. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to also throw that out there too. Yeah, that's man,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's hard to Again, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say what he's doing. It is dark and it's a
Speaker 1: murky little video. Yeah, well that's the problem. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing again. I think we talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit more but before, but cave diving, the only
Speaker 1: light that you have is the light that you bring.
Speaker 1: So if you have crappy you ever had a car
Speaker 1: that had crappy headlights, then you got a car that
Speaker 1: had good headlights. You're like, oh my god, how did
Speaker 1: I not run anybody over the same thing? Cave diving
Speaker 1: your crampy little headlights, you're not gonna see very well.
Speaker 1: And that's what makes that video so difficult. But back
Speaker 1: to Ben and Edwardo. As we said, Eduardo figured that
Speaker 1: Ben was bypassing the gate, so he unlocks it. And
Speaker 1: then normally what Chuck and Edwardo would do is they
Speaker 1: would finish their dive, they'd go top side, and they'd
Speaker 1: wait until they saw Ben's bubbles coming to the surface,
Speaker 1: because that mean he was out of the cave, he
Speaker 1: was going through the decompression process. Things should be fine.
Speaker 1: And then that was a fairly frequent occurrence. Then that
Speaker 1: Ben wouldn't dive at night and obviously done it several times,
Speaker 1: and these guys I really feel like they were kind
Speaker 1: of trying to look out for him, like that idiot,
Speaker 1: Well hang on, Well, we'll keep an eye for him
Speaker 1: in case something seems like it's not right, and then
Speaker 1: we'll have to we'll go try and help. That's the
Speaker 1: sense that I got. But instead this particular night, they
Speaker 1: didn't wait for Ben. They left, They took off that
Speaker 1: something going on. Probably yeah, I think, and had coffee.
Speaker 1: Can't be babysitting this guy all the time, although it
Speaker 1: is a little suspicious that this is the one night
Speaker 1: they didn't stay but find whatever, But that is raised
Speaker 1: a lot. It is suspicious the one time they don't
Speaker 1: stay he disappears. So those guys go home. The next day,
Speaker 1: Ben's truck is in the parking lot because he has
Speaker 1: not that we know of, come out of the water.
Speaker 1: Nobody notices notice. I'm using notice with quotes, and that
Speaker 1: means it was a Thursday, though it was August, so
Speaker 1: maybe school is still out. It was particularly hot, very busy.
Speaker 1: They said they didn't notice it because they were busy.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that doesn't bother me that much.
Speaker 1: I think you're a little busy. So what you're really
Speaker 1: saying is I didn't notice Ben because if he was
Speaker 1: having at the rate that he that we seem to
Speaker 1: think he was diving at, it's totally possible that he
Speaker 1: would get there really early in the morning and go
Speaker 1: for a dive, and then bang out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day when it's really busy, and then go
Speaker 1: for a night dive after everybody's left, and that they
Speaker 1: were used to just seeing his truck there all the time,
Speaker 1: and so what they're really saying is we didn't notice
Speaker 1: been around, but you know, his truck is always there. Anyway,
Speaker 1: truck is there, he's probably off underwater somewhere, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's that's a really good point. I've never heard anybody,
Speaker 1: i mean, we've heard about his night diving habit, we'd
Speaker 1: never I've never actually seen anything that said if Ben
Speaker 1: was an early riser and was in the water at six,
Speaker 1: when they opened up at eight, they just Ben's Ben's
Speaker 1: diving again. It sounds like he was doing a very
Speaker 1: accelerated process. Really, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me to
Speaker 1: find out that he was often there early in the
Speaker 1: morning too. So the next day is of August, that's
Speaker 1: a Friday, and that's the second day he's missing. EDWARDO
Speaker 1: actually is the one who recognized the truck and realized
Speaker 1: that it had moved and asked around and nobody said
Speaker 1: they had seen Ben, and so then he turned around
Speaker 1: and called cops. Yeah, he probably thought, oh, I left
Speaker 1: on Thursday and it has been there the entire time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably something like that. The police came, they searched the truck.
Speaker 1: They find Ben's wallet. It's got seven hundred bucks in
Speaker 1: cash in it. Uh, there's equipment and his log book
Speaker 1: in the pickup. They eventually, when they can't find him,
Speaker 1: they bring cadaver dogs. Cadaver dogs for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: I know, we've talked about it. They're not cadavers. The
Speaker 1: dogs are not. They are dogs that react to the
Speaker 1: smell of a decomposing human body. Those dogs were brought
Speaker 1: and supposedly triggered when they smelled the water. Don't I
Speaker 1: have a hard time with it as well. I don't
Speaker 1: think the body would have started decomposing that quick. I
Speaker 1: don't think that they could have smelled it if it
Speaker 1: was under eighty or a hundred feet of water like that.
Speaker 1: Plus there's gonna be other things dying, of course. Never
Speaker 1: docs are well trained a differential between and say, a
Speaker 1: dead possible human being. They're supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I I have a difficulty with the whole cadaver
Speaker 1: dog thing. But you will see that reported. They like
Speaker 1: I said, they they signaled on the body, so they
Speaker 1: signal on thank you. Yes, they signaled on the water.
Speaker 1: And at that point local divers who were certified to
Speaker 1: go into the cave and knew what and found out
Speaker 1: what Ben had been doing, went into the cave, and
Speaker 1: those divers logged our upon our looking for him in
Speaker 1: the cave. Uh. The strange thing that they found right
Speaker 1: away was they found a pair of his tanks near
Speaker 1: the entrance of the cave, which we mentioned before. We
Speaker 1: talked about that before, So that was weird. The location
Speaker 1: of them is weird because typically what a diver does
Speaker 1: is you don't leave all of your air in one
Speaker 1: places on the way dropped tanks like bread crumbs. You
Speaker 1: dropped tanks so you can find your way back out
Speaker 1: and be get some air. If you really need some air,
Speaker 1: you got a low tank, you can switch them out.
Speaker 1: So it's odd that they were there. Somebody said that
Speaker 1: it looked like they were placed by somebody who didn't
Speaker 1: know what they were doing. Oh yeah, you do hear that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there there is a lot and there were
Speaker 1: and there were three tanks, right, I believe there was.
Speaker 1: But what I want to I do want to touch
Speaker 1: on real quickly is there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: things that have been said in the media, and we've
Speaker 1: started saying some of this as well. Which is questioning
Speaker 1: his diving abilities. And so when we say things like that,
Speaker 1: I don't want it to come across as we say
Speaker 1: Ben was an idiot. It was he was doing things
Speaker 1: that were not done the way that a proper cave
Speaker 1: diver would have done. I just wanted he didn't those
Speaker 1: tanks where that That's also a very valid point, but
Speaker 1: I just want to cover that because I've noticed it's
Speaker 1: kind of happened a couple of times. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't know. We're not saying that been I mean, he
Speaker 1: may have been a nod inexperience and shouldn't have been
Speaker 1: doing what he was doing. Probably that's completely different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was an experienced scuba diver, not in caves. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: By the way, so this place was very very popular
Speaker 1: vortech springs with scuba divers, and so scuba divers coming
Speaker 1: and go on every day. Yep. Okay, So it's it's
Speaker 1: strange that nobody noticed those tanks. Well, they may have
Speaker 1: noticed the tanks. It may have been that a diver
Speaker 1: who was like, oh, well there's somebody obviously in the cave.
Speaker 1: That must be his tanks. Okay, So here's a question.
Speaker 1: I see the look on her face. H Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: a here's a question for you, a real brain puzzler,
Speaker 1: if you will. So, Edward Oh unlocked the gate for
Speaker 1: him Thursday night. Uh, and it's a pad lock with
Speaker 1: a key, correct, How did it get locked again? Well?
Speaker 1: Ben could have locked it, but it was locked correct?
Speaker 1: When Well, that's that's something that was That's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a really good question. Is that. I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: EDWARDO unlocked it and maybe even handed the padlock over
Speaker 1: to bed just in case some prankster would come wouldn't
Speaker 1: come along and not at that time of night, I know,
Speaker 1: I I imagine that if that if EDWARDO unlocked it,
Speaker 1: he left the unlocked padlock on the loop, he would
Speaker 1: have given the lock to Ben. He wouldn't no use
Speaker 1: for it. Well, well, the us is that you have
Speaker 1: it with you, so nobody's going to lock you in.
Speaker 1: But if nobody else is expected to go in that night,
Speaker 1: then what's the prom But he definitely didn't leave the key, right,
Speaker 1: So it's EDWARDO unlocked the gate and then at some
Speaker 1: point relocked. It had to have been relocked at some point,
Speaker 1: yet it was eventually. I mean, it's not as if
Speaker 1: when they you know, I don't believe that when they
Speaker 1: went down the divers went down looking for Ben, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: the gates still unlocked. I'm sure that some employee who
Speaker 1: was looking around when uh, nobody's been in here today,
Speaker 1: somebody left the gate unlocked and they relocked it. Imagined
Speaker 1: that would have happened the next day. But no, absolutely
Speaker 1: no idea when that could have happened. For me, that's
Speaker 1: a really really really important detail. You're right, it is.
Speaker 1: It's the bubbling gun in this case. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no idea when that gate got relocked, right, Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: Zinger done, Um okay, So let's uh, let's continue on
Speaker 1: with the story here. So Ben's parents come to the
Speaker 1: area and they stay there while the search has begun
Speaker 1: for their son. They've made some not so great choices
Speaker 1: in the way that they've discussed the case with social media. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they've they've peep some people off in the fighting community,
Speaker 1: because I mean, poor Joy supports is exactly what. It's
Speaker 1: not like they're intending they actually know they need these
Speaker 1: people's help. What I'll say is that they they have
Speaker 1: said things in the way that you would expect grieving
Speaker 1: parents to say them, I'd agree with that. So while
Speaker 1: they're they're there's divers in the cave looking. One of
Speaker 1: the things we talked about in the beginning is that
Speaker 1: this spring, obviously because it's an upwelling and overflows. The
Speaker 1: water overflows out through um and drains into Blue Creek,
Speaker 1: which then goes into some swampy areas because it's Florida.
Speaker 1: And of course they checked those corpses, they checked all
Speaker 1: of that. They ran dogs through the area, they searched it.
Speaker 1: So nobody has found at this point below or above
Speaker 1: the water. So Ben's body has completely disappeared. His possessions
Speaker 1: aren't there, like his dive gear, everything he would have
Speaker 1: had on. None of that is shown up at this point,
Speaker 1: as they have to do. Eventually, the police called search off.
Speaker 1: I mean, the divers are like, listen, we can't find him.
Speaker 1: He's not in here, and the police are like, we
Speaker 1: can't find him on the ground. We're not going to
Speaker 1: keep combing this area, and they're calling off. It's not
Speaker 1: that complicated cave really, I mean, it's twisty and long,
Speaker 1: but there's not that many side passages. For the most part.
Speaker 1: I am in agreement with Joe. I know, Devin that
Speaker 1: you feel a little different. But when I watched that,
Speaker 1: though the walls do undulate, they are essentially a straight line.
Speaker 1: From the overview from space. If you look at this cave,
Speaker 1: it seems to kind of be in a bit of
Speaker 1: a bend, maybe almost an S shape as it goes away.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it's a it's a tube
Speaker 1: that goes straight in the ground. I will I will
Speaker 1: agree with that for the moment. So there's no giant
Speaker 1: offshoot you you know, as far as we know, but
Speaker 1: there are places where there are holes, you know, between
Speaker 1: where the floor is and the wall that who knows
Speaker 1: what's behind there, because frankly, every single person who has
Speaker 1: gone into this cave has cared for their life and
Speaker 1: wants to come back alive, so they're not going to
Speaker 1: stick their head in there. So we don't know if
Speaker 1: there is a cavern in there, if somebody did squeeze
Speaker 1: in there, anything like that. So something to go along
Speaker 1: with that and why there may actually be offshoots that
Speaker 1: we don't know is the floor of the cave is
Speaker 1: very silty, and I've actually read accounts from divers who
Speaker 1: have um been stuck in uh sandy lanches, I believe
Speaker 1: they called it. It's very sandy, and they went into
Speaker 1: something and then the sands started coming in, the silts
Speaker 1: started coming in, and they had to dig themselves out,
Speaker 1: and for every two shovelfuls out or one out, too
Speaker 1: seemed to come in and it took them a while
Speaker 1: to get some headway to get back out. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it is entirely possible that he squeezed in a hole
Speaker 1: and he knocked something loose and the whole closed behind him.
Speaker 1: That is possible, and that could be some giant because
Speaker 1: we don't know. One of the other things they found
Speaker 1: was his shovel. They believe they think somebody I think
Speaker 1: it's his shovel because it was placed very deep in
Speaker 1: the cave, but they don't know that it was Ben's.
Speaker 1: But it's believed to be his. Yes, and it apparently
Speaker 1: matched the description of a picture, which is a standard
Speaker 1: issue folding. Oh yeah, No, it could have been anybody's,
Speaker 1: but it also could have been Ben's. Yes. Absolutely. The
Speaker 1: thing about it is is, uh, you know, I used
Speaker 1: to know some cavers did caving myself, and uh, and
Speaker 1: there's always the real hardcore ones really really want to
Speaker 1: push the cave. That means that if they find some
Speaker 1: little crack or crevice or hole, they'll go try to
Speaker 1: force your body into it to see if they can
Speaker 1: actually you know, break through and find another room or
Speaker 1: another cave or something like that. And the thing about
Speaker 1: it is is even the hardcore cavers that I used
Speaker 1: to know would never do something like that by themselves.
Speaker 1: Well you know, it's like, you know, maybe you want
Speaker 1: to when you get stuck, you want to have somebody
Speaker 1: to grab your feet and pull you back out of
Speaker 1: that hole. Yes. Yeah, So back to the McDaniels though,
Speaker 1: Ben's family. So while they're there, remember I said they
Speaker 1: were hanging, They were there while the search was going on,
Speaker 1: and then once the search was called off, what they
Speaker 1: decided to do was they decided to and this is
Speaker 1: the part that I told you they did where they
Speaker 1: kind of bungle things and they really made people mad,
Speaker 1: is they put out a ten thousand dollar reward for
Speaker 1: someone to find their son's body. Because at this point
Speaker 1: they know he's dead, but they say, we'll get They're
Speaker 1: pretty sure. They'll give ten thousand dollars to anyone who is,
Speaker 1: as they put it, brave enough to go find him. No,
Speaker 1: because all of the cave I was like, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: You know how much danger I put myself into going
Speaker 1: in this cave looking for him in the first place,
Speaker 1: and the cave diving communities up in arms, and they
Speaker 1: are saying, listen, you need to you need to pull
Speaker 1: back this reward offer. Your going to get somebody killed.
Speaker 1: The mcdan is on their part, they ignore that they
Speaker 1: increased the reward not once, but twice, to the tune
Speaker 1: of thirty thousand dollars totally in the end. Eventually they
Speaker 1: took they took that away, but they did only after
Speaker 1: a gentleman by the name of Larry Higginbotham and he's
Speaker 1: from Biloxi, Mississippi. March two thousand twelve. He uh, he
Speaker 1: drowned in the cave and it's believed, not confirmed, but
Speaker 1: people were pretty sure he was going in there and
Speaker 1: looking for Ben because he was having a hard time
Speaker 1: and he needed some cash. He thought, if I find
Speaker 1: He's evidently said something about finding this guy. He had
Speaker 1: also been following the case. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: cave diver who had been following the case since it started.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just like out of the blue, Oh,
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. I will. I've never done this before, but
Speaker 1: I'll do it. Yeah, no, no, absolutely not. I gotta
Speaker 1: say that must really suck to be that moment when
Speaker 1: when you coming about it. I don't want to think
Speaker 1: that through at all, the moment when you realize you're
Speaker 1: out of air or so Ben's um. Ben's parents did
Speaker 1: eventually withdraw the offer of the reward. They've still been
Speaker 1: very active in regards to the case. They are still
Speaker 1: very active on social media in anywhere that discusses the case.
Speaker 1: I've seen them come up in discussions, threads, from articles
Speaker 1: all over the place. Chances are they're probably listening to
Speaker 1: us right now. And if they are listening, I do
Speaker 1: wanna give my condolences for the loss of Ben and Paul.
Speaker 1: I feel terrible for these Yeah, we all do. And
Speaker 1: by the way, we've been saying so, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that Ben was a good guy. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're saying stuff like he was an incompetent cave diver. Question,
Speaker 1: I'm an incompetent cave divers too, and I'm also I'm
Speaker 1: also you know, I'm much more incompetent scuba diver than Ben. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had a respirator to take once and I was
Speaker 1: in a swimming pool. But I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: But okay, well that is our story. Okay, well I
Speaker 1: took a long time. Goodbye everybody. So at this point
Speaker 1: we should probably go ahead and get into the theories.
Speaker 1: And there are three very different theories. It's actually kind
Speaker 1: of an easy when there's three simple chippy UFO, drowning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought big Foot was in their nose rowing underwater
Speaker 1: big Foot, underwater fot that sounds like under water big Foot.
Speaker 1: You don't think Lockness monster did it? Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Nobody is nobody has actually proved that this this cave
Speaker 1: does not connect up with Locknuts. True. Nobody has Yeah,
Speaker 1: show me the proof. No, ain't there. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: one of the moments when I love working with you, Joe. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to theory number one, which is that Ben
Speaker 1: is still in the cave. Yeah, he's crawled into some
Speaker 1: tight little crawl they shouldn't have done. Here's here's something
Speaker 1: that people need to know about what this is. Sadly,
Speaker 1: what people have figured out after the fact, what happens
Speaker 1: to cave divers when they their bodies are retrieved. They
Speaker 1: tend to when they're running low on oxygen, panic, weird, strange,
Speaker 1: and what happens is their bodies tend to be found
Speaker 1: in little cracks and crevices that they're trying to squeeze
Speaker 1: them selves through in the mistaken belief that that is
Speaker 1: the way out. You know, they're panicking, their thrashing, cling,
Speaker 1: and so they get into it, and then that's where
Speaker 1: they die, and that's where their body stays, and that's
Speaker 1: where it's found. So it's possible, as we talked about,
Speaker 1: he could have been freaking out and gone into some
Speaker 1: teeny little cravice and stuck into an area. I mean, frankly,
Speaker 1: he could have been not even a little bit freaking
Speaker 1: out and got himself into a little area that he
Speaker 1: thought was gonna be because I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that we kind of glossed over is that he
Speaker 1: was very vocal around vortex springs and saying that he
Speaker 1: was going to discover, you know, he was going to
Speaker 1: find a different part of the cave, and he was
Speaker 1: going to go deeper than anybody else ever had, and
Speaker 1: he was going to find all this new stuff. He
Speaker 1: had a lot of bravado he did, and um, I
Speaker 1: you know it's it wouldn't surprise me that if he
Speaker 1: saw something he was like, oh, I can fit in
Speaker 1: that crack. There's got to be something interesting in there,
Speaker 1: and I can fit in there. He went through there
Speaker 1: and then got stuck. Well, it's it's yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: possible that he went through and he got stuck because
Speaker 1: it was a dead end and he couldn't get back out,
Speaker 1: or like we talked about before, the sand fills in
Speaker 1: the hole and there's no evidence of him having been there,
Speaker 1: or you know, his line got cut. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was diving with line No, I mean his like
Speaker 1: air line. Okay, So I don't know how it could
Speaker 1: have gotten cut unless somebody actually cut it. Well, if
Speaker 1: he had been like shimmying under rocks, I don't I
Speaker 1: didn't see a lot of sharp rocks down there. It's limestone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's not a whole lot of really jagged edge.
Speaker 1: The only problem I have, I know I'm the one
Speaker 1: who's saying it could have been this, but but here's
Speaker 1: the reason that it wasn't is that, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, all of the cave drivers that went
Speaker 1: down there afterwards reported seeing no disturbances. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about that briefly. Okay, So people who are listening,
Speaker 1: what you need to remember is that it is a
Speaker 1: silty bottom. So if you run your fin through it,
Speaker 1: you're gonna leave an obvious mark. If you're squeezing through
Speaker 1: a hole, you're going to scrape the stone and leave
Speaker 1: marks because there's there's algae and stuff growing on the rocks,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna scrape that off with your suit and
Speaker 1: your helm it and your arms and your tanks and
Speaker 1: all of that. You're gonna be leave very obvious signs
Speaker 1: on the walls and the floor and the ceiling. And
Speaker 1: there were none that stood out as this is brand
Speaker 1: new and this weird. There's a bunch of screen marks
Speaker 1: that go into this sandy thing that's just here like that.
Speaker 1: That wasn't what happened. And it does sound like it
Speaker 1: wasn't very frequent that people were going down into this cave.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where you would be able to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody went down a day or two before him. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't one of those things where they were like
Speaker 1: you know, several people a day going, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that for sure. I don't know the traffic. I
Speaker 1: have nothing that has ever said what the traffic in
Speaker 1: that cave is. But there was the one report one
Speaker 1: guy who went down like really really deep. Who was this,
Speaker 1: you know, legendary deep and he said he said there
Speaker 1: was evidence of no one having ever been as far
Speaker 1: and as he was. So that's true. M Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that most of the divers that played around in
Speaker 1: Vortech Springs probably they do. They do. Here's the so
Speaker 1: I talked about for divers that do die in caves
Speaker 1: is that they tend to cram themselves in a little holes.
Speaker 1: There's also been a number of cave divers who have
Speaker 1: disappeared and everybody has gone looking for him, and for
Speaker 1: several years couldn't find them. And then five ten years later,
Speaker 1: somebody's bopping along kind of like what Devil was saying,
Speaker 1: and suddenly spotted and opening. Because again it's pitch black,
Speaker 1: you only have your lights, so if you're not at
Speaker 1: the right angle, you may not see it. And they
Speaker 1: have gone through a bend and they've looked up and
Speaker 1: there is a mask on the floor and a wetsuit
Speaker 1: full of bones. It does happen that way, and there's
Speaker 1: been a great number of a number of divers have
Speaker 1: been found. Though, Yeah, I don't think it's going to
Speaker 1: happen again. That's not that's not that complicated. But also
Speaker 1: also in in Ben's vortex, when the dive team went down,
Speaker 1: they went down with a high definition camera and a
Speaker 1: priest all a light like you could see anywhere than
Speaker 1: anyone could have gone banks that they really illuminated. It
Speaker 1: was so it felt like you could see everything and
Speaker 1: there wasn't really any Just know they didn't. They didn't
Speaker 1: from somebody, miss um. Now, the thing about you said
Speaker 1: Joe earlier is that Ben was saying that he was
Speaker 1: going to find the end and he was gonna find
Speaker 1: things that people had never done before. Again, this is
Speaker 1: one of those things that his his dad. I don't
Speaker 1: know how his dad's came upon this, but his dad
Speaker 1: said online that everybody went the wrong way in the
Speaker 1: cave and that if they would just go the right way,
Speaker 1: they would find Ben a lot of sense. No, I
Speaker 1: know you're joking, but it doesn't make any sense to
Speaker 1: me because everything I've seen on this nothing supports that
Speaker 1: so I don't even know where Mr McDaniels got that information.
Speaker 1: He's never been in there. I mean, I'm sure he's
Speaker 1: seen the same maps that we've seen. I'm sure he has,
Speaker 1: if not better ones, And it sounds to me like
Speaker 1: many many divers dove all the way as far as
Speaker 1: they could, as far as they could squeeze through. Although
Speaker 1: I guess the interesting thing is, um, gosh, what's her name,
Speaker 1: Jill from Ben's vortex? Yeah, Jill, Yeah, she uh. She
Speaker 1: said that when she looked at the map that Ben
Speaker 1: had been making, that it didn't correspond at all. She's
Speaker 1: not the only one with her understanding of the cave,
Speaker 1: So I guess it is that is an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: Whether he was mapping it poorly or maybe he did
Speaker 1: he was going a different way, I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 1: he wasn't. Maybe there is some hole that leads to
Speaker 1: a different part out of the you know, piano room
Speaker 1: for instance, right, so that he hadn't actually been jumping
Speaker 1: the gate this entire time, that there was some random
Speaker 1: hole that he had discovered and that's how he went,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so. I doubt it,
Speaker 1: because I mean, there was I don't know how many divers.
Speaker 1: I got the sense at least a couple of dozen
Speaker 1: divers went down. They're searching the cave. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of dietime we're logged looking for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can't believe that, you know, they've ben found
Speaker 1: some hole somewhere. I can't believe those guys didn't find
Speaker 1: it too. I would agree with that unless there was
Speaker 1: like a sand avalanche. But I mean, yeah, just that's
Speaker 1: worth mentioning. I guess too. But there's some other really
Speaker 1: compelling evidence against him not being in there. I guess
Speaker 1: him being in there. I guess him not being in there,
Speaker 1: against him being in there, and and that his The
Speaker 1: cave is full of aquatic life, specifically eels, which are carnivores,
Speaker 1: and so if there had been a body in the water,
Speaker 1: there should have been increased activity among the eel population,
Speaker 1: and there should have also been a spike in the
Speaker 1: bacteria in the water due to the presence of a
Speaker 1: decomposing human body. Yeah, they've been testing the water, right
Speaker 1: they Yeah, they tested it immediately, like a month straight.
Speaker 1: They tested it, and there's no increased eel activity and
Speaker 1: there is no spike in the bacteria. So that is
Speaker 1: what has led the vast majority of people to say
Speaker 1: there's no way his body's in that cave, because the
Speaker 1: scientific evidence says he's not here. There's no slings of him.
Speaker 1: So that then leads us during number two. Ben's not
Speaker 1: in the cave. Ben's not in the cave, Then where
Speaker 1: is he. Ben's not alive, but Ben is not in
Speaker 1: the cave. That is what theory number two is. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you we've briefly touched on him. There's a guy
Speaker 1: by the name of Ed Sorensen who threw a series
Speaker 1: of miscommunications I didn't get to talk to. I tried
Speaker 1: to line that up. But Ed is in that area
Speaker 1: and among cave divers he is very well revered. He
Speaker 1: is one of the most experienced. He has his own
Speaker 1: he's got his own school and he teaches cave diving.
Speaker 1: When the guy knows how to cave dive, he's been
Speaker 1: doing it for years. I read Gripping Tail about this
Speaker 1: family that had gotten trapped in the cave and he
Speaker 1: actually wanted to rescue their daughter. Yeah, he's pulled out
Speaker 1: more than one person alive. Because believe it or not,
Speaker 1: if you know somebody's lost diving in a cave. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: you can send a trained professional end to get him.
Speaker 1: And he has done it multiple times. The guy is
Speaker 1: a really good diver. He's good at caves and he
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. Yeah, if I ever go cave diving,
Speaker 1: hopefully he's going to be around somewhere nearby. I'll go
Speaker 1: to the school, but I'm never getting a cave. So
Speaker 1: the thing is is that Ed shows up several days
Speaker 1: after Ben has disappeared. They call him in and he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go I'll go in and I'll go look. And
Speaker 1: he's got better equipment for cave diving than Ben had.
Speaker 1: He's got the experience. He also was using a under
Speaker 1: water propulsion device, you know, one of those little skimmer things.
Speaker 1: He could. Always wanted to have one of those, ever
Speaker 1: since I was a kid, and I wanted to see
Speaker 1: where he used stuff like that so he could shot
Speaker 1: himself down through there so he could cover ground faster.
Speaker 1: And then he started diving the cave. He was dropping
Speaker 1: tanks along his way, so he had tons of air
Speaker 1: supply with him, not the band, and then he is
Speaker 1: he's looking all over and he goes he's the one
Speaker 1: who went to feet back. Yeah, and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: there's there was no signs of anybody in that cave.
Speaker 1: So he is one of the huge proponents of the
Speaker 1: guy's not in the cave. I didn't find him, and
Speaker 1: I found everybody else who got lost in over the cave.
Speaker 1: I kind of I kind of gotta say, well, Lead
Speaker 1: probably knows what he's talking about. Would say, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he ain't in the cave. Well, that solves that problem.
Speaker 1: Actually it doesn't it. Then this to a gentleman that
Speaker 1: we mentioned briefly earlier, which is our resident skeeezy character
Speaker 1: in this story, the owner Lowe Kelly. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: guy who Lowell Kelly, so Mr Kelly, as we said,
Speaker 1: was the owner of Vortex Springs and uh so he
Speaker 1: says that he was there the night that Ben disappeared,
Speaker 1: later than Chuck and EDWARDO. And he said he didn't
Speaker 1: see Ben and didn't see anything hanky going on except
Speaker 1: for that random drunk guy he says, walked up at
Speaker 1: sunset and wanted to go diving. The drunk guy, by
Speaker 1: the way, is only in Lowell Kelly's account. I've never
Speaker 1: seen him anywhere else. And he supposedly walked onto the site,
Speaker 1: which is not easy to do. So I sort of
Speaker 1: discount the whole drunk guy thing. But Kelly says, maybe,
Speaker 1: well maybe that guy I was responsive for what happened
Speaker 1: to Ben. That what he said, well, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: alluded to. I discount that right away because on foot
Speaker 1: and drunk is a long way to go to get
Speaker 1: in there, and so it just kind of it doesn't
Speaker 1: add up. Um So then, but here's why I don't
Speaker 1: like low Kelly in general, besides the fact that I
Speaker 1: just think he was a bit of a dirt bag,
Speaker 1: is that he had an employee that he said owed
Speaker 1: him thousands upon thousands of dollars. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't know the date that this happened. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm about to talk about. It's prior to Ben's disappearance.
Speaker 1: We know it because he got into legal trouble. But
Speaker 1: what he did is he had an employee who he
Speaker 1: said owed him thousands of dollars. He got that employee
Speaker 1: into his vehicle, we believe under darrest, took them out
Speaker 1: into the swamp Everglade Woods something something that attempted to
Speaker 1: extract the money. From them with a baseball bat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: excepted that employee managed to get away, and low Kelly
Speaker 1: only earned himself a bunch of charges, kidnapping an assault
Speaker 1: being two of them, but he got away probation. He
Speaker 1: got very lucky. He only got probation and he didn't
Speaker 1: even have to serve all that. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that was the lucky part. Yeah, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think he had very good luck. Because a year after
Speaker 1: Ben's disappearance, were looking at two thousand eleven, there's a
Speaker 1: barbecue happening at Vortex Springs and according to the the story,
Speaker 1: and I'm using air quotes here, he fell down some stairs.
Speaker 1: Take that to mean whatever you want. All I know
Speaker 1: is that he was injured. Somebody gave him a ride
Speaker 1: home and put him in his bath that night. Somebody
Speaker 1: else showed up in his house the next day and
Speaker 1: found him in a very bad stage, in a coma. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think he was in a coma quite at
Speaker 1: that point, but then they took him to the hospital.
Speaker 1: He was in a coma. He died within a month.
Speaker 1: After that. He was in hospice for basically a month.
Speaker 1: Head injuries is what I have to infer. This whole
Speaker 1: thing means is he fell down the stairs and wailed
Speaker 1: his head quite severely. And this is one of those
Speaker 1: cases where you think, well, if instead of taking him
Speaker 1: home and helping him out of his clothes and helping
Speaker 1: him in a shower and then laying him down in
Speaker 1: his bathtub to sleep it off, if you had just
Speaker 1: taken him to the hospital, he might a lip. It
Speaker 1: might have been a good idea. Yeah, but he did
Speaker 1: try to beat money out of a person with a
Speaker 1: baseball bat, so I don't know. Well, it might have been,
Speaker 1: it might not have been the person who was helping
Speaker 1: him call. He may have said, if you take me
Speaker 1: to the hospital, you're fired. Yeah, I mean, this guy
Speaker 1: seems the rational behavior to begin with. I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that he was in a cognitive
Speaker 1: place to say things like that, but maybe you agree
Speaker 1: entirely with that. So yeah, so Mr Kelly passed away. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you he's but he has a suspect for you. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a suspect because let's run down this road. Let's
Speaker 1: say that Eduardo and Chuck let him in the cave. Well,
Speaker 1: EDWARDO specifically and Ben goes in and Ben drowns. Well,
Speaker 1: the water it's an upwelling, it's all coming out of
Speaker 1: the cave. And it's entirely possible that Ben's body was
Speaker 1: pushed out of the cave and he came to the surface,
Speaker 1: at which point Lowell finds him. And I understand that
Speaker 1: this is hard if you look at the map, because
Speaker 1: it does some some kind of switchbacks back and forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to believe the body would actually
Speaker 1: if it was positively point, that it would actually come
Speaker 1: up to the surface, because there's like a spot, there's
Speaker 1: several spots, one spot right outside the cave entrance in
Speaker 1: the piano he was, if he was positively buoyant, where
Speaker 1: his body would have wound up. Well, I'm not in
Speaker 1: disagreement with that, particularly for it to have happened that fast.
Speaker 1: It's possible. I mean, also could have gotten caught on
Speaker 1: the gate. He probably would have got I mean, the
Speaker 1: hole in the gate isn't that big. Okay, So maybe
Speaker 1: Eduardo and Chuck said something to Lowell, and at nine
Speaker 1: o'clock Lowell went down and found Ben dead. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: add that to the mix. Either way, Lowell realizes that
Speaker 1: Ben is drowned and Lowell has already dealt with the
Speaker 1: heat of the divers that died in that cave in
Speaker 1: the past and says he got rid of the body.
Speaker 1: I got to get rid of the body. So he
Speaker 1: hauls Ben out and he takes him somewhere and he
Speaker 1: buries him, or he throws him in a swamp and
Speaker 1: lets the gators get him. Can I tell you what
Speaker 1: I think about this theory? Yeah, well, it sucks because
Speaker 1: he didn't do a very good job of sanitizing the
Speaker 1: crime scene. Remember one he leaves, He leaves the three
Speaker 1: tanks behind in a pickup truck, all of which you
Speaker 1: know he would think he would have gotten rid of.
Speaker 1: So here's a question. What if Ben, Well, what if
Speaker 1: actually luell Um said, hey, Edward, oh, Chuck, I know
Speaker 1: you guys usually hang out wait for Ben, but I
Speaker 1: can stay. I'll stay, right, So that explains why they
Speaker 1: didn't stay, because that's extremely out of the ordinary for them.
Speaker 1: He goes down and you know, finds Ben, or maybe
Speaker 1: he's annoyed with Ben or I don't know what you know.
Speaker 1: So he does pull him up, but then he thinks, okay,
Speaker 1: if I just leave the truck and leave the tanks
Speaker 1: and leave everything else. People will just assume that Ben
Speaker 1: drowned and it will be a non issue and there
Speaker 1: won't be a thing. I mean, why sanitize it that much?
Speaker 1: Because he's trying to, Because there's two reasons. Either a
Speaker 1: he doesn't want the heat that he has already gotten
Speaker 1: by having divers die in the cave before, which by
Speaker 1: not sanitizing the crime scene he and up getting anyway.
Speaker 1: Or it's entirely possible that some shady dealings were going
Speaker 1: on on property at night, at which point you want
Speaker 1: to get rid of the cops any attention from the police, like,
Speaker 1: you know, get get him away, Get him away, get
Speaker 1: him away. I have nothing to say that Kelly was
Speaker 1: doing anything weird like that, but it's the only thing
Speaker 1: that I can think of that would justify him ditch
Speaker 1: in the body. But I completely agree with Joe that
Speaker 1: he would leave a truck that is a prime evidence
Speaker 1: and oh it just happens to have a bunch of
Speaker 1: money sitting in it as well. It doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense for him to get rid of the body, not
Speaker 1: get rid of the truck. And because if the truck
Speaker 1: and the tanks, but if the truck has found fifty
Speaker 1: miles away. Yeah, well that's the beauty part. How does
Speaker 1: he move the truck with the keys? He way? I
Speaker 1: I don't Yeah, I don't know exactly what you do
Speaker 1: when you're scuba diving. If you have a locker inside
Speaker 1: the scuba shop, maybe will you leave your leave your
Speaker 1: wallet and your keys and stuff. Yeah, I'm not really sure,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there was a way to get into
Speaker 1: the truck. Well, frankly, I think it cast less suspicious
Speaker 1: on low if something like if he did kill Lull
Speaker 1: for instance, right, if he liked actively killed Ben. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if law killed Ben. Yeah, if Ben killed Loule,
Speaker 1: he did a hell ofmet changing. But so then it
Speaker 1: is less suspicious that the cars there and the money
Speaker 1: is there and all that stuff because you just assumed
Speaker 1: that something happened to him. Yeah, okay, like you may
Speaker 1: catch heat for like another person died, but if you
Speaker 1: have a ward of saying, listen, this guy didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was doing, but I let him in anyway
Speaker 1: because he was going to go in anyway, and you
Speaker 1: were able to kind of cast this in this guy
Speaker 1: like these people didn't. This guy didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was doing. He just he accidentally killed himself. It was
Speaker 1: an accident. Maybe that's less heat than oh yeah killed
Speaker 1: the guy. I mean, well, I still don't understand his
Speaker 1: motivation to Yeah, I don't. I don't think. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about how shady some of these
Speaker 1: people were, and I'm not sure that any of them
Speaker 1: really were all that shady. But the thing about it
Speaker 1: is is when you when you commit murder, you don't
Speaker 1: leave the corpse. Like I work in an office. Now,
Speaker 1: if I was to go murder somebody in dispose of
Speaker 1: the body, I wouldn't leave it in the lobby of
Speaker 1: the office building I work in. I would say, I
Speaker 1: would take it out. I would bake that body disappear
Speaker 1: permanently somewhere far away from me. Yeah, I mean so,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody that worked at at Vortex Springs
Speaker 1: is really a suspect in my book. But if you're
Speaker 1: somebody who hung out at Vortex Springs and you happen
Speaker 1: to know Ben, and you know he's spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time, you know, in that cave pushing the envelopen stuff,
Speaker 1: and for some reason or another, you kill him, either
Speaker 1: deliberately or accidentally. Well, you get rid of the body
Speaker 1: and then you go park his truck and then draw
Speaker 1: and drop some tanks into the end of the vortex.
Speaker 1: So there's one spot if you dropped him in here,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't think a tank would roll all
Speaker 1: the way down to the gate. I mean if it
Speaker 1: got past this one. So that what Joe is pointing
Speaker 1: too is the map, And on the map there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a bend in the base of the bowl
Speaker 1: before it rolls into the actual cave itself. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I don't think, Joe, I I think what you're getting
Speaker 1: at is it is nearly impossible for somebody to be
Speaker 1: able to from the surface to set tanks in. I
Speaker 1: would have to have them get all the way to
Speaker 1: the bottom. It would have to be a diver, Yes,
Speaker 1: have to be a diver. But here's here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: is that if you got to that cave entrance point
Speaker 1: this point right here where where it narrows down, and
Speaker 1: you just started just rolled that thing down, it would
Speaker 1: go all the way to the gate and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: go any further. It can't roll any further because there's
Speaker 1: a gate there. So you can drop it there so
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if somebody wanted to if somebody wanted
Speaker 1: to kill him, somebody wanted to disappear him, disappear him,
Speaker 1: and then and then totally totally misdirect everything. You take
Speaker 1: his truck, you park it there, and you put the
Speaker 1: tank in the in the vortex, and then in the spring.
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, I guess we don't know that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't know that. We don't know actually
Speaker 1: that he didn't successfully complete his dive that night and
Speaker 1: leave and go home. I was just going to say,
Speaker 1: we don't know with certainty that who what EDWARDO and
Speaker 1: Chuck saw was in fact Ben. That's true too, I mean,
Speaker 1: I see, I assume they sort of knew what they
Speaker 1: identified because he knew what his gear looked like like
Speaker 1: as wet suiting his tanks. Yeah, but it could have
Speaker 1: been somebody else in his stuff. I guess that is
Speaker 1: that is? Are you okay? I'm just gonna I just
Speaker 1: want to ask you a question, because I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I know where you're heading here. Are you saying
Speaker 1: that it could have been Low in Ben's gear? Not
Speaker 1: just Low? I'm just saying, if we're going to say
Speaker 1: somebody had killed Ben and disposed of his body. Then
Speaker 1: they created this whole other thing, right that Ben maybe
Speaker 1: didn't actually do. Maybe Ben had been dead for ours,
Speaker 1: maybe he had not been dead for hours, but that
Speaker 1: a decoy story was set for him to set up
Speaker 1: the idea that he I know was the red blue pillar,
Speaker 1: the blue pillar. Just totally absolutely. But I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that it is possible because it is. No, it's a
Speaker 1: that's a good point because you know, how do you
Speaker 1: identify a guy by his gear? I'm assumed the most
Speaker 1: part of the dark. Yeah, but all the you know
Speaker 1: what if I saw the guy based on the video
Speaker 1: we saw, if I saw him several times, that is
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's a pretty unique set up. His specific helmet,
Speaker 1: his mask is not every mask is the same, his tanks,
Speaker 1: but it's gear. It's his gear. So like if somebody
Speaker 1: dressed in Ben's gear, even if they were like not
Speaker 1: six feet and two pounds, if they were kind of close,
Speaker 1: it'd be pretty easy in that much dark to just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been Yeah. So all this guy was doing is
Speaker 1: what that guy was doing, and he was just placing
Speaker 1: the truck there and taking the tanks down to plant them.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it's not likely, but it's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and I think the reason probably the tank
Speaker 1: wasn't any further than the gate is that guy whoever
Speaker 1: it was and then again saw hypothetical, really didn't want
Speaker 1: to go past the gate. Uh maybe in the g
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So I'm just I'm just gonna drop it
Speaker 1: right here. That's good. And so and then and then
Speaker 1: hung out down in the piano room for a while,
Speaker 1: just hung out, hung out for a while, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you know, yeah, and then eventually after it's dark,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, it's still they're on out and then
Speaker 1: going on and walk home, and and that in fact,
Speaker 1: it might be that. So how far you know, the
Speaker 1: talking box? How far down is that vertically? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's forty Yeah, it's I think that it's anybody
Speaker 1: can any regular diver can get to that box. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So my understanding is this is that so if you
Speaker 1: hang out down there and you you go through your
Speaker 1: complete decompression routine. And then was my understanding is that
Speaker 1: the two tank they found, one down low and one
Speaker 1: up on the platform where the talking box is. Now
Speaker 1: imagine you know, you just you just parked the truck there,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have to hoof it. You gotta walk aways,
Speaker 1: and do you you gotta you gotta take those tanks
Speaker 1: with you or you can just leave behind. So whoever
Speaker 1: it was could have just left them on the platform
Speaker 1: at the talking box and then just swam up to
Speaker 1: the surface and gotten out that way. So that's that's
Speaker 1: just a rough theory. Yeah, I mean we're we're in
Speaker 1: conjecture canyon at this point first, very much. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I but I think that foul play is is
Speaker 1: quite possible here. So I think we've covered that theory
Speaker 1: and be it to death. Yeah, let's let's go to
Speaker 1: our final theory. Let's dive into it, which is that
Speaker 1: Ben ran away and started a new life. He's living
Speaker 1: out a farm with Dorothy Arnold Amelia Earhart. I know
Speaker 1: that every disappeared person's story comes across as and they
Speaker 1: left to start a new life. Actually pretty good. This
Speaker 1: one's actually got some legs under it, small legs, yes,
Speaker 1: they're short legs. So it's a very short theory. So
Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit already. Is that
Speaker 1: there's a documentary out there called Ben's vortex, and we
Speaker 1: haven't really taught. We've talked about things we saw in it,
Speaker 1: but what it is it's a husband and wife team
Speaker 1: of documentary makers who also happened to be divers. Well,
Speaker 1: they're both divers. Jill the wife is a cave diver
Speaker 1: professional and yeah, Robert McClellan, he is not, but he
Speaker 1: is a diver. So they started making a documentary and
Speaker 1: their initial idea was, listen, we're gonna go in, We're
Speaker 1: gonna film the cave. We're gonna bring this back to
Speaker 1: Ben's parents so that they understand how what this cave
Speaker 1: is like and that he's not in there, so that
Speaker 1: they'll take the reward away, so that they'll stop enticing
Speaker 1: people to go in there and potentially lose their life. Now,
Speaker 1: over the course of their documentary, Jill changes her position
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty degree. She comes to believe that
Speaker 1: Ben is in the cave based on his maps, but
Speaker 1: her husband, he Robert, he's still to this day thinks
Speaker 1: that Ben just skipped down. That I appreciate that bit
Speaker 1: about this documentary the most because they don't follow a
Speaker 1: common line. They don't and and she outright says like
Speaker 1: I really want to say he's not in the cave,
Speaker 1: but I think he's in the cave, which is crazy,
Speaker 1: especially because her husband even says sorry. But her husband
Speaker 1: even says, you are the one who presented me with
Speaker 1: all of the evidence to say that he is not
Speaker 1: in the cave, which is why I think he's not
Speaker 1: in the cave. And she goes, I know, but I
Speaker 1: think he's in the cave. It's great, like it's a
Speaker 1: totally it's a hung jury. It's one of a few
Speaker 1: times you see that. So here's the here's the thing
Speaker 1: about the the documentary. It's really interesting. But Ben's parents,
Speaker 1: they go to visit the family and they are very
Speaker 1: open with these folks, and they let them film everything
Speaker 1: and they talk with them, and at one point they
Speaker 1: come to realize that Ben is not their only son,
Speaker 1: but they actually have three sons. Uh. And they had
Speaker 1: a son whose name was Paul, and he had died
Speaker 1: two years prior, at the age of twenty two from
Speaker 1: a stroke or if you if you look go out
Speaker 1: and read, and he died of an overdose. But you know, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's what that's what it starts to come out
Speaker 1: as they start looking at the autopsy, and as they
Speaker 1: start um digging into some of the history, they come
Speaker 1: to question the stroke theory. So they settle on and
Speaker 1: they get the it's the autopsic report, right, They get
Speaker 1: the autopsy report and it says overdose on it. So
Speaker 1: then they start to think about what the family has
Speaker 1: done and they realized that, well, they're they're strangely controlled
Speaker 1: about information and the way things are presented, which from
Speaker 1: one perspective, I totally get their grieving family and they
Speaker 1: want their child to be put in the best light.
Speaker 1: But on the other side, they start this whole thing,
Speaker 1: this whole foundation for stroke prevention, which is something that
Speaker 1: their kid didn't die from. So it's a little kind
Speaker 1: of heading it up and everything. Yeah, so it's very questionable.
Speaker 1: And as you read correspondence from Ben to his family,
Speaker 1: he always makes sure it always did everything that he writes,
Speaker 1: he's always thanking his parents for everything they've done. Now
Speaker 1: that could be because a he realizes how much they've
Speaker 1: done for him and he is sincerely thankful, or it's
Speaker 1: brought up maybe that's because he is required to say
Speaker 1: those kind of things for the cash to keep coming
Speaker 1: in or the hell to not rain down and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know, I mean just conjecture. Well, and
Speaker 1: we should clarify that when we say required, it's not
Speaker 1: as though his parents said, listen, if you don't say
Speaker 1: to us every single time, it's a learned behavior. It's
Speaker 1: a learned behavior, right. I mean, I think almost every
Speaker 1: kid who's ever relied on their parents as an adult
Speaker 1: learns that what you I mean, whether you feel it
Speaker 1: or not, you have to say, I am so thankful
Speaker 1: to you, and that's how you keep getting things. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's true. Because as soon as you start saying, ah, man,
Speaker 1: screw you guys, they're gonna be like, okay, just kidding,
Speaker 1: we won't give you a bunch of Hey mom, Dad,
Speaker 1: you're a total senter jerks. Oh well, you know it's positive.
Speaker 1: We're going to make for you because we love you.
Speaker 1: Never mind, we don't love you that, we don't love
Speaker 1: you that much. Instead, Dad wants a new new motorcycle.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's that's the way it comes across.
Speaker 1: Its completely possible. So now, so let me get this straight. So, um, so,
Speaker 1: he's living for free in this condo in Florida, and
Speaker 1: um and also getting cash with the parents and all
Speaker 1: he's got to do is say thanks occasionally. So is
Speaker 1: that the kind of job you would quit? No? No,
Speaker 1: And that is my problem with this theory is that
Speaker 1: if Ben ran away, let's the theory is just so
Speaker 1: we lay it out in its entirety, is that Ben
Speaker 1: went down, Ben came up and marched on foot with
Speaker 1: his gear out of vortex springs, or had somebody meet
Speaker 1: him and took him there and left his truck behind.
Speaker 1: My problem with that theory is that he would have
Speaker 1: had to start over, so he wouldn't have had any cash.
Speaker 1: So it seems crazy to me that he would have
Speaker 1: left the wallet with seven bucks in it exactly I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean it leads credibility to the dying idea. If
Speaker 1: you leave a wallet with least a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: bucks in it, but seven hundred bucks and also also
Speaker 1: the dog. You know, he left his dog behind. His
Speaker 1: dog could have starved. The dog is troubling. The cash
Speaker 1: is less troubling to me. It doesn't seem to me
Speaker 1: that seven hundred dollars seemed like a ton of money
Speaker 1: to him, given that he was having seen the house
Speaker 1: that he grew up in in Tennessee. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible that he had a bunch of money while
Speaker 1: away and it was just like whatever he had in
Speaker 1: his wallet at the time. I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars a lot of money. I think most
Speaker 1: people do. But I also didn't grow up in a
Speaker 1: house like he did. But my, I guess my my
Speaker 1: issue and why I pointed the seven hundred bucks is
Speaker 1: that he's going to have to start over. And chances
Speaker 1: are when he starts over, he's going to have to
Speaker 1: start over in a lifestyle he is entirely not accustomed to.
Speaker 1: So knowing that you were going to have to live
Speaker 1: like you've cheaper and than you've ever done it, and
Speaker 1: so under the radar, you take every dollar that you
Speaker 1: could conceivably take. That That's what I would if if
Speaker 1: I was going to disappear. Yeah, but you've lived poor before.
Speaker 1: I have. Yeah, So like I know some kids who
Speaker 1: have never lived poor before in their entire lives. And
Speaker 1: then like we went to college and suddenly their parents
Speaker 1: were like, well, we'll give you seven d a month
Speaker 1: allowance and they were like, I can't live on that
Speaker 1: would mean seven hundred dollars a month and For me,
Speaker 1: it was mind boggling, right, because that's like, that's so
Speaker 1: much money. You can do almost anything you want with
Speaker 1: that amount of money. Well, it depends. And if that's
Speaker 1: that's after after rent, No, no, no, that's like their
Speaker 1: parents were paying for everything that was there, like spending
Speaker 1: money that they're walking around. No, that's really good. But
Speaker 1: I think that there are kids in this world, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible that he got to the age
Speaker 1: of thirty where he just like, I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: get fifty thou dollars in debt to the I R
Speaker 1: S for not spending any money, right, you don't incur
Speaker 1: as much debt and have as much stuff going on
Speaker 1: for not living large or beyond your means. So I
Speaker 1: think it's possible that you know, what's the it's the
Speaker 1: rest of development. Quote, what is it a banana? How
Speaker 1: much could it cost? Ten dollars? Like, I think there
Speaker 1: are people in this world who have no idea, and
Speaker 1: so seven may seem like, no, I don't, I don't
Speaker 1: need that amount of money, And it's entirely possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that Ben showed up in Florida with
Speaker 1: you know, five tanks. He probably picked up tanks while
Speaker 1: he was there, and he may I mean there was
Speaker 1: Joe was t and I were talking about this earlier.
Speaker 1: Their standard sized tanks. It's not like he bought anything crazy,
Speaker 1: but tanks are cheap. No, no, no, yeah, they were
Speaker 1: there like tanks. He himself a set of tanks, or
Speaker 1: at least a set of tanks and gear. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: It is a situation where he may not have and
Speaker 1: that possibly could have been what got him in trouble
Speaker 1: in his businesses. He didn't understand the way the world
Speaker 1: works when it comes to money. Entirely possible and go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say he was also doing that
Speaker 1: real estate thing, and well he started out in construction
Speaker 1: and he thought he could spin himself into real estates
Speaker 1: and but that was like it was like a pyramid scheme.
Speaker 1: Real estate. Also the year and also the year was
Speaker 1: two thousand ten is one of the real estate markets
Speaker 1: was really in a crapper. The thing about it is
Speaker 1: is the whole disappearing thing is I just don't see
Speaker 1: what it got him. I agree, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: the negatives are well, the positives are basically nothing possible.
Speaker 1: The positive are you're out from underneath the thumb of
Speaker 1: mom and dad and you are free of them. Who. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't need to disappear to do that. Well,
Speaker 1: you might need to disappear to get rid of your
Speaker 1: fifty dollars worth of debt to the I R S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did hear. I did hear one rumor online at
Speaker 1: the fifty grand had actually been paid off. I've never
Speaker 1: seen that. I'm not I'm not sing I did see that.
Speaker 1: I did see that, But you know, I could be
Speaker 1: wrong about that. But you know, maybe his parents paid
Speaker 1: it off and they just said, hey, you know, some
Speaker 1: whenever you're whenever you're rack back in money, whenever you're
Speaker 1: back in the money and you've got a lot of money,
Speaker 1: you can pay us back. Please please do it. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we'll just take it out of your inheritance or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I mean it could have been something
Speaker 1: like that. I wish you had inherit. I mean, no
Speaker 1: doubt me too. Yeah. And the thing of hot it
Speaker 1: is is, I mean he was walking away from some
Speaker 1: good stuff. I mean he had a dog, he had
Speaker 1: a he had a girlfriend, and and I've seen I've
Speaker 1: seen stuff on the webs on the web about how,
Speaker 1: oh my god, his parents were horrible people. Well, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were. I don't think they worry either,
Speaker 1: and I don't. For me, my biggest drawback on the
Speaker 1: Walking Away from Life is to see how Paul's death
Speaker 1: affected his family and to know that I don't think
Speaker 1: that Ben was like a horrible guy. And I can't
Speaker 1: imagine even if you didn't really care that much about
Speaker 1: your family, putting your family through something like that. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's my biggest Okay, so the things that I
Speaker 1: see that could and I'm going to do this and
Speaker 1: then let's let's finish. The theory is that his if
Speaker 1: he believed his brother had died of a stroke, or
Speaker 1: knew that his brother didn't actually die of a stroke,
Speaker 1: but his parents put up this front that said it
Speaker 1: was a stroke and we're gonna do all this stuff
Speaker 1: and by way, by the way, you're gonna be the
Speaker 1: front man of that organ ization, he may have kind
Speaker 1: of just got sick of it. I can't take this anymore.
Speaker 1: The other thing that may have driven it driven him
Speaker 1: to that was he had not too long before he disappeared,
Speaker 1: gone home. And one of the things that you see
Speaker 1: in Ben's vortex is you You go through the house,
Speaker 1: and I would call it a shrine. There is a
Speaker 1: shrine to Paul in a single room. It is nothing
Speaker 1: but Paul. Same thing now for Ben. And they got
Speaker 1: a house big enough that they have an entire room
Speaker 1: dedicated to this one person, to himself. Well, but he
Speaker 1: may have I mean, it may have been the situation
Speaker 1: where he had to walk, you know, his parents and
Speaker 1: go visit Paul, and he had to go in there
Speaker 1: and he just feels, you know, it feels like he's
Speaker 1: betraying the truth and just so sick and so fed up.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I know people get that way. And
Speaker 1: it may have been that he said, I'm gonna hatch
Speaker 1: this cocka baby plan and I'm getting the hell out
Speaker 1: of Dodge and I never have to see you people
Speaker 1: again because your liars and I can't take it anymore
Speaker 1: making this up. I think that probably he might have
Speaker 1: been totally on board with the whole thing about about
Speaker 1: hushing up, the whole overdose thing. What's Joe, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite theory? My favorite theory is that somebody killed him
Speaker 1: and made it look like he died on a dive.
Speaker 1: I think he's in a crevice somewhere. I'm tied. I'm
Speaker 1: that he's in the cave. I am seventy percent that
Speaker 1: he is not in the cave. And I believe that
Speaker 1: of that set is Lowell Kelly is involved. I don't
Speaker 1: know how. I don't know where he's at, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I really, I don't believe he's in there. I would
Speaker 1: say low Kelly in my mind is like involved, but
Speaker 1: I think he probably is just in the cave. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, are all three different? Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: Lowell Kelly would be involved. Again, because you don't crap
Speaker 1: in your own nest um. He could be looking at chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, given the fact that there is evidence that
Speaker 1: you know, I mean cars parked there, he left tanks behind.
Speaker 1: There's it looks like maybe he drowned in the cave. Lawsuit,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean seriously, and so or if it's murder,
Speaker 1: it's not a lawsuit. They have to sign a waiver. Well,
Speaker 1: there's that, but waivers. Waivers can always be broken by
Speaker 1: the wouldn't have signed a waiver? Yeah, Ben wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to go in the cave. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so there hasn't been a law suit against them because
Speaker 1: there's no body to prove that he died in the cave.
Speaker 1: That's why I think that that he's not in the cave,
Speaker 1: and I think Lolls involved. I think he died. This
Speaker 1: jerk went in there and never sign a waiver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get the pantsuit off of me. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But so he disposed of the body, but he didn't
Speaker 1: dispose of the tanks in the truck. Again, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: we're laboring the crow about of this all right. So
Speaker 1: at this point we have gone over this story quite
Speaker 1: a lot if you if you want to read any
Speaker 1: more about it, we will have links to it on
Speaker 1: our website website of course Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
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Speaker 1: random mystery stuff on there. Well, I love it, that
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Speaker 1: comment on it today your yeah Frederick challenge. There's always
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Speaker 1: a good group of people. Yeah, And the only thing
Speaker 1: I haven't talked about yet is that we do also
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Speaker 1: if you'd like to talk about episodes in there, and
Speaker 1: you two have any other things that we've missed and
Speaker 1: talk about. He's not in the cave. That's about it.
Speaker 1: He's in the cave. Not in the cave. He's in
Speaker 1: the cave. Yeah he is, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Kay Bye.