Speaker 1: Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
Speaker 1: not be suitable for all listeners. From iHeartRadio and Neon
Speaker 1: thirty three, I'm John Walzac and this is Missing in Arizona,
Speaker 1: the story of a man who disappeared after allegedly killing
Speaker 1: his wife and kids, blowing up their suburban home, and
Speaker 1: escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three years later, I'm hunting,
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher, and I need your help. What got me
Speaker 1: about this case? Where the caves, people often pitch me
Speaker 1: story ideas. Many are good, few are great. It's extremely
Speaker 1: rare to find one that warrants two years of exhaustive
Speaker 1: investigative labor. There has to be an X factor. A
Speaker 1: man kills his family, blows up their house, and flees
Speaker 1: into the wilderness. Go on, then escapes or dies in
Speaker 1: a cave. Okay, sold? I picture a goony style skeleton
Speaker 1: in an underground cave in the Arizona Mountains, A romantic,
Speaker 1: morbid Western adventure. Of course, I want to search the
Speaker 1: caves myself, but first I need to find them. And
Speaker 1: let me tell you, the Arizona caving community is the
Speaker 1: most secretive group I have ever encountered. More than anyone
Speaker 1: I met while reporting on the Mafia or nine to
Speaker 1: eleven or anything. Really, no one will tell me the
Speaker 1: location of these caves, and they're not on a map,
Speaker 1: but I know that they're very close to where police
Speaker 1: found Mary Fisher's forerunner, Find the suv, find the caves.
Speaker 1: For months, I examine every piece of data for clues,
Speaker 1: every news report, every police record. I'm proud to say
Speaker 1: in the end my best final guess is within a
Speaker 1: quarter mile of the actual spot. But that's not good enough.
Speaker 1: These aren't Hollywood caves. They're holes in the forest floor,
Speaker 1: tiny dark doors into a subterranean world. They're easy to
Speaker 1: miss in a vast wilderness. I need the exact spot.
Speaker 1: I need help. This is where I introduce you to
Speaker 1: Paul Gemperline. Hey, y'all, Paul is a fan of Season
Speaker 1: one Missing in Alaska. Of the thousands of people who
Speaker 1: contacted me, he's been the most helpful when I choose
Speaker 1: this case. I email Paul, hoping to loop him in
Speaker 1: as an amateur researcher and satellite imagery analyst. Unsurprisingly, he
Speaker 1: says yes. Surprisingly, he tells me he's also a recreational caver,
Speaker 1: an intelligent tech savvy caving superfan a perfect fit the plan.
Speaker 1: Our producer Chris and I will go into the woods
Speaker 1: with Scott Steal Detective TJ Juran trying to find the
Speaker 1: forerunner spot. Based on my research and TJ's memories, I
Speaker 1: all video the woods and from his headquarters in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: Paul will try to pinpoint exactly where the SUV was abandoned,
Speaker 1: like literally the tree was parked against. So one pleasant
Speaker 1: Phoenix morning, Chris and I meet up with TJ and
Speaker 1: drive into the mountains. A twist here, A turn there.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is Young Road.
Speaker 3: Turn right now, So.
Speaker 4: Now we're going to start heading down to.
Speaker 1: We descend from the top of the muggy on rem
Speaker 1: that jagged strip of cliffs extending across Arizona. Young Road
Speaker 1: is paved for a bit. Then Bumpy, look at my
Speaker 1: fucking back windshield. Oh fuck, So you used to have
Speaker 1: a Bronco. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually bought it in ninety four, early the year
Speaker 2: he was arrested. And I go to the Ford dealship
Speaker 2: and there's a white Bronco and I told the guy
Speaker 2: I don't want to fucking white. So he shows me
Speaker 2: all these different colors and I picked one that was
Speaker 2: turquoise green, but it had, you know, the white top.
Speaker 5: It had the turquoise top, and it looked stupid. So
Speaker 5: he goes, we're here, come around back. Let me show
Speaker 5: you what else we got, and he takes me around back.
Speaker 5: There's like fifteen white Broncos lined up. I'm like, I
Speaker 5: told you, I don't want to know J Bronco.
Speaker 1: We're driving down this dirt road faster than OJ on
Speaker 1: an LA Highway when.
Speaker 5: Your destination is ahead on the left.
Speaker 1: We're here where.
Speaker 2: There should be a little road that we can turn
Speaker 2: left onto it. No, holy shit, that's it.
Speaker 6: That's it. Yeah, huh shit.
Speaker 1: We turn onto a raggedy side road and park.
Speaker 2: It should be right generally in this direction.
Speaker 6: Do you want to walk?
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: An eerie silence forms the soundtrack of the forest, interrupted
Speaker 1: only by our footsteps in the wind. I pull out
Speaker 1: my phone so I don't have cell service, but I
Speaker 1: have GPS, so since the map is loaded, if we
Speaker 1: start walking, we'll see okay, well we're here.
Speaker 6: And then we'll get right to that spot.
Speaker 1: So we walk.
Speaker 5: Watch where you walk, rattlesnakes and bears.
Speaker 1: TJ and I head in different directions. Memory guides him.
Speaker 1: GPS guides me.
Speaker 6: Do you mind if I walk to finish the coordinate?
Speaker 1: TJ yells at me to follow him. I can tell
Speaker 1: he's kind of pissed. I ignore him and speed walk away.
Speaker 1: We've made it so far. I'm not stopping until I
Speaker 1: reach these coordinates. I think this is it. Our producer
Speaker 1: Chris is stranded in the middle, unsure who to follow
Speaker 1: me or TJ. TJ, the cave's over here. I found it.
Speaker 1: TJ walks over.
Speaker 4: That's it. That's the cave, the cave.
Speaker 1: That shall not be named. I know its name, but
Speaker 1: I've been asked by cavers not to publicize it. They're
Speaker 1: worried a name will help people find and vandalize it,
Speaker 1: which means I get to rename it Apex Simple, the
Speaker 1: name of my high school. Winding through the forest, I
Speaker 1: spot a sinkhole maybe thirty feet wide thirty feet long.
Speaker 1: A wash or seasonal creek bed flows right into it. Today,
Speaker 1: there's no water, one hundred percent dry. The sink is
Speaker 1: filled with branches and leaves and dirt. A fallen tree
Speaker 1: crosses from one side to the other. A precarious bridge
Speaker 1: peering down maybe twenty feet at the bottom between craggy rocks.
Speaker 1: There it is the cave entrance. I know the Forerunner
Speaker 1: was parked near here, within one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 1: The problem is it all looks the same trees, bushes, rocks.
Speaker 1: This will take more detective work, so I video it
Speaker 1: than TJ. Chris and I walk back to the car.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Johnny made me fucking sweat.
Speaker 1: TJ and I laugh about bolting in different directions, yelling at.
Speaker 7: Each other, and then some poor sap caught in the middle.
Speaker 1: Well, sorry, guys, but we made it. Back in Phoenix,
Speaker 1: I send my video to Paul Gemperline. I often joke
Speaker 1: that these stories turned me into John Nash or Carrie
Speaker 1: Matheson or Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a
Speaker 1: crazed person surrounded by maps and charts and sticky notes.
Speaker 1: Paul puts me to shame. I see his computer monitors.
Speaker 1: They're playing a dozen videos simultaneously. He's comparing old footage
Speaker 1: of the Forerunner recovery, every archived angle to video. I
Speaker 1: took in the woods. Here a tree, there a bush,
Speaker 1: Here's some rocks. They are a shadow. Can we narrow
Speaker 1: it down? Can we find the exact spot where Robert
Speaker 1: left Mary's forerunner.
Speaker 8: I think I've figured it out, when a little bit
Speaker 8: crazy in the process.
Speaker 1: Yes, this genius man found it.
Speaker 8: I've identified those double trees. I've identified this dead tree.
Speaker 8: I've identified this leaning tree, this tree here, I've identified
Speaker 8: the dead one there.
Speaker 1: VOILA. Thank you, Paul. So at this point we found
Speaker 1: the cave and the fore runner spot, which allows Paul
Speaker 1: to search old satellite imagery for any photos taken between
Speaker 1: April tenth and April twentieth, two thousand and one. Why
Speaker 1: let's say we find an image from I don't know,
Speaker 1: April sixteenth. Can we see the fore runner. If so,
Speaker 1: we can narrow down how long it was in the woods.
Speaker 1: Tighten the timeline. Paul starts to rule out or in
Speaker 1: dozens of satellites. It's a taxing, months long chore with
Speaker 1: no payoff until one day.
Speaker 6: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: An email from Paul.
Speaker 8: The good ish news is that the spot for satellite
Speaker 8: took two ten meter resolution photos of the Toyota location
Speaker 8: on April sixteenth, two thousand and one. We got lucky
Speaker 8: with this because there is zero percent cloud cover and
Speaker 8: the bit of overlap between satellite images happened to work
Speaker 8: out that the location was photographed twice. We're even more
Speaker 8: lucky because there's also a fifteen meter resolution Landsat image
Speaker 8: of the area taken on April fifteenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Paul strikes again. He finds images of the fore runner
Speaker 1: spot taken by two different satellites during the correct period. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that's where the good news ends.
Speaker 8: Only about four percent of a fifteen meter pixel would
Speaker 8: be filled by a toyota. Additionally, it would be under
Speaker 8: tree cover and also possibly split across as many as
Speaker 8: four pixels.
Speaker 1: So if you zoom in down to the pixel on
Speaker 1: a fifteen meter resolution SAT image, a four runner would
Speaker 1: cover only four percent of that pixel. Tantalizingly close, but
Speaker 1: useless for us. We need high resolution photos. It's frustrating
Speaker 1: to stare at my screen at this wide swath of
Speaker 1: Arizona from the right time frame, knowing the fore Runner
Speaker 1: is likely down there somewhere. I zoom into the spot
Speaker 1: where Greg the camper found it. This is the part
Speaker 1: of CSI when I'd say enhance and the image would
Speaker 1: resolve to finer detail, but in reality it doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. Blurry blurrier, blurry, IST one pixel no detail.
Speaker 1: We've now ruled out all but three satellites our last
Speaker 1: hope IRS one, c IRS one D, and Arrows A.
Speaker 1: The first two were operated by the Space Agency of India,
Speaker 1: the third by an Israeli company. As Paul digs around online,
Speaker 1: I email the Indian and Israeli embassies in DC. Paul
Speaker 1: soon determines there's no way the Indian satellites capture the
Speaker 1: photos we need. The final final hope is aeros A,
Speaker 1: which would give us two meter images detailed enough to
Speaker 1: see the fore Runner. In August twenty twenty three, I
Speaker 1: get an email from the Israeli embassy saying they'll check
Speaker 1: on it. Six weeks later, Hamas attacks Israel war breaks out.
Speaker 1: I never hear back from them again. We still haven't
Speaker 1: determined whether or not Aerosa captured imagery of the fore
Speaker 1: Runner spot in April two thousand and one. If you
Speaker 1: can help, please contact us. Okay, so we found the
Speaker 1: four Runner spot and a cave. What about other caves
Speaker 1: in the area. My hope is that someone will give
Speaker 1: us a list, or better yet, a map. That's dashed
Speaker 1: immediately when I realized that the Arizona caving community is
Speaker 1: something of a secret society. They do not like outsiders,
Speaker 1: especially reporters.
Speaker 3: The joke in the caving community is say, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: going caving in Arizona, and the joke is there's no
Speaker 3: caves in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Ken Bailey a caver in Kentucky, and.
Speaker 7: We all have a big laugh because no one is
Speaker 7: going to tell you a location of a cave in Arizona.
Speaker 7: It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 4: You'll find two modes of thought in the caving community.
Speaker 1: Dave Decker a caver in New Mexico.
Speaker 3: Arizona is kind of like on the far side of that,
Speaker 3: which is, we don't have any caves, so don't come
Speaker 3: here looking for caves. And the reason that they want
Speaker 3: to keep things secret, and I'm more along these lines myself,
Speaker 3: is that you've got this group in the general public
Speaker 3: that they don't care about the caves, they don't care
Speaker 3: about the wildlife, they don't care about the archaeological history
Speaker 3: that may be associated with it, and they just want
Speaker 3: to go in there and party, throw beer cans around,
Speaker 3: knock down the stalactites, and spray paint the walls.
Speaker 1: This is critical to understand. The caving community is secretive
Speaker 1: because they've been burned repeatedly. Vandals routinely desecrate pristine caves,
Speaker 1: destroying irreplaceable features of beauty that took thousands of years
Speaker 1: to form. It's not that these cavers are asocial. They
Speaker 1: can be friendly. It just pains them to see something
Speaker 1: so elegant, something they love deeply defiled, so they turn inward.
Speaker 1: They're suspicious of outsiders. They have a code. Don't speak
Speaker 1: to outsiders, especially not a podcaster looking for the body
Speaker 1: of a killer. Beyond vandals, even people who mean well
Speaker 1: can unintentionally do irreparable harm. One big concern is white
Speaker 1: nose syndrome, a fungal disease that kills bats more than
Speaker 1: six millions since two thousand and six. Humans can spread
Speaker 1: it to unaffected caves where bats hibernate. There's more, but
Speaker 1: you get the idea early on. I try to build trust.
Speaker 1: I tell cavers that I worked for years at a
Speaker 1: biodiversity research and in stad I care about nature. I
Speaker 1: love nature. That doesn't work silence, I fail to be frank.
Speaker 1: It kind of pisses me off. I have ten million
Speaker 1: things to do. I'm trying to report this story responsibly
Speaker 1: and no one will help me. Meanwhile, YouTubers who just
Speaker 1: don't care are recklessly going into many of these caves anyway. Slowly, though,
Speaker 1: I earned some trust. More so, several cavers help me
Speaker 1: off the record because I learn information independently, and now
Speaker 1: they need me because they don't want certain things publicized,
Speaker 1: like the name of the cave one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: feet from where police found Mary's forerunner. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: I already committed to not publishing coordinates or directions or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but the name, not even the name.
Speaker 1: I think this desire for secrecy will backfire, but I'm
Speaker 1: honoring their wishes. To this day, I still don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how many caves are within a mile of the
Speaker 1: forerunner spot, at least four, including Apex, again only one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet from where police find the fore runner.
Speaker 1: Our producer Chris and I do a little test. We
Speaker 1: park a Subaru cross track at that exact spot. We
Speaker 1: walk to Apex and can still easily see the cross truck.
Speaker 1: It makes sense why police thought Robert Fisher was hiding here.
Speaker 1: They couldn't enter it in two thousand and one, the
Speaker 1: entrance was too tight. Instead, they called a plumber who
Speaker 1: snaked in a drain camera. No sign of Fisher. Forty
Speaker 1: one club. Forty one club is on tribal land the
Speaker 1: Ford Apache Indian Reservation. Police teargased it in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. No sign of Fisher. Pishee Burrow, pishibo ro
Speaker 1: though I've seen alternate spellings. It's unclear if police attempted
Speaker 1: to search it and Redman Redman is locally famous. Police
Speaker 1: tried to search it. No sign of Fisher. There's something
Speaker 1: you should know about Redman. Another reason for all the secrecy. Caves,
Speaker 1: even popular ones like Redmen, can be deadly. You have
Speaker 1: to worry about sliding into a crevasse. You have to
Speaker 1: worry about rocks breaking off and bashing in your skull.
Speaker 1: You have to worry about bad air decaying or antiicmatter
Speaker 1: creates pockets of air saturated with carbon dioxide. It can
Speaker 1: kill you. You have to worry about critters, snakes, mountain lions, bears.
Speaker 1: You have to worry about hypothermia. You even have to
Speaker 1: worry about the rapture and extreme anxiety that you need
Speaker 1: to get the out now. Inexperienced people can easily die
Speaker 1: in caves. In fact, one died in Redman. His name
Speaker 1: was Aaron's Standage. On February twenty fourth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: only six weeks before the Fisher murders, Standage and a
Speaker 1: friend descended into Redmen and traversed it until they reached
Speaker 1: a flooded sump or passage at the back of the cave.
Speaker 1: The friends squeezed through a three foot pole and swam
Speaker 1: ten feet underwater, surfacing in a cavern with only six
Speaker 1: inches of air between water and the rocky ceiling above.
Speaker 1: Standards swam into the same cramped space according to the
Speaker 1: pacin roundup, bobbing in the water breathing scarce air. They
Speaker 1: debated what to do. The friend turned around. When Standage
Speaker 1: didn't follow, the friends sought help. A rescue diver entered
Speaker 1: the flooded swamp through the three foot hole feet first,
Speaker 1: pulling an air tank behind him. Navigating underwater, he bumped
Speaker 1: into a body. Using his legs. The diver pulled the
Speaker 1: body out of a crevice slowly through the sump to
Speaker 1: the surface. Neither Standage nor his friend, a certified diver,
Speaker 1: took any safety precautions. According to the Heela County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Office quote, they were strictly diving in, holding their breath,
Speaker 1: swimming underwater, and hoping they had air in the next cavern.
Speaker 1: My goal here is not to scare you off from caves.
Speaker 1: They can be places of discovery and adventure, of camaraderie
Speaker 1: or solitude. With experience or guides, They're typically safe, but
Speaker 1: you need to exercise caution. Caves are unpredictable. Even profession
Speaker 1: oles die. The most famous death occurred ninety nine years ago.
Speaker 1: A man named Floyd Collins got stuck in a cave
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, pinned in place by fawn rocks for weeks.
Speaker 1: Dozens of men tried to save him. The rescue became
Speaker 1: a national spectacle. Millions followed updates via radio. Tens of
Speaker 1: thousands showed up in person. Vendors sold everything from balloons
Speaker 1: to hamburgers. According to The Daily Beast, Bread and Circus,
Speaker 1: a newspaper reporter, William Burke Miller, only five foot five,
Speaker 1: even managed to crawl to Collins and interview him. Miller
Speaker 1: won a pulitzer. Collins died for years. His body was
Speaker 1: a tourist attraction, displayed in a glass covered tasket. Pay
Speaker 1: a dollar enter a cave, see a corpse. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine, someone stole the body. It was recovered minus
Speaker 1: a leg. Finally, in nineteen eighty nine, Collins got a
Speaker 1: proper burial. Since the Collins spectacle, caves have popped up
Speaker 1: repeatedly in mass media. In nineteen seventy three, Cormack McCall
Speaker 1: the published Child of God, a novel in which spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: a man kills a woman, burns down her house, and
Speaker 1: flees to a cave. In two thousand and five alone,
Speaker 1: Hollywood gave us the Cavern Spolunker's Fall, Prey to a
Speaker 1: supernatural force in Russian caves six percent, on Rotten Tomatoes,
Speaker 1: The Cave Monsters Huntsplunkers in Romanian caves twelve percent, and
Speaker 1: The Descent, set in western North Carolina, eighty seven percent.
Speaker 1: I love that film. I saw The Descent in a
Speaker 1: theater a week before moving to Asheville, North Carolina for college.
Speaker 1: There is, of course, so much more caves in literature
Speaker 1: and song and lore, from Plato to Mumford and Sons
Speaker 1: to the Lord of the Rings. Seijin Pang lived in
Speaker 1: a cave for seven years. A cave in Kenya gave
Speaker 1: us Ebola a cave in Greece gave us Armageddon. John
Speaker 1: of Patmos had apocalyptic visions and recorded the Book of
Speaker 1: Revelation in that cave. I once hiked Devil's Courthouse, a
Speaker 1: mountain in North Carolina with a cave that, according to
Speaker 1: Cherokee legend, is home to a plant eyed giant named Judhicola.
Speaker 1: Judahicola controls wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. We rarely see
Speaker 1: caves in a positive light. They're usually scenes of fear, horror, death, isolation.
Speaker 1: That's what we project onto them. But extricated from human narratives,
Speaker 1: they're undeniably sublime, exquisite quirks of nature. They form in
Speaker 1: many ways. The ones near the Forerunners spot where police
Speaker 1: thought Robert Fisher was hiding, are called solution caves.
Speaker 7: They have been carved out over the course of hundreds
Speaker 7: of thousands of years by the action of running water
Speaker 7: dissolving away the limestone.
Speaker 1: Frank Kimbler is a geologist and associate professor of Earth
Speaker 1: Science at New Mexico Military Institute. He lived in Arizona
Speaker 1: from the late eighties until two thousand and nine, working
Speaker 1: as an engineer for the state Department of Minds and
Speaker 1: Mineral Resources. He explored the caves near the Forerunners spot
Speaker 1: in the nineties. The first thing he tells me is that.
Speaker 7: The caving community is very, very secretive, and they won't
Speaker 7: tell you anything because people trash things out really bad
Speaker 7: and they leave cans. There's this caving thing that says,
Speaker 7: leave nothing behind and kill nothing but time, and take
Speaker 7: nothing but pictures.
Speaker 1: Frank has been in two of the four caves near
Speaker 1: the four Runner spot, forty one Club and Pishie Burrow,
Speaker 1: where in nineteen ninety two he almost died on the
Speaker 1: way out.
Speaker 7: I was really tired. My arms were cramping up, and
Speaker 7: I miscalculated the stride length. You need to have enough
Speaker 7: space to reach up and grab the top ledge to
Speaker 7: pull yourself out. And what happened was on the way
Speaker 7: out with my arms cramping up and I was dead tired.
Speaker 7: I get to the top and I was about a
Speaker 7: foot short. I'm going, oh my god, I messed up
Speaker 7: the stride length. So I'm dangling in there and I'm going,
Speaker 7: all right, I'm too tired to go back down and
Speaker 7: redo and then come back up. So I was the
Speaker 7: last person out and my friend Wayne was at the
Speaker 7: very top waiting for me, and I tried to reach
Speaker 7: him and I couldn't reach. He reached down and I
Speaker 7: stretched with all my might. He caught my fingertips and
Speaker 7: literally pulled me out. I was scared to death. I
Speaker 7: thought it was going to die dangling in Pisheborough Cave.
Speaker 7: But he pulled me out, and when I got to
Speaker 7: the top, I just laid down. I says, thank you, Wayne,
Speaker 7: this is the second time you've saved my life. He says,
Speaker 7: don't worry about It's what friends are for.
Speaker 1: Pcburrow was much harder to access than other caves like
Speaker 1: forty one Club or Redman. First, you had to descend
Speaker 1: into a deep sinkhole.
Speaker 7: You would absolutely have to repel to get down into Picyboro.
Speaker 7: No other way to get in there, and that's about
Speaker 7: forty to sixty feet to get to the bottom.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, right after Frank's near death experience,
Speaker 1: the Picheboro sinkhole collapsed. Now there's only one way in.
Speaker 7: The flat metal plate goes in through what's called the
Speaker 7: filopium tubes, aptly named I wouldn't be able to fit
Speaker 7: through it. You probably would because you look like you're
Speaker 7: a pretty slender dude, So fillopium tubes is horrible to
Speaker 7: get through with fancy names like Restricter one and Restrict two.
Speaker 1: And you're telling me that it's so tight that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm five eight hundred and thirty five pounds, so I
Speaker 1: could probably do it, but you're not. You could do it,
Speaker 1: You're not that big of a guy, but it's tight
Speaker 1: enough that you don't think you would be able to
Speaker 1: get in there.
Speaker 7: I know when I was younger, I weighed one sixty
Speaker 7: five and I could have done it. It would have
Speaker 7: been a little bit of a stretch, but I was
Speaker 7: used to that. But now that I'm one hundred and
Speaker 7: eighty nine pounds, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: By chance, Frank is within one pound of Robert Fisher's
Speaker 1: weight one hundred and ninety pounds when he disappeared.
Speaker 7: I think the chubb around I think that the good
Speaker 7: life from my wife's cooking, I would have been stopped
Speaker 7: at probably Restrict one because they have different diameters on them.
Speaker 7: That's the reason why they named them Restrict one and
Speaker 7: Restrictor two, and hence the name. I mean fallopium tubes
Speaker 7: that describes all tight.
Speaker 1: That is, if I went in there, am I just
Speaker 1: in an extraordinarily claustrophobic tube for a long period of
Speaker 1: time until it open.
Speaker 7: It would be you would be. That's a guarantee. And
Speaker 7: I've been in tight places like that before. You would
Speaker 7: have been probably more than one hundred feet of ultra
Speaker 7: tighte we're talking about. Got to have your hands directly
Speaker 7: in front of you, not by your sides, and you've
Speaker 7: got to push with your feet and pull with your
Speaker 7: hands to get through it. No way to turn around,
Speaker 7: no way to do anything. You can't back out. You
Speaker 7: just once you get started, you got to keep going.
Speaker 1: When I spoke to a coworker of Robert Fishers from
Speaker 1: the early nineties, she was the first person to confirm
Speaker 1: to me that he had been in at least one
Speaker 1: cave in that area, and she did not remember the
Speaker 1: name of the cave, but what she said is that
Speaker 1: they went biking with some coworkers and that Fisher and
Speaker 1: some of his coworkers went into a cave and then
Speaker 1: came out another entrance. As far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: the only one in that area that fits that description
Speaker 1: is PC Burrow. Are there any other caves in that
Speaker 1: area that you know of that you can enter one way?
Speaker 1: And exit another.
Speaker 7: I gotta think about this. You can't do it in
Speaker 7: forty one Club, as far as I can remember PC
Speaker 7: Burrow before the sinkle entrance collapse. If you knew the
Speaker 7: way around inside that cave and knew it well, yes,
Speaker 7: you could go in one side and come out the other,
Speaker 7: although coming out the filopium tubes would be an absolute bitch.
Speaker 7: Going in that way as an absolute bitch. Forty one
Speaker 7: Club I heard somebody say something that there was another
Speaker 7: inference to that. I don't know, and I don't remember,
Speaker 7: but I do know that pshew Borrow had two ways
Speaker 7: in and two ways out at one time. Now I
Speaker 7: think it only has one unless somebody made some discoveries
Speaker 7: since I was there.
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to determine which cave Robert Ashley
Speaker 1: and their coworkers entered in the nineties p she Burro
Speaker 1: seems unlikely they would have had to either repel down
Speaker 1: into a sinkhole or crawl through fillopian tubes, neither matches
Speaker 1: Ashley's account, but I'm unaware of any other cave in
Speaker 1: the area through which Fisher could enter one way and
Speaker 1: exit another. Frank and I are kindred spirits adventurous souls.
Speaker 1: I suspect you are too past caves. We chat about
Speaker 1: lost minds and treasures and UFOs. Sorry UAPs. I once
Speaker 1: hunted for Forest Fenn's treasure. So did Frank. Fenn was
Speaker 1: an art dealer who hit a million dollar treasure chest
Speaker 1: somewhere in the Mountain West. He wrote a poem with
Speaker 1: nine clues to find it. This is what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do for Missing Season two, spend my days in
Speaker 1: the wilderness treasure hunting. Instead, someone found the chest, Fenn died,
Speaker 1: and I ended up in New York at the height
Speaker 1: of COVID, sifting through nine to eleven photos. Frank tells
Speaker 1: me intriguing stories, including one about people he knows who
Speaker 1: found treasure in the Oregon Mountains organ in New Mexico.
Speaker 7: They found a partially concealed mine in the Oregon Mountains,
Speaker 7: and once they unsealed it and went back into the
Speaker 7: back end of it, there was a stacked up silver
Speaker 7: bars and Spanish armor in the back.
Speaker 1: Frank zoom background is the site where a UFO allegedly
Speaker 1: crashed near Roswell in nineteen forty seven. Did you ever
Speaker 1: find any piece of it?
Speaker 7: I have got probably thirty or four fragments of metal
Speaker 7: that have come from out there. Some of it's been
Speaker 7: analyzed and it comes back as being anomalous.
Speaker 1: I tell Frank that these shows missing in Alaska, a
Speaker 1: nine to eleven in Arizona are Gothic treasure hunts. A
Speaker 1: plane carrying two congressmen, a doctor who vanished in New
Speaker 1: York the night before nine to eleven, A familicidal fugitive.
Speaker 1: What drives Frank, what drives.
Speaker 7: Me, It's that innate curiosity that is in almost everybody.
Speaker 7: What's at the top of the mountain. Well, we climb
Speaker 7: Everest because we want to go to the top of it.
Speaker 7: We explore space, We go to the moon. It's in
Speaker 7: our nature to look for things. It's just there to.
Speaker 1: Explore, including caves, which feel like a final refuge from
Speaker 1: our digital age voids. To explore blank space is to
Speaker 1: give us some meaning, any meaning, in a day and
Speaker 1: age where it feels like there isn't a lot of
Speaker 1: exploration to do. It's something that is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pioneer spirit, because even when we're saturated with
Speaker 1: satellites and cameras and drones and maps and tobo this
Speaker 1: and Tobo that, and history and photos. There are caves
Speaker 1: that are undiscovered, and it's got to be absolutely exhilarating
Speaker 1: to discover something new that you're either the first person
Speaker 1: or the first person in a very long time to
Speaker 1: go into.
Speaker 7: There are undiscovered caves. There are many things that need
Speaker 7: to be explored. The exploration days are not over yet.
Speaker 1: As our interview winds down, Frank hou's a surprise. He
Speaker 1: tells me about another cave near the fore Runner spot
Speaker 1: number five Columbine. I get excited, but.
Speaker 7: It's full of water. There's no way that you could
Speaker 7: even camp out in that thing. We were water up
Speaker 7: to our armpits and that thing. I kept thinking we
Speaker 7: were going to drown, but no, and it was ice cold.
Speaker 1: Not habitable, a dead end. If you like this show,
Speaker 1: please download our first two seasons, Missing in Alaska and
Speaker 1: Missing on nine to eleven. For updates, visit Neon thirty
Speaker 1: three dot com or follow me on Twitter at John
Speaker 1: waalzac Jo n Wa l Czak. Thanks for listening. My
Speaker 1: initial plan is to search the Fisher caves using autonomous
Speaker 1: aerial drones. Then I have trouble finding the caves. I
Speaker 1: don't want to damage them. There are legal issues that
Speaker 1: technology isn't there yet, and regardless, it's expensive, and we are,
Speaker 1: as I've said before, but a humble podcast. There are
Speaker 1: so many hurdles.
Speaker 9: It's dog dusty, narrow, all kinds of geometry, and you
Speaker 9: have to figure out where do I go, how do
Speaker 9: I stay safe?
Speaker 6: And do all of this with all.
Speaker 1: The human Sebastian Chaer is an associate professor at Carnegie
Speaker 1: Mellon University's Robotics Institute. He was part of a team
Speaker 1: that participated in something called the DARPAT Subterranean Challenge, sponsored
Speaker 1: by the US Defense Department.
Speaker 9: The goal was to explore underground spaces and find objects
Speaker 9: in those spaces, such as people and so. The ideas
Speaker 9: that before you send any first responders in, can you
Speaker 9: see what you have ahead of you in a safe way.
Speaker 1: One day in the near future, police might unleash a
Speaker 1: swarm of drones into a cave to search for a
Speaker 1: fugitive or a missing splunker. Yet for now, nothing beats
Speaker 1: in old fashioned boots on the ground approach. So let
Speaker 1: me reintroduce you to.
Speaker 4: Hi, Dave Decker.
Speaker 3: I'm the owner and principal geologist at Southwest Geophysical Consulting
Speaker 3: out of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: And Hi.
Speaker 10: My name is ger Jorgensen Olage. I've been working for
Speaker 10: a Southwest Geophysical since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: We hired Dave and Garrett to help us search two caves,
Speaker 1: Apex and Redman. Part of this is just for fun.
Speaker 1: What an absurd job I have. I tell friends, I'll
Speaker 1: be off the grid in Arizona in a cave hunting
Speaker 1: for the bones of a killer. However, it is also
Speaker 1: a legitimate search for clues. We're hunting for guns, bullets, tobacco, tins, keys.
Speaker 1: Our plan is not only to search the caves, but
Speaker 1: also to map them with widar, scan for other caves
Speaker 1: using a drone and metal detect around the fore Runners spot.
Speaker 1: So in November twenty twenty three, I fly back to Phoenix,
Speaker 1: as do the Polls, Paul Deckett, our executive producer, and
Speaker 1: Paul Kemberlin, our fan turned researcher. The Pauls and I
Speaker 1: meet Dave and Garrett at the fore Runner spot. I
Speaker 1: tell Dave he looks like Gary Sinise. He seems mildly offended,
Speaker 1: which I don't get. The next day he explains he
Speaker 1: thought I was talking about Gary Busey. This is our plan.
Speaker 1: Day one explore and map APEX and Redman. Day two
Speaker 1: metal detect and fly the drone. To start, we get
Speaker 1: a safety briefing.
Speaker 3: Okay, so always want a good quality helmet with the
Speaker 3: chin strap. Don't wear a construction helmet with rubber band.
Speaker 3: Not going to work if a rock falls off the
Speaker 3: ceiling and hit your head because the first rock's going
Speaker 3: to knock the helmet off, the second rock's going to
Speaker 3: crush your skull once you're around the cave entrance. The
Speaker 3: cave entrance tends to be the location where most rock
Speaker 3: fall actually does occur, so try to be pretty careful
Speaker 3: when you're at the cave entrance. That's also where most
Speaker 3: critters hang out, so snakes, coyotes, rentail, cats, raccoons, any
Speaker 3: number of wild animals use cave entrances and the first
Speaker 3: inner room of a cave as shelter, so that's where
Speaker 3: you're most likely going to run into them. So just
Speaker 3: be aware of that and kind of be expecting it,
Speaker 3: so when the raccoon comes flying out at you or
Speaker 3: the owl comes flying out at you, you don't get startled,
Speaker 3: step backwards and.
Speaker 4: Fall off a cliff.
Speaker 1: One time in a cave entrance. Garrett came face to
Speaker 1: face with a bear.
Speaker 2: Start to crawl in.
Speaker 10: Look up and it's about as close as we are.
Speaker 6: Just looking at me there.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh shit.
Speaker 10: I start to back out and then I stand up
Speaker 10: and I hear it bolt, so I think, a fuck,
Speaker 10: it's coming. It's charging me. So it's the cave entrances
Speaker 10: backed up against the cliff face. I don't remember climbing
Speaker 10: into about twelve feet high. I just remember the next
Speaker 10: thing I was up on top of it, scaled the rock,
Speaker 10: and then from there I did jog to my group.
Speaker 10: At that point, I'm like, Okay, it probably can't get
Speaker 10: to me up that sheer rock.
Speaker 1: It might get tight in the cave. Dave says, it
Speaker 1: feels like mother's giving you a hug.
Speaker 3: If you're into that kind of thing. I am like it.
Speaker 3: I like the feeling of being in a rock chamber.
Speaker 3: It's surrounded by rock on all sides. But some people
Speaker 3: don't like that and they start to panic.
Speaker 10: Remain calm in case someone does get injured. The first
Speaker 10: risk is going to be hypothermia. Not moving around forty
Speaker 10: degree environment becomes very cold, very fast.
Speaker 1: It's important to bring.
Speaker 10: Extra water, extra food, extra light, redundancy. It's just good
Speaker 10: to emphasize how isolated the environment is. It may seem obvious,
Speaker 10: but we're becoming more dependent on these technologies that just
Speaker 10: don't work underground. No Google maps, no satellite, no GPS,
Speaker 10: no radio, no cell signal. What you have on your
Speaker 10: person and what your teammates have is all you got
Speaker 10: down there, and there's no way to get in contact
Speaker 10: with the surface.
Speaker 1: Treat critters, snakes, spiders, bats respectfully. It's their home. Don't
Speaker 1: break off decorations, stalactites and stalagmites. Be careful with any
Speaker 1: sign of human activity.
Speaker 3: The footprints that you see in there could be one
Speaker 3: thousand years old. The charcoal that you see along the
Speaker 3: path might actually be from the Native Americans that were
Speaker 3: exploring the cave.
Speaker 1: And with that, the descent we climb down in the
Speaker 1: sink to the entrance into Apex, a small hole in
Speaker 1: the ground, a jagged cavity in the earth that even
Speaker 1: light struggles to enter.
Speaker 4: There's blood on the rock in here.
Speaker 3: O human, No, No, I'm sure it's just a gameing
Speaker 3: like something killed something and.
Speaker 4: Dragged in there.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, so scary, but it does go.
Speaker 4: So it goes into a small room right over here.
Speaker 4: It's big enough to turn around in.
Speaker 6: Can tell how fresh the blood is?
Speaker 4: No, I can't tell it.
Speaker 6: To a good start.
Speaker 1: Garrett goes first, then Paul Gemberline, then me. I slither forward,
Speaker 1: constricted dirt below rock above. It's very, very tight. This
Speaker 1: is the first cave I've ever been in. Had to
Speaker 1: crawl on our stomachs just to get into the entrance.
Speaker 1: And then you drop down, and it's very tight. The
Speaker 1: front room is barely big enough for two people. Paul
Speaker 1: Gemperline and I crouched down. Garrett is ahead somewhere, scoping
Speaker 1: a route. To go any further, I have to drop
Speaker 1: into a cramped hole, crawl forward, double back, drop down again.
Speaker 1: And this is just the start. Remember police thought this
Speaker 1: cave was so tight and treacherous they didn't even attempt
Speaker 1: to enter it. We've already made it further than the
Speaker 1: SWAT team. I debate moving on. I want to push myself.
Speaker 1: I want color for the show, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to navigate the winding, hermetic belly of this rock beast.
Speaker 1: I feel suffocated only ten feet in. I choose not
Speaker 1: to proceed. Unlike me, Paul Gemperline isn't phased. Another day,
Speaker 1: another cave. I give him my recorder.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'm not gonna mess with the settings. And I
Speaker 11: clicked it and it's got a red light and it's recording.
Speaker 11: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 6: So, and you need to just shum in your pocket
Speaker 6: or whatever. Yeah, I'll try to not destroy it.
Speaker 1: I exit. Dave enters, Hey, Paul, I'm coming in right
Speaker 1: by it, all right, Paul Deckt and I stand in
Speaker 1: the sink.
Speaker 4: Dave made off in comment.
Speaker 3: He said, unless Fisher was an experienced cave or I
Speaker 3: doubt he would have gone in here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's extremely tight.
Speaker 1: So yes, he is known to have gone into caves occasionally,
Speaker 1: but he definitely wasn't a professional. So we are with
Speaker 1: two people who do this professionally and somebody who's done
Speaker 1: it extensively recreationally. Paul and I have never been in
Speaker 1: a cave before. I've now been in a cave about
Speaker 1: ten feet in. This is extremely tight. The idea that
Speaker 1: you would crawl in here with like a big packful
Speaker 1: of supplies and survive for weeks in a labyrinth of tunnels,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe somewhere else, but the only reason you
Speaker 1: would crawl into this cave is either to explore it
Speaker 1: for fun or to die, not to hide out here.
Speaker 1: It's very clausophobic. It's very tight. I doubt he was
Speaker 1: ever in it before. It's not one that people really
Speaker 1: know widely. My nerves are a little up, even from
Speaker 1: crawling on my stomach through the entrance. The entrance itself,
Speaker 1: that's the first cave I've ever been in a my
Speaker 1: life is very tight. Think, even if you want to
Speaker 1: die by suicide, you're not gonna be like I want
Speaker 1: to call into this miserably claustrophobic little cave. We're in
Speaker 1: a beautiful forest, Paw and I are down in the sink,
Speaker 1: but you look up top and it's very pretty, and
Speaker 1: we're looking up at the trees and it's still sunny,
Speaker 1: and it's burning like the entrance of a dark little hole.
Speaker 1: Here for a while, we hear voices grow weaker than vanish.
Speaker 11: Hey, Garrett, can you hear me? Yeah, I'm coming through
Speaker 11: this triangle part?
Speaker 4: Did you do you do? Headfirst? Okay?
Speaker 11: This is like a hands and knees crawl.
Speaker 12: Uh, I'm talking into the just to myself here.
Speaker 4: Sorry.
Speaker 11: It's like a long tunnel, kind of like a you know,
Speaker 11: almost like what a drug gunner would use or something
Speaker 11: like a drug grounder tunnel.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is.
Speaker 6: It's cool.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah that opened up.
Speaker 11: Yeah you do you have a camera on you on
Speaker 11: my phone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: We had a tunnel that was pretty long, like I
Speaker 12: don't know fifty how long you think that tunnel was, Garrett,
Speaker 12: I'm bad at that one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 12: feet tunnel. And now it has opened up to a
Speaker 12: room that you could fit a small like a like
Speaker 12: a business jet. You could fit a business jet in
Speaker 12: here if you could get it down here. It's not flat,
Speaker 12: but uh, it's you know, very rocky, and there's some
Speaker 12: kind of like rock in the center of it. But
Speaker 12: it is big and open for sure. You just walk
Speaker 12: this kind of ridge here. Yeah, okay, does look pretty vertical.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that goes down forty fifty feet or something.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Very Now Dave has to turn around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think just as bad as far as
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go. My shoulders are starting to bug me.
Speaker 1: Garrett and Paul press On.
Speaker 11: Hey, since it's the two of us, if somebody, well,
Speaker 11: you know what to do, but if you fall, should
Speaker 11: I what immediately?
Speaker 6: Go to the surface or.
Speaker 1: Okay, forty five minutes later, Hello.
Speaker 11: Yep, we're coming out here in this a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: Paul and Garrett made it one thousand feet into the
Speaker 1: cave one hundred feet below the surface. Apex is much
Speaker 1: bigger than we anticipated, including a chamber maybe.
Speaker 10: Thirty wide, twenty high and eighty long, so enough to
Speaker 10: fit like a like a bus in but not not flat,
Speaker 10: but a decent size. You know, it's a regularly shape,
Speaker 10: so it's a little hard to give estimates, but.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's huge compared to what you would imagine.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 10: And yeah, the registers in this room and it says welcome.
Speaker 1: The last time anyone signed the register a scrap of
Speaker 1: paper coiled into a piece of PVC pipe was February eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, ten months earlier.
Speaker 10: By judging at the register people quit their times in
Speaker 10: and sign up time when the register people would spend
Speaker 10: anywhere from two to six hours beyond that point. So
Speaker 10: I'm going to guess that's just the start of the cave.
Speaker 10: It's pretty sizable.
Speaker 1: Neither Garrett nor Paul saw any sign of fissure, or
Speaker 1: anyone for that matter, save for the register. By now
Speaker 1: it's late afternoon, the sun sinks, the forest dims. We
Speaker 1: navigate south through the woods to Redmond Cave. At first
Speaker 1: we can't find it. We reach a barbed wire fence,
Speaker 1: a boundary between the Tanto National Forest and the Ford
Speaker 1: Apache Indian Reservation, and turn around as twilight soaks the forest. Okay,
Speaker 1: this looks a little bit, a little bit more inviting.
Speaker 1: I spot something fifty feet from the cave. There's what
Speaker 1: looks to be a headstone. It's very old, so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not modern, it's not recent. We try to read
Speaker 1: its weathered letters. J Redman, I don't know who Jay
Speaker 1: Redmond is, but this is his cave and this is
Speaker 1: his grave. Something says not haunted like entering a little
Speaker 1: cave near a grave in the woods. Cave near the grave, Okay,
Speaker 1: John focus, lingering is a luxury we can't afford. It's
Speaker 1: not the sun that matters. We are, after all, descending
Speaker 1: into darkness with headlamps and flashlights. But we have call
Speaker 1: out times. If our loved ones and producers don't hear
Speaker 1: from us, they're supposed to call the police. So chop chop.
Speaker 6: It's five fifteen pm. The sun's going down and I'm
Speaker 6: standing in the entrance of a cave.
Speaker 1: Belt to crawl underground on my knees through a little
Speaker 1: gate into the cave. Redman is immediately more inviting than Apex,
Speaker 1: but I still have to slither in.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is very different.
Speaker 1: I squeeze through a metal gate.
Speaker 4: This is not bad.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 12: Actually it has an opening at the top.
Speaker 7: See, so.
Speaker 1: Paul, it's up to you.
Speaker 6: You don't.
Speaker 1: Don't feel obligated. Okay, well it's it's not too bad.
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. But it's a little tight. You'll
Speaker 1: have to get on your stomach. It's not nearly as
Speaker 1: bad as the other one though, and then it's walking
Speaker 1: past that, so it's pretty easy.
Speaker 4: Over here.
Speaker 6: Wow, this is so cool.
Speaker 1: Redman opens up into walkable tunnels maybe seven feet tall,
Speaker 1: four feet wide.
Speaker 6: Okay, this is I feel better. This is cozy, all right.
Speaker 3: So the reason I'm stopped here, and what I want
Speaker 3: to show you guys is you had asked me a
Speaker 3: questions on how caves form, and this particular cave is
Speaker 3: actually a really good example. So look in the ceiling
Speaker 3: right here. You see this crack yep, you'll see that
Speaker 3: it goes all the way down.
Speaker 6: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: So that was the original crack that this cave formed along,
Speaker 3: So water was seeping through here, so it actually started
Speaker 3: to dissolve the rock at this location.
Speaker 1: Onward this spider.
Speaker 4: There's some crickets, right, Okay.
Speaker 6: So there's spiders.
Speaker 1: I signed the register again. Garrett is ahead of us.
Speaker 1: He finds the sump, the flooded passage at the back
Speaker 1: of the cave. Only problem, it's down a forty foot drop. Garrett,
Speaker 1: you know that somebody died in the sump.
Speaker 6: Yeah, somebody drowned in the sump. Yeah, in two thousand and.
Speaker 1: One, four hundred feet in. We pause briefly.
Speaker 12: Look like a cozy place to hide out as a fugitive.
Speaker 6: Honestly, yes, I like this cave way more than the
Speaker 6: other one.
Speaker 1: Sadly, though, this is the end. For us to proceed,
Speaker 1: we'd need climbing gear and more experience time to go.
Speaker 1: On the way out, Dave points.
Speaker 6: To that Scott. Okay, so this is probably one of
Speaker 6: the roosts. Okay, I'm calling out.
Speaker 1: We exit into night, a black forest, hike tower cars,
Speaker 1: drive to Paysin in our west, check into hotels, grab dinner.
Speaker 1: The next morning we return back to the woods. It's
Speaker 1: sunny and cool. We've been sent good weather. Praise be.
Speaker 1: Garrett shows us the light our scan he took of
Speaker 1: Redman last night. After we exited. He scurried around like
Speaker 1: a hobbit, crouched over with fancy equipment, building a three
Speaker 1: D model. It's colorful and fascinating.
Speaker 10: Here's that final bend that it does, ninety degrees. And
Speaker 10: then we stopped up here where it started dropping down
Speaker 10: into the lower level, pointed it over it so you
Speaker 10: can see the floor of that, and then from there
Speaker 10: the sump would be like right here, it takes another
Speaker 10: ninety degree bend.
Speaker 1: Today is all about technology. We want to use a
Speaker 1: drone mounted thermal camera to scan for hidden caves in
Speaker 1: cold weather. Cave entrances vent insulated air to the surface,
Speaker 1: contrasting visually on screens with the land around them. Sadly,
Speaker 1: though it's too warm, we're limited to an eye's only search.
Speaker 1: As Garrett pilot's the drone. We're going to the four
Speaker 1: runner spot with the metal detector and we're going to
Speaker 1: work our way out and see what we find towards
Speaker 1: the road and then also towards the cave. A metal
Speaker 1: detector might seem basic, but I think it's the most
Speaker 1: promising technology we have. To my knowledge, no one ever
Speaker 1: metal detected the fore Runner spot. We could find keys,
Speaker 1: or a pistol, or a pot of gold.
Speaker 6: How deep can it detect?
Speaker 4: This one? About eighteen inches?
Speaker 1: By golly, miss Molly, we got a hit.
Speaker 4: It was detecting my steel.
Speaker 1: To dude, we find any gold who lays ownership?
Speaker 4: Uh for service? It's like, I was like, man, this
Speaker 4: is all over the place.
Speaker 1: We went like six inches and we're getting results.
Speaker 4: Not keys. Got it?
Speaker 1: Bullet point two right where the driver's side door of
Speaker 1: the fore Runner would have been.
Speaker 3: That's a fired bullet. It's hit something. It's mushroomed out.
Speaker 6: Wow, okay, it's very interesting for that to be right where.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's like, hey, let's put it in the sun so
Speaker 3: you can see it literally the.
Speaker 4: Place his foot would have.
Speaker 6: Stepped getting out of the car.
Speaker 1: Don't get too excited.
Speaker 4: Looks like another bullet. Case it's exploded. Bbbbe another bullet.
Speaker 1: Here, here a bullet. They're a bullet everywhere a bullet.
Speaker 1: This is the forest, after all, this is America, after all. Basically,
Speaker 1: what I've learned is all the forests land, and it's
Speaker 1: just littered with bullets everywhere everywhere. Yeah, even areas that
Speaker 1: look pristine, you know, looking at the surface, there's there's
Speaker 1: not garbage or trash or litter here.
Speaker 6: It's pretty prisceine and clean.
Speaker 11: Well, it's not like this is random location, though we
Speaker 11: do there is.
Speaker 12: There is a fire, There is a cave, especially the cave,
Speaker 12: because there's like.
Speaker 6: A million other campsites.
Speaker 1: But well, I think the point is more like in
Speaker 1: your proscene, natural area that looks clean right below the
Speaker 1: surface is littered with bullets everywhere. We find so many
Speaker 1: twenty two's.
Speaker 6: We're jaded at this point.
Speaker 1: Bullets, bullets everywhere, and not a clue. Paul went from
Speaker 1: like videotape this flags it's a clue to like gang.
Speaker 3: Oh it sounds a little better, a little bigger, a
Speaker 3: little better.
Speaker 6: Any idea I'm going to ask you every time, but
Speaker 6: any idea?
Speaker 4: Eight?
Speaker 6: Really, So that's the gun that's missing.
Speaker 1: First someone was the twenty two, But the gun for
Speaker 1: sure that we know was missing of his was a
Speaker 1: thirty eight.
Speaker 11: Very it was like, no, got it, what do you
Speaker 11: got here?
Speaker 4: Thirty eight?
Speaker 3: So it's been fired because it's not in its casing,
Speaker 3: or it's been taken out of its casing.
Speaker 4: It did not hit anything before it fell to earth.
Speaker 6: So this was fired and just fell.
Speaker 4: Yep, didn't hit anything any good shape.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, So that one you could get forensics
Speaker 3: off of this, So that the rifle, the rifling inside
Speaker 3: a barrel, you could get info off that one.
Speaker 1: We find it in the drywash, the seasonal creek bed,
Speaker 1: not far from the fore runner spot. What are the
Speaker 1: odds it's Robert Fisher's zero point zero zero one percent.
Speaker 1: Regardless on the off chances of forensic value, I'm happy
Speaker 1: to turn it over to law enforcement. Moving on, we
Speaker 1: find rusty cans, barbed wire, a wrench only fifteen feet
Speaker 1: from the fore runner spot, and of course bullets.
Speaker 12: Which is no longer of interest to me, and dead inside.
Speaker 11: And a bolt, which is somehow the more interesting thing
Speaker 11: these days.
Speaker 1: A bolt bolt, an exhilarating bolt. Make it stop, please
Speaker 1: no more. We were finding so many twenty two casings
Speaker 1: and what was the other one, Dave seven casings that
Speaker 1: we actually got tired of finding them with our limited
Speaker 1: time and resources.
Speaker 6: Moved on.
Speaker 1: As Dave and the Pauls poke around, I wander out
Speaker 1: far into the woods alone. This is the real joy,
Speaker 1: to disconnect and adventure A soundtrack of wind Peace. A
Speaker 1: few hours later, Dave and Garrett have to leave, but
Speaker 1: first one final beep under a bush next to where
Speaker 1: the Forerunner was parked, And now they really have to go.
Speaker 1: They have to drive back to Albuquerque. Dave gives us
Speaker 1: a crowbar. This is our final hope. So we clawed
Speaker 1: the dirt maniacally with the crowbar and our bare hands.
Speaker 1: Sorry about life, Dig dig dig, find nothing, continue diggig big.
Speaker 1: A judgment called a splend to stop diggig.
Speaker 6: I'm burnout and exhausted. I just guess they have to
Speaker 6: stop digging.
Speaker 1: Next time. I'm missing in Arizona. It's interesting to think
Speaker 1: that he could have another family. He absolutely could and
Speaker 1: probably does. To be honest, you can reach us by
Speaker 1: phone at one eight three three new tips that's one
Speaker 1: eight three three six three nine eight four seven seven,
Speaker 1: by email at tips at iHeartMedia dot com, tips at
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com, online at neon thirty three dot com,
Speaker 1: or on Twitter at John wallzac j O n w A. L. Czak.
Speaker 1: Paul Decan is our executive producer. Chris Brown is our
Speaker 1: supervising producer, Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemperlin
Speaker 1: is our researcher, Ben Bowen is a consulting producer, and
Speaker 1: I'm Your Host and executive producer John Waalzac Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Wolfgamefink. Additional production support provided by Ben Hackett. Cover
Speaker 1: art by Pam Peacock, Neon thirty three. Logo designed by
Speaker 1: Derek Rudy. Our intro song is Utopia by ruby Cube.
Speaker 1: Please download the first two seasons of our show, Missing
Speaker 1: in Alaska and Missing on nine to eleven, and if
Speaker 1: you're so inclined, give us a five star rating. Missing
Speaker 1: in Arizona is a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon
Speaker 1: thirty three