Speaker 1: This episode of Thinking Sideways is not brought you by
Speaker 1: people who have successfully tipped cows. Instead, it's brought you
Speaker 1: by Stitcher Premium. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we are
Speaker 1: on Stitcher Premium, where we are making available all of
Speaker 1: our episodes four days early. Those episodes are also going
Speaker 1: to have no advertisements in them, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to listen to stuff like this if you don't want to.
Speaker 1: And oh, on top of that little ice cream on top,
Speaker 1: we're doing bonus content once a month. So that's all
Speaker 1: available over at Stitcher. So go to stitcher dot com
Speaker 1: slash Thinking Sideways and if you use the promo code sideways,
Speaker 1: you'll get one month free when you sign up for
Speaker 1: the twelve month plans. So go over there. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of great content. You're going to enjoy it. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to an episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I
Speaker 1: am Devin, joined as usual by the two Jabronies, Joe
Speaker 1: and Steve. And what's the brown? Is that like a
Speaker 1: piece of sausage or I think it's like an animal.
Speaker 1: I think it's like an animals private parts or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably don't want to know. You're probably right, Okay,
Speaker 1: meat product noted anyway, Today we're gonna talk about a
Speaker 1: disappearance of Ronald Tammon. It was suggested by Lily on
Speaker 1: Facebook a really long time ago. I believe this disappearance
Speaker 1: that we're gonna talk about takes place in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: He Ronald Tamon Jr. Disappeared from his dorm in Oxford, Ohio,
Speaker 1: at the Miami University. Because apparently I have a for
Speaker 1: students who disappear in Ohio. As long as you do.
Speaker 1: But as long as we get to school right this time,
Speaker 1: I think we're okay, we can just we can do
Speaker 1: another one. This one Miami University for sure. Sweet yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's in Ohio not Miami, which is just not
Speaker 1: confusing at all. I was a little confused by that
Speaker 1: at first. I didn't, you know, because I was thinking, Okay, Miami, Florida,
Speaker 1: you know, and they started talking about them like the
Speaker 1: Midwest and stuff, and I know, what's what? Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's Ohio. Yeah. So Ronald Henry Tammon Jr. Is the
Speaker 1: full name of the gentleman that disappeared. He was nineteen
Speaker 1: on April nineteen, nineteen fifty three. He was a sophomore
Speaker 1: at Miami University. He was a resident advisor, a member
Speaker 1: of the Navy r OTC. He was a frat member
Speaker 1: Reserve Army Training Corpses. Believe it's what you're right. That
Speaker 1: would have been our a TC so um. He was
Speaker 1: a member of a fraternity back when that meant something.
Speaker 1: It isn't just you know, drunken antics. I'm really excitedful
Speaker 1: the emails we're going to get about that one. He
Speaker 1: was a varse city wrestler, He was a bassist, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: He was I mean, he was really like an all
Speaker 1: American boy who he kind of just seemed to say
Speaker 1: yes to every opportunity that came along for him. He
Speaker 1: was very involved. He was very stereotypical of the time.
Speaker 1: He was seventy five pounds, dark hair, light eyes, brown hair,
Speaker 1: dark brown hair, light eyes, like really just like the
Speaker 1: all American nondescript. You know, you you picture the college
Speaker 1: boy in the nineteen fifties, and that's him. Yeah. Some
Speaker 1: days before the nineteenth it's reported. We're just gonna go
Speaker 1: chronologically here, I tell you, because I already told you.
Speaker 1: He disappeared from his dorm room. That's the mystery. This
Speaker 1: is an easy way to appeach It makes it actually
Speaker 1: easy to follow. Yeah, I think so. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: it's a little easier than a lot of the ways
Speaker 1: that they report it. You mean, where they report half
Speaker 1: and half and then the other half. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there's like twelve paragraphs in between about who knows what.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I was reading what was it Esquire,
Speaker 1: an online Esquire article today, and I started skipping entire
Speaker 1: paragraphs because it was just like, bounce around filler content. Oh,
Speaker 1: you just make a living, make so this is really nice.
Speaker 1: And actually one of the articles that Devon linked to
Speaker 1: in this one, I skipped a bunch of paragraphs because
Speaker 1: they were describing a prompt photo. Yes, I did that,
Speaker 1: and then I read a sentence. I skipped about five
Speaker 1: more paragraphs. I got through that one really fast. Actually, really,
Speaker 1: that article was really really interesting for me. But I
Speaker 1: agree there was some filler and not a lot of information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there was some. There was interesting information, not not
Speaker 1: killer information, but good backfill. Yeah. It was interesting for
Speaker 1: understanding Ron, not so much the case anyway. Cool. Some
Speaker 1: days before the nineteenth it's reported that Ron went to
Speaker 1: get his blood type tested. Now he paid for this
Speaker 1: procedure off campus when it sounds like it was a
Speaker 1: free p future on campus, And can I ask how
Speaker 1: do I know? I'm going to ask this for a
Speaker 1: lot of this because a lot of things in this case.
Speaker 1: You're just stated, is it just a generally accepted fact
Speaker 1: that that was free or do we know that it
Speaker 1: was free? Okay, it is reported that it was free,
Speaker 1: and we also know that he did go off and
Speaker 1: did pay for it because the corner did the testing, right.
Speaker 1: I knew about the I knew about the actual test.
Speaker 1: It was the free portion that I could never really pin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was part of it was part of student health services. Plus,
Speaker 1: you can also go to the Red Cross and donate
Speaker 1: blood and they'll type people out for free to even
Speaker 1: at that day and age the Red crosses around wasn't
Speaker 1: it was, but actually one of the you you often
Speaker 1: had to get your blood typed first before you could
Speaker 1: go donate it in those days. That was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that people suggested he might have gotten his
Speaker 1: blood typed. But it doesn't necessarily explain why he would
Speaker 1: have gone and paid for it because it was twenty
Speaker 1: dollars to have the corner do it versus free and
Speaker 1: twenty back in fifty three was kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of money and there it wasn't like Boogo bucks, but
Speaker 1: it was, you know not Yeah, it's not something that
Speaker 1: a normal college kid would be like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: can throw that away on this thing over a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks today. You know, I'm sorry I interrupted you. Where
Speaker 1: so he went and got his blood type off campus? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like I said, a lot of people find this to
Speaker 1: be kind of suspicious, like he was planning something, and
Speaker 1: to be totally honest with you, it does confuse me
Speaker 1: the motives behind, you know, going to spend you know
Speaker 1: what is essentially more than a hundred dollars on something
Speaker 1: that you could get done for free. But we'll dig
Speaker 1: into that a little more when we start talking about theories.
Speaker 1: It's just something that you should know about. Background wise,
Speaker 1: nineteenth of April in Ohio was reportedly very cold outside,
Speaker 1: like record setting cold in Columbus, which is only seventy
Speaker 1: eighty miles away from Miami, Ohio. In fact, the coldest
Speaker 1: April nineteenth on record is nineteen fifty three. This same year,
Speaker 1: it was I think it was nineteen degrees outside fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or something like that. It was frigid. Whether people live
Speaker 1: there and well it does, it's not usually that's that's record.
Speaker 1: Usually it's kind of you know, in the sixties seven. No,
Speaker 1: it's usually a nice like it's kind of like it
Speaker 1: is in Portland Sea. But this was this was extremely abnormal,
Speaker 1: which is why we even bring it up because he
Speaker 1: did go disappearing on a night that go disappearing, did
Speaker 1: disappear on a night where it was abnormally cold. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like an you wouldn't be inclined to go out
Speaker 1: in that kind of weather exactly, especially in his state.
Speaker 1: Got it. So, as far as we know, this is
Speaker 1: how things went. At about eight p m. On April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: Ron called the house mom, which is a bit tricky
Speaker 1: for me because he was r a in a dorm
Speaker 1: and usually I associate house moms with like fraternities and sororities.
Speaker 1: But I guess that was the thing that existed back then. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, now it's like, well, I think the differences
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a even though you were
Speaker 1: a young adult, you were not smart enough to take
Speaker 1: care of yourself, and therefore there had to be a
Speaker 1: woman around help you take care of those things that
Speaker 1: you couldn't figure out how to do, because it's the
Speaker 1: fifties mentality. I'm not here, but well, also in those days, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, colleges were expected to look after you and
Speaker 1: not just physically but also your more morally speaking to
Speaker 1: there were adults living in the dorms to make sure
Speaker 1: that nobody was like boozing it up, having sex, etcetera, etcetera. Panky, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially the hacky panky part. Yeah. Yeah, hanky panky was
Speaker 1: the biggest offense. The sex and the booze were bad,
Speaker 1: but the hanky panky terrible. And I can totally I
Speaker 1: can totally see too the same thing adult supervision. You'd
Speaker 1: have the house mother there to doll out the sheets
Speaker 1: in the pillow cases so that you know, all the
Speaker 1: kids don't take them and like gonna make you ghost
Speaker 1: costumes out of them or banner tellt Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: when I mean when I went to college not so
Speaker 1: long ago, two years ago, you provided your own you
Speaker 1: could ride your own sheets. So this is totally different
Speaker 1: to me, but I understand it was a totally different era.
Speaker 1: So there was a there was a house mom. The
Speaker 1: reason that Ron called the house mom. In fact, was
Speaker 1: because his sheets were soiled and he needed a new
Speaker 1: set of sheets. Soiled as sheets? Did he? Yeah? Why
Speaker 1: were they soiled? And you may ask, apparently there was
Speaker 1: a dead fish in his bed when he got back
Speaker 1: to his dorm room. Oh you see, it's a dead fish.
Speaker 1: You see, I'm going to that's that's that's what it was, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was actually, Okay, there was actually dead fish. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think it was. Actually No, I just
Speaker 1: made all of the blather that I just did. I
Speaker 1: don't make a bad accent. Yeah, okay, let's put this
Speaker 1: on hold while I got to read it and started
Speaker 1: read it throat And how did the fish get there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say any theories we get. Yeah, so, actually at
Speaker 1: eight thirty, it took about a half hour for his
Speaker 1: new sheets to arrive. It sounds like he somehow cleans
Speaker 1: up after the dead fish. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: sends the soiled fishy mess with the house mom. I
Speaker 1: don't know whose responsibility it was to clean up after
Speaker 1: suffer life. I doubt that he would hand her the
Speaker 1: dead fish. I bet he disposed of that himself. He
Speaker 1: sounds like a nice boy. Well, I would also say
Speaker 1: that where wherever the new sheets were picked up from
Speaker 1: her delivered by would also be where the smelly fishy
Speaker 1: sheets would have been left at or handed over to. Well,
Speaker 1: but the the house mom broth the sheets to him,
Speaker 1: which means I would guess he gave her his his
Speaker 1: soiled to the laundry. Yeah. I mean, that's the only
Speaker 1: way it makes sense. It's not like he's just gonna
Speaker 1: hang him up in his room to air drive. And
Speaker 1: he probably had already moved the dead fish into somebody
Speaker 1: else's bed yeah, yeah, or hopefully like a trash can
Speaker 1: or a flower bed maybe outside. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: how dorms worked in those days. Really, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I just don't understand it. He said that
Speaker 1: the dead fish was a prank played on him by
Speaker 1: another student or fraternity member maybe um, but other people
Speaker 1: on the internet it again, we'll get into this a
Speaker 1: little bit later, but some people think that he was
Speaker 1: lying about the purpose behind the dead fish. Remind me,
Speaker 1: we get into the theories and I'll talk about the
Speaker 1: dead fish in the bed things. I really don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about a story again. But okay, do you
Speaker 1: think maybe he murdered the fish. No, I just know.
Speaker 1: I just know the story that Steve wants to tell him.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I need to hear it again.
Speaker 1: But well, it's never been on recording, so we'll do
Speaker 1: it again. It's there, we go. Yeah. It's also said
Speaker 1: that he was planning on studying for the rest of
Speaker 1: the night, although I don't really know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how we get a lot of this information after the
Speaker 1: house Mom, Yeah, I thought he had been talking to
Speaker 1: a friend and said, yeah, I gotta go study. I
Speaker 1: gotta testimony. I thought so too. And it's and it's different.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes it says he's studying history, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it said he's studying psychology. I don't really know which
Speaker 1: is correct. I don't think they had psychology in nineteen
Speaker 1: they did. The psychology has been around for a long time, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just under a different name. I just didn't
Speaker 1: think anybody took it back in those days. He was
Speaker 1: business major, so you know, I don't really know what
Speaker 1: it was that he was taking. But it is also
Speaker 1: reported that around nine Ron heard something outside his dorm
Speaker 1: room that disturbed him. But again, I don't know how
Speaker 1: the heck we would know that. This is such a
Speaker 1: leading statement that drives me bonkers because it is copy
Speaker 1: and pasted everywhere on the internet and there's nothing nobody
Speaker 1: could have known that. But I was thinking about that too,
Speaker 1: and the only the only explanation I could come up
Speaker 1: with that is that people heard a noise, Like more
Speaker 1: than one person heard a noise coming from somewhere, and
Speaker 1: they assumed, you know, well somebody he must have gotten
Speaker 1: up to investigate the noise that I didn't bother to investigate. Well,
Speaker 1: he was maybe, So that's what I'm thinking. That other
Speaker 1: people heard a noise of some sort. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that would be the only that would That was kind
Speaker 1: of my assumption is that a bunch of people heard
Speaker 1: it and poked their heads out, and he said, Okay, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, get back to your rooms. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: check it out. But that's no explanation. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: But that's not how it's reported. It's just reported that
Speaker 1: he wanted to investigate a dead noise or a disturbing noise.
Speaker 1: I think the problem is when this story was originally reported,
Speaker 1: they only had four lines to put it into, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of this trimmathea. About ten PM, his
Speaker 1: roommate Charles Finlay, came home and found Ron's death light
Speaker 1: on his physiology, psychology history, whatever it was. He was studying,
Speaker 1: book open radio on and his belongings, including keys to
Speaker 1: the dorm and his car, wallet, I d money, all
Speaker 1: in their usual spot in their dorm room, but Ron
Speaker 1: was gone. His roommate said that he thought maybe Ron
Speaker 1: had gone to spend the night at the frat house
Speaker 1: or something, which I don't know why you would have
Speaker 1: left all this stuff, but okay, that makes no sense
Speaker 1: of he left his coat, right, Yeah, he left all
Speaker 1: of his stuff. Yeah, But Charles went to bed anyway
Speaker 1: because I guess he just assumed, you know, it's Ron's deal.
Speaker 1: If it's not nothing I need to really worry about.
Speaker 1: And then he woke with the next morning and Ron
Speaker 1: was still gone. So they notified the authorities. What did
Speaker 1: they find? Nothing? Nothing? Actually actually yes, kind of spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: Steve was being a smartass, but it's true. The police
Speaker 1: found Ron's green car. It was like a nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine something or other that was either way. He found
Speaker 1: his nineteen thirties car parked in its normal spot. Um
Speaker 1: with his bass in it. Still. That's one thing I
Speaker 1: find on is that you would leave your musical instrument
Speaker 1: in the back of your car when it's like nineteen
Speaker 1: degrees out this I would not do that with like
Speaker 1: my guitar. Well, And that's the thing is that he
Speaker 1: was what it was it was it a bass guitar
Speaker 1: or was I thought it was something? It was like
Speaker 1: an upright bass. Oh it was okay, so which is
Speaker 1: a big instrument. But even that, I mean, they have
Speaker 1: it's not they don't use steal strings. I'm guessing they
Speaker 1: would your normal natural filament strings. Whatever it is that
Speaker 1: that is that does not do well in a very
Speaker 1: cold environment. For yeah, I know, what would an instrument
Speaker 1: really You don't want to subject it to a lot
Speaker 1: of extremes and temperature, which leaving in a car would
Speaker 1: seem to do, whether it's cold or hot. So that,
Speaker 1: I agree, really odd thing. It's kind of odd to
Speaker 1: have done. Maybe he was planning on leaving town or
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean he played a gig that day,
Speaker 1: hadn't he, So I mean maybe he was thinking he
Speaker 1: was going to go back out and get it later on.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that could have been which I don't know,
Speaker 1: but maybe Yeah, I don't really know why he would
Speaker 1: have left it in his car, but he did. And
Speaker 1: you know, nothing else really was missing. I mean nothing
Speaker 1: really at all of Ron's was missing. And that's the
Speaker 1: last that we I mean, presumably the clothes that he
Speaker 1: had been wearing. He didn't even take his tooth rush. Yeah, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing was really missing. And that's it. That's all we've
Speaker 1: ever heard of roun. Okay, Yeah, there there's more stuff
Speaker 1: on here. You're not just ending us there, I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the end of episode. Just kidding. One final note
Speaker 1: here before we move onto theories, because there's just like
Speaker 1: nothing to this story, unfortunately, is that the summer after
Speaker 1: Rown disappeared, a citizen witness named Mrs Carl Spivy so
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't have a first name. She didn't
Speaker 1: because she belongs to her husband or whatever. She was
Speaker 1: a kind of a nearby resident told police officers that
Speaker 1: somebody matching Tomas description had come to her door around
Speaker 1: midnight on April nineteen. She said that the man looked disheveled.
Speaker 1: He was wearing only a T shirt and pants, which
Speaker 1: seems strange for the freezing temperatures. Which is true. And
Speaker 1: then she said that the man was looking for a
Speaker 1: bus stop, but further investigation found that the Oxford bus
Speaker 1: lines had been suspended for the night, so he it
Speaker 1: would have been impossible for him to take the bus. Yea,
Speaker 1: she said that, Yeah, I heard that. She said he
Speaker 1: was polite and then thanks her and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but she was sure that it was wrong. I mean
Speaker 1: she was sure. Almost everyone else is not sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let me ask clarifying detail, because I don't remember
Speaker 1: seeing the Dayton. This says the summer after according to
Speaker 1: the quote you've got here, is that months later? Or
Speaker 1: is that a year and months later? Months later? So
Speaker 1: it's okay, okay, so that's still to three months later
Speaker 1: when his stuff has been all over the newspaper. Again,
Speaker 1: these are the we always complain about, these, these later
Speaker 1: second hand accounts of him after I was informed by
Speaker 1: the newspapers. How does she remember that specific night for sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: diary or or you know, that was the one night
Speaker 1: that it was nineteen degrees outside, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the nights around it could have been not as cold,
Speaker 1: could have been much warmer. I mean, you know the
Speaker 1: weather we're having here in Portland. Right, it's like high seventies,
Speaker 1: and then we've got two days coming up. They're supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the fifties and I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: back up to the seventies and eighties. So I didn't
Speaker 1: managed to find out a lot of information about the
Speaker 1: weather surrounding this day. But it's possible. But it's possible
Speaker 1: that it was like, you know, kind of normal April
Speaker 1: weather and then this one freezing cold day for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: or there could be some other reason. It could have
Speaker 1: been there at wedding anniversary, birthday something, you know. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did read it, or she could just be full
Speaker 1: of it. I did read a small little interview with
Speaker 1: her son, who had been home at the time because
Speaker 1: she had passed away by the time this this guy
Speaker 1: was investigating, and he said he remembered the guy coming,
Speaker 1: but he also remembered that one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: it stood out to him was because it was one
Speaker 1: of the only nights that his father was gone, So
Speaker 1: it could have been something like that as well. That
Speaker 1: she remembered that a strange man came to the door
Speaker 1: while her husband was gone, and that was the night
Speaker 1: that he was working and okay, and it was the
Speaker 1: vacuum salesman and mysterious nine months later his little brother
Speaker 1: was bo. That's not how it happened, okay, but investigators
Speaker 1: are pretty sure that was actually not ron. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean there is some stuff, but we'll talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The current guy that I was just talking about, his
Speaker 1: name is Detective Smith, because that's, you know, easy enough
Speaker 1: to remember it is. So with that, twenty minutes in,
Speaker 1: you have heard our entire story. So you guys want
Speaker 1: to talk about theories? Okay, okay, Well, I guess we
Speaker 1: should take a break first. If you've ever read The
Speaker 1: Green Mile, you know what a lovable and relatable character
Speaker 1: John Coffee is. He was so calm and mild that
Speaker 1: it was impossible to think that he could be guilty
Speaker 1: of the crimes that he was convicted of. The man
Speaker 1: was a literal gentle giant, and in the end we
Speaker 1: would learn that he was also innocent. Sorry, spoiler too late.
Speaker 1: In those the prose of the author, though, he understands
Speaker 1: the world in a way that none of can, and
Speaker 1: he's willing to accept his fate in order to escape it.
Speaker 1: But of course that's fiction, and in the real world.
Speaker 1: It rarely works that way. Did you know that four
Speaker 1: percent of all defendants sentenced to death have later proven
Speaker 1: to be innocent. Now, imagine serving twenty years in prison
Speaker 1: knowing you didn't do the crime. It happens all the
Speaker 1: time in this country. If you're a fan of this podcast,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get hooked on the upcoming Stars original series
Speaker 1: Wrong Man. From the Emmy winning filmmaker of Paradise Lost,
Speaker 1: Joe Berlinger. This new docuseries follows the stories of three
Speaker 1: inmates who have all maintained their innocence for two decades. Now,
Speaker 1: these three men have one last chance at freedom. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the six riveting episodes, a team of esteem,
Speaker 1: legal and investigated experts will dig relentlessly into each case
Speaker 1: to find the truth. Don't miss the series premiere of
Speaker 1: Wrongman on Sunday, June three, at nine pm only on Stars.
Speaker 1: Get the Stars app and start your free trial today
Speaker 1: and we're back. Well, I guess one thing to get
Speaker 1: out of the way right away is that the police
Speaker 1: at the time decided that since Ron was quote unquote rugged, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was no possibility of foul play right exactly, he was. Actually,
Speaker 1: it was a wrestler, he's probably in really good shape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But another thing about it is, I don't think you
Speaker 1: can totally rule out foul play just because the guy was,
Speaker 1: you know, muscular and in good shape. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: being muscular in good shape does not prevent a bullet
Speaker 1: from entering your body. And you know, if there's like
Speaker 1: five dudes trying to kidnap you. But yeah, yeah, exactly, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: she will tear you up. Well yeah, yeah. Well, so
Speaker 1: now that we've got that out of the way, we
Speaker 1: know that you clearly had to just have run away
Speaker 1: on his own, right, Alright, But and there's some series
Speaker 1: as to why he would have done that. There are
Speaker 1: there are, actually, there are a lot of theories that
Speaker 1: integrate both foul play and not. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and just run down the list. Some of these are
Speaker 1: better than others. True. The first theory that you will
Speaker 1: see out there is that actually Ron was a draft
Speaker 1: dodger because, as you may or may not know, in
Speaker 1: fifty three, that's just about when they started doing the
Speaker 1: draft for the Korean War. Fun times. Yeah, but he
Speaker 1: was serving in the r OTC, and his older brother
Speaker 1: was serving in the military, and his father was a veteran,
Speaker 1: so for all I can tell, and I've read interviews
Speaker 1: with his sister, his only living relative. Her name is Marcia,
Speaker 1: and she because his brother died about five years after
Speaker 1: his disappearance, right, and his parents died. His parents died,
Speaker 1: his older brother died, his younger brother died. He was
Speaker 1: one of four. His younger brother died tragically, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit. Yeah, so she's the
Speaker 1: only one who's still living. And she was much younger
Speaker 1: than him. She was seven or eight at the time
Speaker 1: of his disappearance, I believe, No, No, she was ten
Speaker 1: at the time of uns Right, So she she just
Speaker 1: seemed to feel that he was excited to surface country.
Speaker 1: That was the sense the entire family had, was that
Speaker 1: he was really a patriotic yeah, and that you know,
Speaker 1: he had been preparing for that. I mean again, you
Speaker 1: know r OTC like really trying to get in there,
Speaker 1: and that it would be unlikely that he would run
Speaker 1: away to this extent, especially considering to dodge the draft.
Speaker 1: Considering this is like on the heels of World War
Speaker 1: two and everything like that, and draft dodging was like,
Speaker 1: look upon, is far more dishonorable than that when it
Speaker 1: first started. Yeah. Well, and and the other thing is
Speaker 1: that the Korean War officially is listed as having ended
Speaker 1: on the seven July three, so he would have been
Speaker 1: gone for April to May to like three months. He
Speaker 1: could have dodged to the draft for three months and
Speaker 1: came back and said, I made a big mistake, and
Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't have been that bad. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the repercussions were if you were a draft dodger
Speaker 1: and you after the fact came, but I don't think
Speaker 1: they shot you in the head for it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a pretty low slap on the risk kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but that's true necessarily. Yeah, it would have been a
Speaker 1: big market your record, it would have. It would have
Speaker 1: definitely blackened your employment prospects. You know, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been the end of the world, but yeah, if it
Speaker 1: would have been not optimal. Yeah, So mostly I just
Speaker 1: don't think this is a good theory. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think general, especially because they were a close family, and
Speaker 1: you know, if if you are going to do something
Speaker 1: like this, you're not gonna live the rest of your
Speaker 1: life without ever getting in touch with your family and
Speaker 1: saying hey, by the way I'm safe. No, I mean
Speaker 1: you could actually, you know, if you did do it
Speaker 1: to draft, to dodge the draft, say in a couple
Speaker 1: of years, you show back up and you're tell them
Speaker 1: all these three guys in Horsepack abducted me and took
Speaker 1: me to the coast and sold me into slavery, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, then I one of my master died, I
Speaker 1: escaped and the Portugal Yeah, it wasn't a lot of
Speaker 1: story that we heard. It was one. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: next one also has to do with being drafted, but
Speaker 1: this is something slightly different. It's actually the direct opposite
Speaker 1: of being a draft dodger, and that is there's some
Speaker 1: theories that the CIA may have recruited him into their
Speaker 1: ranks as an operative. Apparently in nine the CIA was
Speaker 1: actively recruiting for the Korean War and other things. I
Speaker 1: was going, things were pretty hot in Europe, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the Cold War and all of that stuff. And there's
Speaker 1: a theory out there that Ron was actually recruited to be,
Speaker 1: like I said, an operative for the CIA, So he
Speaker 1: would have been, you know, doing clean DestinE operations and
Speaker 1: things like that. He was unassumingly attractive American man. I
Speaker 1: mean you know he wasn't he. There was something that
Speaker 1: I read, uh in in that article that you were
Speaker 1: talking about, actually, the one about the prom date, where
Speaker 1: they said, hey, everyone knew of him, admired him, but
Speaker 1: nobody really knew him or had any stories about him.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what you
Speaker 1: want from a spot. You want somebody who looks, you know,
Speaker 1: attractive enough that you're not going to be like whoa,
Speaker 1: oh God, but also not so attractive that you're also
Speaker 1: going to be like WHOA right attractive, No, neither. You
Speaker 1: want somebody who's kind the middle of the road, which
Speaker 1: he was not. Not Quasimodo and not Marilyn Manson. These
Speaker 1: are also all on the same end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: currently the other one there's side right and stunning as
Speaker 1: the man sitting next to us every week. Exactly, you
Speaker 1: want somebody to kind of average, right, it's more like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm on the low in inspectrum. So so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he also he had he apparently had really good grades.
Speaker 1: He was smart. He again he was interested in me
Speaker 1: his country with the r OTC and the family reports.
Speaker 1: He had a wrestling career and he was well liked
Speaker 1: by everyone. But I guess my big problem with this
Speaker 1: is that I don't it seems like at one point,
Speaker 1: sometime in the last however many years he was or
Speaker 1: even somebody would have just said like, hey, he's okay.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have to have been him. But maybe
Speaker 1: what they did is they brought him into a super
Speaker 1: secret program that's kind of like Matt Damon in the
Speaker 1: Born movies, where they totally brain watched him turn to
Speaker 1: turn him into a super assassin kind of guy, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't even know what his previous identity. But that
Speaker 1: also presumes that he survived his very first training session
Speaker 1: or mission, and that he didn't just failed badly by
Speaker 1: just dying all over the place on the first round.
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, this is a secret program, so
Speaker 1: I'm afraid buddy, you're going in with the dogs and
Speaker 1: the kiddies in the Creamtory. Yes, but sixty odd years on,
Speaker 1: it seems like the almost any mission. And this is
Speaker 1: maybe this is optimistic thing, but it seems like most
Speaker 1: missions would have been declassified to a point where you
Speaker 1: could have said, at the very least, hey, one single
Speaker 1: living relative of Ron who is still heartbroken to this
Speaker 1: day of his disappearance. He we recruited him. It didn't go. Well.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to say what mission. You could
Speaker 1: just say he did died serving his country. He loved
Speaker 1: you very much. Okay, But again, that's presuming that it's
Speaker 1: something that was on the books. If it's off the books,
Speaker 1: not always recorded, and too, it doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: wasn't that somebody was recording it under presumed identity, assumed identities.
Speaker 1: It could have been Oh well, um major major lamp
Speaker 1: died in a horrible electric fire, his bull burned out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did a sign of a new identity and everything. Well,
Speaker 1: you know that identity is in the files having died
Speaker 1: trying to assassinate Kim Il sung in Korea or something
Speaker 1: like that. And uh, but it's it's the original one.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not cross referenced, and so yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I listen, I'm throwing things in there because
Speaker 1: I think this theory is I actually I also see
Speaker 1: we've seen things where I actually think this theory is
Speaker 1: not the worst. I think I would say it's like
Speaker 1: middle of the pack for you, and I really hate
Speaker 1: your theory. Next up on the tail end of the
Speaker 1: pack is that the fish head dead fish was actually
Speaker 1: a threat from the mob. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think, I think, yeah, I guess that's threat. I
Speaker 1: mean usually a threat to use a horsehead and then
Speaker 1: and then the fish means that we're going to feed you.
Speaker 1: So it's more than the threat. It's like a promise,
Speaker 1: right yeah. Yeah, Well, either way that it was something
Speaker 1: to do with the mob. There's some speculation that he
Speaker 1: could have gotten into drugs or gambling because he played
Speaker 1: in a jazz band, so then he was out with
Speaker 1: ne'er do Wells and the speaks. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the big threat in those days was reefer madness. Madness
Speaker 1: thing was a big deal. So and and definitely those
Speaker 1: jazz musician types. You know, we're into the reefer kind
Speaker 1: of jas grass. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think they took
Speaker 1: him out for killing that innocent trout. Yeah, the trout
Speaker 1: writes people. Yeah, but you will you'll see this, actually
Speaker 1: you will see the theory kind of on the forums.
Speaker 1: I think it's not a very good theory, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to put it in here anyway. I kind of
Speaker 1: fun to talk about the bunkt with the story that
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, which is when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I went fishing and I threw a fish in somebody's bed.
Speaker 1: That things are not unheard of, because I thought hilarious. Okay,
Speaker 1: you weren't planning on murdering him. No, no, And believe me,
Speaker 1: it was. It was somebody who was renting from or
Speaker 1: staying with us, and person didn't find it all that funny.
Speaker 1: And my mom at the time yelled at me under
Speaker 1: the guise of not thinking it was that funny, but
Speaker 1: years later would admit to me she thought it was
Speaker 1: hilarious too. So now you know where I get it. Well,
Speaker 1: here's what I will say is we can bring this
Speaker 1: up a little bit later in terms of the prank,
Speaker 1: because I have a theory that kind of explains that
Speaker 1: at how better. But I just all I want to
Speaker 1: say is that I don't think that it was a
Speaker 1: mop threat. No, no, no, I think might be totally unrelated.
Speaker 1: Let's face it, it totally could be. Ye. Next theory
Speaker 1: that he ran away from a girl were with the girl.
Speaker 1: There were some rumors that Ron had a girlfriend that
Speaker 1: went to a different school in Canada. I'm kidding, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: He did have a girlfriend apparently that he was seeing
Speaker 1: that did go to a different school, went to school
Speaker 1: in Indiana and actually Indiana University, and there was some
Speaker 1: speculation that he had maybe gotten her pregnant, and that
Speaker 1: would have been one of the reasons for the blood
Speaker 1: test and for him to pay for the blood test
Speaker 1: versus getting it for free, because one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that men got blood tests at that time was for
Speaker 1: paternity tests of course. Uh. And so that I guess
Speaker 1: the theory goes that he could have gotten his girlfriend
Speaker 1: pregnant and not wanted to do this blood test on
Speaker 1: campus because he was worried it would sully his reputation
Speaker 1: on campus because apparently you couldn't just say I was
Speaker 1: going to do it for the Red Cross or whatever.
Speaker 1: So he went and paid a bunch of money to
Speaker 1: have it done. But when you say a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you have no idea. No, it was twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: like a hundred bucks, Okay, a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big that's a big lot of bills for
Speaker 1: the fore for a college. So that that kind of
Speaker 1: follows that either he could have run away with this girl,
Speaker 1: but no girls were reported missing from Indiana University at
Speaker 1: that time. I mean, it seems like you would have
Speaker 1: just that would have been easy to connect the dots.
Speaker 1: And also the thing about it is is is if
Speaker 1: you've gotten a girl pregnant, the reason to get a
Speaker 1: blood test is because you doubt your own paternity, right
Speaker 1: the child. Yeah? Um, so I mean, why would you
Speaker 1: run away with somebody who do you suspect is screwing
Speaker 1: around on you anyway? I mean I don't quite get that.
Speaker 1: I don't either, unless unless she was sleeping with multiple
Speaker 1: people and you were trying to prove to her that
Speaker 1: you were the father, which you don't, because he seems
Speaker 1: like he was kind of like the wholesome, all American guy,
Speaker 1: and that he would have felt like he wanted to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for something like that with the stand up
Speaker 1: guy who says, I'm not sure it's my kid, but
Speaker 1: does it? Yeah, here's my blood, let's prove it to
Speaker 1: you and we'll run away. I don't think he ran
Speaker 1: away with somebody though, like I said, because there was
Speaker 1: there was no correlating woman who but he could have
Speaker 1: been running away from something. But again, that seems count
Speaker 1: or to what I think I seem to know about him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's what's the the opposite theory because we had
Speaker 1: to we ran away from a ran to ran away from. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and then there's the opposite theory, which is that he
Speaker 1: was trying to help out a friend who might have
Speaker 1: gotten a girl pregnant. Explain to folks, because I know
Speaker 1: not everybody gets what you mean, but I so I
Speaker 1: found this online on a really lovely web sluic forum,
Speaker 1: and this this poster said that when they read about
Speaker 1: the blood test, they thought about the fact that apparently
Speaker 1: one of the tactics that guys would use if they
Speaker 1: had gotten a girl pregnant is apparently the only way
Speaker 1: that they could do the paternity was, you know, through
Speaker 1: blood typing. So they would get a bunch of friends
Speaker 1: together who had the same blood type. Wait, so by
Speaker 1: blood typing, you mean I have a positive and the
Speaker 1: baby has a positive, So it's kind of positive that
Speaker 1: it's my baby, not positive. But really, but if I
Speaker 1: have be negative and the bite baby is a positive,
Speaker 1: then it's likely that you're not. Just just to clarify that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they would blood type the baby and blood type
Speaker 1: the mom, and blood type the potential father, and then
Speaker 1: you know, if that all came out, yes, that probably
Speaker 1: is the accurate thing. But the thing apparently, and I
Speaker 1: don't have any real evidence to back this up, but apparently,
Speaker 1: oftentimes fraternity brothers or just friends, you know, a guy
Speaker 1: would say, hey, listen, I think I got my girl pregnant.
Speaker 1: What blood type are you? And if they were the
Speaker 1: same blood type, they'd say, hey, will you just say
Speaker 1: you were sleeping with her? Two? And then it would
Speaker 1: call in questions for morals and that's what matters, but
Speaker 1: also the paternity, and then they would have no way
Speaker 1: to know which one. And then you know, obviously at
Speaker 1: that time, if a girl said no, I was only
Speaker 1: sleeping with the one guy, the doctors would be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you're just trying to protect your I mean, you're lying obviously, um,
Speaker 1: and so that would just be this whole big question
Speaker 1: and then usually they would just drop it. And well,
Speaker 1: there was a that was a case. I remember this
Speaker 1: is like you knows a while back. Let's in the
Speaker 1: eighties where that I heard about where there were like
Speaker 1: three or four guys who were you know, we're doing
Speaker 1: the same thing, and the judge basically said, okay, well
Speaker 1: you're all you're all gonna paytriot support then, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know that's how that will worked out in the eighties,
Speaker 1: I think that worked much better than the fifties. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: for women usually. Yeah, it could have been back in
Speaker 1: the fifties and the sixties or whatever. It might have
Speaker 1: been just the threat of going public with having three
Speaker 1: or four guys saying yeah, we were all I thinking
Speaker 1: sex with you, and so they would just a woman
Speaker 1: would just drop it rather than go through that. My
Speaker 1: biggest concern about this theory is the wanton blood letting
Speaker 1: from the baby, from the mom, from the boy, and
Speaker 1: that boy and maybe the other boys, a whole lot
Speaker 1: of did you just look that word up, Steve, No, Yeah, sorry. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that theory I guess is out there as well that
Speaker 1: maybe he got but I don't Again, I don't know
Speaker 1: why he especially if it worth for that, why he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have just gotten it for free? Who was just
Speaker 1: like to help a buddy out? And it doesn't really doesn't.
Speaker 1: It kind of doubt it. You probably want to do
Speaker 1: it covertly to not be accused of collusion. Yeah, probably, buddy, Um,
Speaker 1: And it might it might be too that if that
Speaker 1: was the case, he found his blood type out and
Speaker 1: found out he was not the same type as his
Speaker 1: role was anyway, so he couldn't be any help to him.
Speaker 1: So that's the end of that, Yeah, I guess. Or
Speaker 1: there's another possibility to which is this. You know, he
Speaker 1: met a mysterious of threatening kind of stranger who says,
Speaker 1: you know, like basically roll and then and so and
Speaker 1: so he goes to check it out, you know, so
Speaker 1: he gets his blood typed and finds out that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually his dad that he not was his dad
Speaker 1: actually couldn't really be his father. It's a giant tall
Speaker 1: man in a black mask. But it still doesn't understand it.
Speaker 1: He was abducted by Darth Vader somebody like that, you know,
Speaker 1: the fifties equivalent or maybe and then and then so,
Speaker 1: you know, he decides and it turns out his his
Speaker 1: real dad is bio biological dad just says, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: you know number one, your dad is not really your dad.
Speaker 1: Number two, I'm a billionaire. She just come and live
Speaker 1: with me in the Mediterraneans hell with these people. And
Speaker 1: he decided to do that. I doubt it, Okay, deep doubt,
Speaker 1: because even if it was his father, I mean like
Speaker 1: the other guy raised him. Yeah, there is there is
Speaker 1: still a relationship, but that is another possibility to those it.
Speaker 1: Maybe he did doubt, you know, his own father's paternity
Speaker 1: for some reason, and he wanted to clear up those deaths.
Speaker 1: But he heard a rumor or something happening, and so
Speaker 1: he wanted to clear that up, you know. Maybe, and
Speaker 1: that's another reason for doing it on the slide. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily but it's not connected necessarily to our story.
Speaker 1: Um okay, So next three is that he could have
Speaker 1: run away just for the hell of it, for the
Speaker 1: heck of it, but it seems like you'd want some
Speaker 1: of your up. It would take your stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like especially an ID card you're probably gonna need at
Speaker 1: some point. This pre internet. Yeah, so this is what
Speaker 1: we're talking really again, is like pre internet, pre connected
Speaker 1: everything really all you gotta do. It's not as though
Speaker 1: this was this like huge national sensation story, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a couple articles, especially later, like recently it's
Speaker 1: gotten a couple of national articles, but most of the
Speaker 1: articles were kind of like, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: footnote and whatever. If you like to come out to
Speaker 1: Oregon with your I D and you still have a
Speaker 1: valid I d. Nobody's going to make a call on you.
Speaker 1: Nobody's going to say, oh, you're that missing guy. Why
Speaker 1: did he leave his money in the bank though, That's
Speaker 1: but that's what I'm saying all of that. It's there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of he left so much stuff behind.
Speaker 1: He didn't take anything with him. So if you were
Speaker 1: to leave on your own, you would take something with you,
Speaker 1: at least one thing shoes. Yeah, okay. Next theory is
Speaker 1: that he could have been kidnapped and that disturbing noise
Speaker 1: could have been allure for him. I don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: why he would have been kidnapped at all. Ransom ransom demand,
Speaker 1: I would think that. I mean, he wasn't from a
Speaker 1: particularly well I mean he was from a middle class family,
Speaker 1: but not one that could pay, you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of amazing that the Iranians had desperate need of an
Speaker 1: upright bass player. I guess it's possible. Yeah, they would
Speaker 1: have grabbed the base and brought it. With that theory
Speaker 1: out the window. However, the kidnapping theory may make sense
Speaker 1: when we examine the theory that it could have been
Speaker 1: a fraternity prank gone wrong and this is how this
Speaker 1: would go, and I think this is probably the most
Speaker 1: plausible theory out there. Basically, the fish would have been
Speaker 1: the first part, like Steve was saying, you know, fat joke,
Speaker 1: right then Captain Bass, here you go. And then there's
Speaker 1: this noise and it was his Frapp brothers and they
Speaker 1: fake kidnap him, maybe because of the he was a
Speaker 1: he was a sophomore, and he pledged in his freshman
Speaker 1: year Chad, Yeah, and then there was a class pledging
Speaker 1: behind him. This is when pledge was happening. Again, do
Speaker 1: you have it? I had it in my notes and
Speaker 1: I've lost it. Delta something, Delta deltair Okay, I had
Speaker 1: it written down and then I can't find it any more.
Speaker 1: It was like on Kappa Stubby or so they were
Speaker 1: they were pledging. I guess they were in the second
Speaker 1: part of their pledging case or something. There was some
Speaker 1: sort of pledge going on at that time, and so
Speaker 1: there's some speculation that this could have been in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the lower class pledge. Maybe maybe some of the
Speaker 1: freshmen that he had taken part in hazing, maybe one
Speaker 1: of them was actually kind of angry about what Ron
Speaker 1: had put him through. Okay, that's not the theory. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe um, but this theory is Baslee that they fake
Speaker 1: kidnapped him and took him out, you know, a mile
Speaker 1: or two away from campus and dropped him off, and
Speaker 1: they just thought, you know, he he'll walk back, no problem.
Speaker 1: And one thing I will say is, having lived in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, sometimes a thing can happen when it's that
Speaker 1: cold out, or it doesn't actually seem like it's that cold.
Speaker 1: It is cold. You think, well, you know, I could
Speaker 1: definitely use a jacket, but you don't really realize how
Speaker 1: cold it is until you look at the temperature. And
Speaker 1: so it is certainly possible that they could have thought
Speaker 1: that it was not you know, nineteen degrees, because it's
Speaker 1: if they're in a car hauling him somewhere, it's the
Speaker 1: heat or crank, it's it was snowing. But you know,
Speaker 1: they were like, okay, well it's chilly out, but whatever,
Speaker 1: he'll walk back and he'll be fine. He'll be annoyed,
Speaker 1: but he'll be fine. Right and then you know, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, either he succumbs to the elements or he thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll do shelter and then walk in the morning, or
Speaker 1: whatever happens, for some reason, he succumbs to the elements
Speaker 1: and maybe he gets lost and dies out there. And
Speaker 1: this is something I never really heard in detail about
Speaker 1: the investigation, but you would have to assume the police
Speaker 1: would have interrogated as frat bros. Right, Well, so apparently
Speaker 1: they didn't really apparently, Yeah, I was reading I think
Speaker 1: it was in that same medium article that we skimmed
Speaker 1: where they were talking about they were talking the woman
Speaker 1: was talking to uh, some of the people who lived
Speaker 1: in the dorm with Ron, and they said they never
Speaker 1: were even asked questions. They lived on the same floor,
Speaker 1: they live like two doors down, and nobody ever came
Speaker 1: to ask them questions about him. The apparently the fraternity
Speaker 1: was never really asked questions. That's Detective Smith feels like
Speaker 1: they probably know something that pledge class and that he
Speaker 1: hopes that he can find a way to track all
Speaker 1: them down and interview them, but which is hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not ideal. Many of them have passed away at
Speaker 1: this point. But my biggest problem with this theory is
Speaker 1: that no one from the fat ever really came out.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like to me, your first thought
Speaker 1: isn't oh, crap, we kill him. Your first your first
Speaker 1: thought is, oh, crap, he got lost. We gotta go
Speaker 1: find him. Unless they were, like Joe said, you know,
Speaker 1: mad about something they wanted to maybe they wanted at
Speaker 1: least hurt him, right, But I just I and maybe
Speaker 1: this is just overly optimistic of me. He could have
Speaker 1: been a tadbit sadistic, and we don't know that he
Speaker 1: really went off the rails on somebody with the you know,
Speaker 1: the equalizer, the paddle of the holes drill. Didn't. They're
Speaker 1: like he could have. But I just, you know, I
Speaker 1: maybe I just again like maybe I just believe in
Speaker 1: the good in people. But I don't think the first thought,
Speaker 1: you know, when you wake up the next morning, is
Speaker 1: a crap, we killed him. I think it's a crap
Speaker 1: he's lost. We got to go find him and save him.
Speaker 1: In my mind, at least, you know, especially if it's
Speaker 1: just a couple a mile or two out. But maybe
Speaker 1: not the more hopeless side of me, I would like
Speaker 1: to think that people are not so moronicous to least
Speaker 1: somebody out in nineteen degree weather with no coat to
Speaker 1: begin with too. But listen, if it's a if it's
Speaker 1: a couple of college guys though, and they've had a
Speaker 1: couple of drinks and they think they're being funny, and
Speaker 1: then oops, we let him turn into a human popsicle.
Speaker 1: They get two, three, four of them may using the
Speaker 1: phrase or term used early. They may collude and go, oh, hell,
Speaker 1: we need to get rid of the wrong sickle. And
Speaker 1: so what we're gonna do is whatever the hell they did,
Speaker 1: and we will never tell anybody of this again. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say something depressing about this.
Speaker 1: Something depressing is what I say every That is my depression. Shick.
Speaker 1: I just I just generally, I guess believe in the
Speaker 1: good in people, and I would hope that it would
Speaker 1: have been we can help him and find him. Not
Speaker 1: and when we killed him, we got to cover up
Speaker 1: our tracks. But maybe it was. And so that's how
Speaker 1: I can kind of make the kidnapping thing work. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of my best theory on this whole thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's also another possibility. It's just this is
Speaker 1: really random. As they leave him out in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, and then he and then they'd go down
Speaker 1: the road a little ways and they're waiting for him.
Speaker 1: He never shows I've been asked to them, he's been
Speaker 1: picked up by like a serial killer, like Ed you know,
Speaker 1: Ed Gain has come along and given him a ride
Speaker 1: or something like that. That would be really awful. But
Speaker 1: that would be I guess possible. It would be the
Speaker 1: mother of all coincidence. That would be just like what's
Speaker 1: his name? The kid who broke down and you said,
Speaker 1: got picked up by somebody randomly, when before the greater
Speaker 1: came by, um Brandon Brandon Swanson. Yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: on par with the completely random stuff to make that happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. But I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: a lot of serial killing kind of stuff, a lot
Speaker 1: of it is kind of random. People just happened to
Speaker 1: be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and
Speaker 1: they crossed paths with the serial killer and then maam,
Speaker 1: that's the end, you know, that's out. Yeah. Um. My
Speaker 1: last theory is, well, I guess I have two theories.
Speaker 1: My my second to last theory is that it could
Speaker 1: have been a revenge gone wrong. You know, maybe ron
Speaker 1: knew who put the fish in his bed, and he
Speaker 1: maybe you know, of the handle, and went down to
Speaker 1: confront them and it went poorly and then they felt
Speaker 1: like they had to dispose of a body. They had
Speaker 1: already killed the fish, so obviously they were not above killing.
Speaker 1: That's good. But did somebody find a human body in
Speaker 1: between their sheets? No? I don't think so it wasn't reported. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my sheets are trying to stank you, and somebody stuffed
Speaker 1: the body and yeah, not the case. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: my last theory is that it could have been a ghost. What. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I love that you put this in here as
Speaker 1: just the theory name and you're not explaining this to us,
Speaker 1: so please tell me what it's just haunting? Ye, to
Speaker 1: be haunted? It was? Yeah, it was once in a
Speaker 1: sane asylum, and so it was rumored to be haunted.
Speaker 1: Oh so what you're telling me is that the text
Speaker 1: was there, but a ghost took it away, so I
Speaker 1: can't see it on my script. Yeah, I guess it
Speaker 1: is actually said that the space is still haunted by Ron,
Speaker 1: even though even though the dorm was torn down and
Speaker 1: it's a conference center now. But some people think that
Speaker 1: Ron haunts the conference center now, which okay, whatever, But
Speaker 1: so maybe a ghost took him and that yeah, so
Speaker 1: so yeah, there were ghosts before. Wrong, So just This
Speaker 1: is a play on the Devil went down to Georgia,
Speaker 1: but instead of a fiddle, he was after a base. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: espectually that's for the hot fiddle Pars. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like like, yeah, you suck. Yeah, But you know, actually
Speaker 1: and also I I I totally like the Poulter guist
Speaker 1: kind of idea. You know, I could have like enticed
Speaker 1: him with that noise down into the basement where he
Speaker 1: had opened and had it opened like a portal to hell.
Speaker 1: It sucked him in, you know, And so you know,
Speaker 1: that's actually weird. That actually takes me in a direction
Speaker 1: that might help some of this, which is maybe the
Speaker 1: noise that Ron heard was something similar to the instrument
Speaker 1: that he had left out in his car, and he thinks,
Speaker 1: oh hell, somebody opened my car because people didn't tend
Speaker 1: to lock their stuff up. Oh hell, somebody's got my
Speaker 1: car and they're screwing around with my base, and that's
Speaker 1: the noise. And so that would could be something that
Speaker 1: lured him out. That could have been the noise that
Speaker 1: he went to investigate and he thought, I got to
Speaker 1: protect my base or my instrument. It doesn't then feed
Speaker 1: into any of these but that could have been what
Speaker 1: that lure was, except he would have taken his dorm
Speaker 1: keys to get back in, like into his car and
Speaker 1: into the dorm. Well, if the door, if the car
Speaker 1: wasn't locked, then that wouldn't be a reason to take
Speaker 1: the keys. And I don't know that the door of
Speaker 1: the dorm would be an auto lock situation in that
Speaker 1: if it was, I don't know. I've never seen anything
Speaker 1: said the auto locks in those days, but I know that, Um,
Speaker 1: well I was in the dorms. If you if you
Speaker 1: had to nip outside for just a moment to your car,
Speaker 1: you might just like toss a brick in between the door.
Speaker 1: And I guess the reason that I think that is
Speaker 1: because if he thought somebody was messing with something in
Speaker 1: his car, he probably want to lock it after Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless he just intended to drag it in the dorm
Speaker 1: room like he should have done in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It could be that. Actually he
Speaker 1: didn't go to investigate any noise at all. He just
Speaker 1: went outside. He just he remembered his base and he
Speaker 1: decided to go out and get it, and that's when
Speaker 1: he ran into Mr. Serial killer or whoever it was.
Speaker 1: So that's the end of my theories. Of course, you
Speaker 1: do st got one. My theory is probably the most
Speaker 1: repugnant of theories because it is very appropriate for the
Speaker 1: day and age. But it could have been it could
Speaker 1: have been a sexual encounter gone wrong. And by that,
Speaker 1: I mean it may have been that Ron was gay.
Speaker 1: And just so everybody knows, I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: this in the frame of the nineteen fifties. It's not
Speaker 1: like I have any negative views on this, but at
Speaker 1: that time it was a huge bad thing to like
Speaker 1: someone of the same gender. And so it could have
Speaker 1: been that he went to a room expecting to have
Speaker 1: a hook up and the person that was there wasn't
Speaker 1: down with it, or they got caught, or he went
Speaker 1: somewhere else even or maybe he busted somebody because he
Speaker 1: was the r A. It's true he may have busted
Speaker 1: somebody actually, you know, murdering somebody to protect that particular
Speaker 1: dark secret that was a serious thing to protect. I mean,
Speaker 1: he could have been in the closet and it was
Speaker 1: him going out to to get an encounter and it
Speaker 1: went bad. Or it could be that he was actually
Speaker 1: straight although el and he busted somebody else, and those
Speaker 1: two guys said, we cannot let this out because we
Speaker 1: are the I don't know, star football players. I would
Speaker 1: make something else. I actually saw a theory out there
Speaker 1: that I did not that I admitted from this because
Speaker 1: I didn't. I liked it just as much as I
Speaker 1: like this one um. And that was that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible that he when he went to go get
Speaker 1: clean sheets from the house mother, the dormmother, that he
Speaker 1: caught her doing something she shouldn't have been doing, and
Speaker 1: she might have either called her husband or her boyfriend,
Speaker 1: or maybe she was with a guy, or maybe she
Speaker 1: was with a guy who came or a girlfriend or whatever.
Speaker 1: And that was, you know, what needs to be done,
Speaker 1: because we just have her take on what happened, and
Speaker 1: it's obviously scant investigations, so I don't listen. And the
Speaker 1: only thing that I don't know, I have no tough
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just there's no good theories and there's
Speaker 1: no good evidence for anything. He just disappeared. And the
Speaker 1: original investigation, frankly, wasn't they just assumed, you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, they said, he's rugged, so we assumed he
Speaker 1: just left on his own. Yeah, as ault. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: One note. There's I have one final hopeful note and
Speaker 1: one final sad note. The sad note is we kind
Speaker 1: of talked about this before um. Ron's younger brother, Richard,
Speaker 1: was actually first year. He was just a year younger
Speaker 1: than Ron at the time he went. He was also
Speaker 1: a student at Miami University. He was the first year,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a freshman while on a sophomore. He
Speaker 1: finished school and then he was killed in an apartment
Speaker 1: fire a couple of years later. That's yeah. Fire. Ron's
Speaker 1: mom died essentially of what's described as a broken heart
Speaker 1: after Ron disappeared. I don't remember when his dad died,
Speaker 1: but it was earlier, and his his older brother died
Speaker 1: kind of early on as well. So, like we said, Marcia,
Speaker 1: his sister who was who was ten years younger than him,
Speaker 1: or much younger than him. She was ten when he disappeared,
Speaker 1: the only living realm that would make her eight or
Speaker 1: nine years younger than him. So damn your tenure. So
Speaker 1: I'll publish you found herself a new family. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like maybe not. It sounds like she's just kind
Speaker 1: of still searching for him, which is really sad. But
Speaker 1: I have this faint hope you know that he actually
Speaker 1: did run away and started a family of his own,
Speaker 1: and maybe this whole DNA testing train. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: as of today, actually as of the recording of this episode,
Speaker 1: they have identified Lyle Stevicks family. This is what I heard.
Speaker 1: Apparently the family is not talking there. They've just declined
Speaker 1: to be identified, which I think is totally fair. But they,
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully they have closure for themselves. Now. You know,
Speaker 1: the Golden State killer was just identified via DNA, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of my hope that he did run away
Speaker 1: and that somebody in his family because Marcia has sequenced
Speaker 1: her DNA because they found a number of bodies that
Speaker 1: they thought might have been Ron's and so they have
Speaker 1: her DNA on file and it's it's spread out in
Speaker 1: the DNA sphere. I think Joe's right. I think this
Speaker 1: DNA thing is going to really screw up our gig here.
Speaker 1: I think it is too, which you know what, kid,
Speaker 1: I'm totally okay with that. I'm totally okay with everybody
Speaker 1: getting closure for everything. Want any answers ever, might actually
Speaker 1: have to shift to a more historical format when we're
Speaker 1: talking about how did year old mysteries and older because
Speaker 1: there's no Yeah, I think we're going to have to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, but um yeah, that's I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of my hope, although I do think it's probably
Speaker 1: more likely that a frat prank went wrong, or you know,
Speaker 1: he was recruited into the CIA. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that, I personally do not. I don't think the
Speaker 1: CIA one works. There's God, what was that crappy Pacino
Speaker 1: movie about a decade ago? It was that That was
Speaker 1: kind of the vein of what you're talking about. That's
Speaker 1: the one where he was the trainer, the you know,
Speaker 1: the old wise man. Yeah, that was that was that
Speaker 1: was That was that movie. It was a horrible movie.
Speaker 1: But the point is this theory is along the same
Speaker 1: lines of that, and I just can't get behind it.
Speaker 1: I I really I think that either he had an
Speaker 1: account or lost in counter, or maybe the frat thing,
Speaker 1: but those are the only ones that seemed to have
Speaker 1: enough history or repeated instances of by other people to
Speaker 1: have explained how it could have happened, and then why
Speaker 1: the body would never have showed up. Just ye, I
Speaker 1: just hope that if it was a frat thing, that
Speaker 1: somebody will come forward at some point. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: doubting it was, because I think it's more likely he
Speaker 1: just went out to get his face and just ran
Speaker 1: into Mr. Serial killer or that's your favorite theory. And also,
Speaker 1: well there's that one of those at the Steve's gay
Speaker 1: theory is also plausible because the frat boys, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean frats, you know, generally speaking of their stunts,
Speaker 1: don't kill people. While they do sometimes they do, they
Speaker 1: have usually that usually they don't. And so I'm finding, like,
Speaker 1: like to say, the whole gay thing is actually kind
Speaker 1: of more plausible in its own way, just because of
Speaker 1: again the sentiment of the time and the reaction that
Speaker 1: it got from people. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of these theories are good. Maybe
Speaker 1: someday we'll find out remarkably better. Yeah, alright, So what
Speaker 1: else have you got for um? Yeah, here's what I
Speaker 1: have for you. Um. If you were a part of
Speaker 1: this frat prank, you can spend up in an email.
Speaker 1: That email address is Thinking Side Was podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find this episode, along with all
Speaker 1: our other more than two hundred and fifty episode back
Speaker 1: catalog as well as an episode list, links to March
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, oh yeah, links to our research.
Speaker 1: You can find all of that on our website, which
Speaker 1: is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. If you want to
Speaker 1: connect with us on social media, you can do that
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways. We have the Facebook
Speaker 1: page and the group. Like the page, joined the group.
Speaker 1: If you want to have discussions, you should join the group.
Speaker 1: And if you join the group, you should answer the questions.
Speaker 1: The answers are yes and thursdays or weekly, I don't
Speaker 1: really care, just answer the questions. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter where we are Thinking Sideways. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Reddit where we have a subreddit that's called
Speaker 1: thinking Sideways, and you can find us on Instagram where
Speaker 1: we are Thinking Sideways Podcast. Lots of stuff from the
Speaker 1: weekend from so by the way, just some people know
Speaker 1: you're a little slow today because we just got off
Speaker 1: an airplane a day and a half ago from Crime Con,
Speaker 1: which for us was a day and a half ago
Speaker 1: and for you was weeks ago. But you've also heard
Speaker 1: our live episode, so you know how much fun we
Speaker 1: had and how excited we are. So yeah, well most
Speaker 1: of us are, and I've had a lot of caffeine.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason I sound excited. I'm just doing
Speaker 1: a lot of other really big planning things right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're your priorities are all I know, and you probably
Speaker 1: know how you're finding us. Um, how you're listening to
Speaker 1: us right now? Hopefully that's on you know, like a
Speaker 1: Stitcher premium type thing where you are not listening to ads,
Speaker 1: you're hearing us four days early, and you're hearing our
Speaker 1: bonus content that we're calling down the rabbit hole once
Speaker 1: a month. If you are not doing that but you're interested,
Speaker 1: you can go to stitcher dot com slash thinking sideways
Speaker 1: and use the promo code sideways for a month off.
Speaker 1: You might be listening to us on iTunes or streaming
Speaker 1: us pretty much almost anywhere. Yeah, who knows where you're
Speaker 1: finding us, but you know how you're finding us, And
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, please do take the time to
Speaker 1: subscribe and leave us comment and reading that helps other
Speaker 1: listeners find us and tune in. I forgot we're on
Speaker 1: tune in and Google. Okay, great, we're kind of place
Speaker 1: were everywhere. Hold crap, we actually sound better on Stitcher
Speaker 1: Premium that's probably true. Ye, Steve spends more time editing
Speaker 1: sabotaging our audio for everywhere else. Yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we do. It's a good long term plan. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I think all of that having been said, we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and get on out of here. But
Speaker 1: we will be back next week, unlike Ron, with another
Speaker 1: hard hitting mystery. A matter of fact, he's right. Bye, guys, dudes. Later,