Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered what happens to a commercial airliner
Speaker 1: when it's retired from service? Well, for those curious enough
Speaker 1: to ask, you'll find that there are a wide variety
Speaker 1: of jobs these planes can be pressed into after they're
Speaker 1: done ferrying passengers, and not all of these jobs are legal.
Speaker 1: In fact, one infamous airliner eight four four AA ended
Speaker 1: up causing an international incident. Maury Joseph is a Florida
Speaker 1: based CEO of an airline leasing company, and in February
Speaker 1: of two thousand and two, he came into possession of
Speaker 1: a Boeing seven twenty seven tail number as I said,
Speaker 1: eight four four AA, recently retired from American Airlines. He
Speaker 1: was approached by a South African entrepreneur, Keith Irwin, who
Speaker 1: had been hired by a joint partnership of airline interests
Speaker 1: in Africa, looking to make money transporting fuel by air
Speaker 1: to diamond mines in Angola. A civil war had broken
Speaker 1: out in the country and transporting fuel by car had
Speaker 1: become too dangerous. Both Morey and Irwin had thixed skins
Speaker 1: and were used to conducting business in third world nations
Speaker 1: with these kind of problems. They also weren't afraid of
Speaker 1: working with industries that some people might find distasteful, such
Speaker 1: as the diamond trade. Maury sold Irwin the seven forty
Speaker 1: seven for one million dollars, but accepted a down payment
Speaker 1: of just one hundre undred and twenty five thousand, with
Speaker 1: further installments to follow once the fuel shipments got to underway.
Speaker 1: Maury even sent a business associate with Irwin to Angola
Speaker 1: to make sure that things went smoothly. But from the
Speaker 1: get go things were anything but smooth. Irwin and his
Speaker 1: flight crew were subjected to harsh conditions in Angola. They
Speaker 1: slept in terrible housing with no running water or electricity.
Speaker 1: They also felt unsafe. Practically everyone in the city carried
Speaker 1: in AK forty seven. They were stuck in limbo as
Speaker 1: they waited for their clients at one of the mines
Speaker 1: to process their passports and get them licenses to operate
Speaker 1: the seven forty seven in Angola airspace. At one point
Speaker 1: they feared that they would never get their passports back
Speaker 1: and would be stuck in the country forever. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: their passports were returned, but some of Irwin's crew had
Speaker 1: already had enough and they returned to the States. Even worse,
Speaker 1: the client at the diamond mine wasn't paying up for
Speaker 1: expenses a crewed. Thus far, Erwin had to accept his
Speaker 1: losses and negotiate a new deal with a new client.
Speaker 1: Erwin and what remained of the crew started flying missions
Speaker 1: delivering fuel to diamond mines in Angola. It was dangerous work.
Speaker 1: They had to maintain as high in altitude as possible
Speaker 1: until the very last second before landing to avoid being
Speaker 1: hit by gunfire from the war, and there were no
Speaker 1: paved landing strips at these mines. They were making extremely
Speaker 1: bumpy landings at dirt airfields. Before long, most of Irwin's
Speaker 1: crew had given up and gone home, including Maury Joseph's representative.
Speaker 1: The operative had failed to make a return on Moury's investment,
Speaker 1: and he wanted his plane back. Eight four to four
Speaker 1: double A would sit in a hangar in Angola for months,
Speaker 1: slowly deteriorating and accumulating storage fees, and so eventually Maury,
Speaker 1: our Airline CEO, traveled with an associate of his, ben Paedia,
Speaker 1: to Angola, whose job it was to prepare the air
Speaker 1: aircraft for the flight to South Africa, where it would
Speaker 1: be finally sold off. Maury flew ahead to finalize the deal,
Speaker 1: but on May twenty sixth of two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: he received a disturbing phone call. The aircraft and ben
Speaker 1: Paedia had disappeared. It was last seen making erratic movements
Speaker 1: on the runway in Angola before making an unauthorized takeoff
Speaker 1: over the Atlantic, and Maury wasn't just mad, he was
Speaker 1: also scared. Losing track of a plane that size and
Speaker 1: that valuable had serious consequences. This was even more true
Speaker 1: in the years immediately following the September eleventh, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one attacks. He had to contact the FBI and
Speaker 1: the Homeland Security, who in turn contacted every single US
Speaker 1: embassy in Africa to let them note to be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for the missing plane. Everyone was afraid that
Speaker 1: the plane had been co opted by terrorists. Fortunately, an
Speaker 1: attack never came, but that left one of the biggest
Speaker 1: mysteries in aviation history happened to the plane. Most people
Speaker 1: close to Ben Padilla believe that he wouldn't have stolen it.
Speaker 1: He was a simple airline engineer. It seems more likely
Speaker 1: that criminals from Angola might have attacked the plane with
Speaker 1: him on board and taken it into a remote area
Speaker 1: for disassembly. It's also possible that whoever hijacked the plane
Speaker 1: never made it to their destination and crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1: This is one curious tale that will remain that way.
Speaker 1: No trace of eight four four double A has ever
Speaker 1: been found. It's the largest missing aircraft in world history.
Speaker 1: Whatever you think of Maury Irwin Ben and the plane
Speaker 1: cargo business, it seems like surely there has to be
Speaker 1: an easier way to make a living. As anyone from
Speaker 1: a small town will tell you not to. Everyone is
Speaker 1: so welcoming to outsiders. People are wary of strangers. Newcomers
Speaker 1: can feel isolated, unwanted, or even outright disliked, and such
Speaker 1: was the case for Teodor Glava, a Romanian immigrant who
Speaker 1: moved to the small town of Lafayette, Colorado, in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: Born in Lesnik in eighteen seventy seven. Glava led a
Speaker 1: brutal life working in marble minds belonging to the Austro
Speaker 1: Hungarian Empire. This work was dangerous, physically demanding, and of
Speaker 1: course it paid very little, so he came to America
Speaker 1: with nothing, hoping to find better work mining coal there.
Speaker 1: Glava eventually planned to send for his wife and daughter,
Speaker 1: whom he had left behind in Romania. When he arrived
Speaker 1: in Colorado, Glava was emaciated from years of backbreaking work
Speaker 1: and his difficult voyage, and the fact that he was
Speaker 1: so tall didn't really help. His skin was pale after
Speaker 1: years of working in the marble quarries and months in
Speaker 1: a cramp ship's cabin. Today we would consider him a
Speaker 1: sickly looking man. To the townspeople of Lafayette in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: though he looked straight out of every vampire legend they
Speaker 1: had come to fear Tiotoglava's story came to a tragic
Speaker 1: end only four years after his arrival. The Spanish flu
Speaker 1: pandemic wiped out hundreds of people in the nearby town
Speaker 1: of Boulder, and the disease reached Lafayette shortly after. Glava
Speaker 1: and many other coal miners stood almost no chance. Remember
Speaker 1: this was before the age of vaccination. The cold and
Speaker 1: unsafe working conditions meant that their immune systems were already weak,
Speaker 1: and tragically, he passed away in December of nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: before he ever got a chance to send for his
Speaker 1: family back home. And this is where the story of
Speaker 1: tiotoor Glava comes to an end and the legend of
Speaker 1: the Lafayette Vampire is born. You see, because Glava had
Speaker 1: been ignored and isolated for so long, no one really
Speaker 1: knew much about him. The absence of his family and
Speaker 1: the poverty he died in meant but there was no
Speaker 1: money for a proper burial, and as a result, he
Speaker 1: was buried in the paupers section of the Lafayette Cemetery
Speaker 1: with a headstone hastily carved using the pointed end of
Speaker 1: a trowel and cheap cement. Glavaz headstone also inaccurately listed
Speaker 1: his birthplace as Transylvania, the birthplace, as we know, of
Speaker 1: literature's most famous vampire, Dracula, with influenza killing dozens of
Speaker 1: others in Lafayette, Though, people in town became desperate for
Speaker 1: someone to blame when they spotted Glava's strangely scrawled headstone
Speaker 1: and that terrifying word Transylvania. They recalled the pale, lanky
Speaker 1: stranger who had wandered into their midst so recently, and
Speaker 1: hatched a plan to rid themselves of this pandemic. They
Speaker 1: would need to dig up and kill the vampire. That winter,
Speaker 1: residents bundled up against the Colorado snow and made their
Speaker 1: way to the cemetery. Once there, they found his grave,
Speaker 1: and they started to dig. What they found in glavas Coffin,
Speaker 1: confirmed all of the worst fears. He looked nothing short
Speaker 1: of monstrous. His hair and fingernails had continued to grow,
Speaker 1: which they took for proof of his undead nature. Glava's
Speaker 1: gums had pulled back away from his teeth, making them
Speaker 1: appear longer and more pointed. Moreover, his body looked almost
Speaker 1: completely unchanged from the day he had died. In short,
Speaker 1: he looked exactly like the vampire legends they had heard
Speaker 1: all their lives. Now, as any mortician will tell you,
Speaker 1: these changes to Glava's body were not supernatural at all.
Speaker 1: Skin and gums shrink after a person dies and begins
Speaker 1: to decompose, making hair, nails, and teeth appear longer, especially
Speaker 1: without the modern embalming processes we have today. And then
Speaker 1: there was Glava's unchanged appearance. Without any money to pay
Speaker 1: for a proper burial, he had been placed in the
Speaker 1: cheapest coffin available and buried in a shallow grave by
Speaker 1: a caretaker, possibly the same guy who had carved his
Speaker 1: headstone out of cement. The winter weather had kept Glava's
Speaker 1: body well preserved, which explains why he looked almost the
Speaker 1: same as the day he died. Of course, to the
Speaker 1: people of Lafayette, they had no way of knowing this,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't trudged to the cemetery in the middle
Speaker 1: of the freezy night in search of rational explanations. Once
Speaker 1: they had dug up Glava's body, one of the locals
Speaker 1: plunged a wooden steak right through the supposed vampire's heart,
Speaker 1: and then, satisfied that they had rid themselves of the
Speaker 1: source of their bad luck, they went home. One can
Speaker 1: only imagine their surprise when a flourishing sapling appeared directly
Speaker 1: over Glava's grave that spring. The wooden steak intended to
Speaker 1: kill the vampire had taken root and grown into something beautiful. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: Glava has become a legend in Lafayette and around the
Speaker 1: United States. His grave, with the same poorly carved headstone,
Speaker 1: is covered in roses, trinkets, money, and souvenirs from his
Speaker 1: home country of Romania, and the tree is over a
Speaker 1: century old now and still growing. Passer buyers probably think
Speaker 1: that they're seeing the final resting place of a beloved
Speaker 1: local resident, but have no idea that they're actually looking
Speaker 1: at the legendary vampire of Lafayette. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.