Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2: Our classic episode for this evening is not suitable for
Speaker 2: all audiences. The Princess Royal Barracks deep Cut, more often
Speaker 2: known as the Deep Cut Barracks, was once upon a
Speaker 2: time the headquarters of the British Army's Royal Logistic Corps,
Speaker 2: and on paper everything was tickety boom. However, as we
Speaker 2: saw back in twenty twenty, there's a much darker side
Speaker 2: to the tail.
Speaker 3: So the big question that we're tackling here is could
Speaker 3: there have been foul play for these four people to
Speaker 3: have died? Or a foul play is in did someone
Speaker 3: else kill them? Or is a foul play in that
Speaker 3: they were led to that place where they perhaps took
Speaker 3: their own lives.
Speaker 4: Let's jump right in and find out.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben.
Speaker 2: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Speaker 2: Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are
Speaker 2: here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know. It's obvious to everybody listening today, whether or
Speaker 2: not you have been in the military, whether or not
Speaker 2: you have a friend or a loved one in the
Speaker 2: armed forces, that life in any country's military can be brutal,
Speaker 2: and depending on where you enlist. Training itself, just the
Speaker 2: training part, just when you're becoming a soldier, can be
Speaker 2: especially taxing. It stretches individuals to their mental and physical limits,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it pushes them beyond those limits, with catastrophic
Speaker 2: consequences to follow. Today's episode is probably best framed as
Speaker 2: an introduction to a story that many of us in
Speaker 2: the US especially may not know. The reason I'm stressing
Speaker 2: that this is an introduction is because there is so
Speaker 2: much to this rabbit hole. This is a warren of
Speaker 2: rabbit holes. And what we're going to do in this
Speaker 2: episode is the same thing we do with every show.
Speaker 2: We're going to give you the facts, We're going to
Speaker 2: tell you where it gets crazy. But we do want
Speaker 2: you to know that there is much, much, much more
Speaker 2: information out there, and we talked a little bit about
Speaker 2: this off air. We consider this an ongoing case. We'll
Speaker 2: call it the Deep Cut four. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3: This story takes place in London, just outside of London,
Speaker 3: actually about an hour and a half drive southwest of
Speaker 3: the City of London, which is a place we've talked
Speaker 3: about before on this show. The city of London exists
Speaker 3: within London or Greater London. That's a whole episode in itself,
Speaker 3: but specifically we're going to the Deep Cut Barracks. It's
Speaker 3: known as Princess Royal Barracks Deep Cut. It's near Camberley,
Speaker 3: Surrey in England, and before nineteen ninety three it was
Speaker 3: also known as Blackdown Barracks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in nineteen hundred the Royal Engineers started to build
Speaker 4: several camps around this facility. It had originally been used
Speaker 4: as a training ground up until the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 4: but it didn't really have any formalized infrastructure until nineteen hundred.
Speaker 4: The barracks went through a number of different changes, but
Speaker 4: after the story that we're going to dive in today
Speaker 4: took place, they were scheduled to be torn down and
Speaker 4: today you can see these barracks as the home to
Speaker 4: the Royal Logistic Corps Museum, which is a wing of
Speaker 4: the British military and also the Royal Logistics Core banned,
Speaker 4: which is where they're based and rehearse, and the Defense
Speaker 4: Logistics School is also there, and then twenty five training
Speaker 4: support regiments.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty thirteen, as you would alluded to earlier there,
Speaker 2: the UK government announced official plans to close down the
Speaker 2: operation and to open the land upon which the compound
Speaker 2: stands for future housing developments. As we record right now,
Speaker 2: the current estimates project the barracks will be completely decommissioned
Speaker 2: and become a thing of the past by twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: That means, of course that anything that any way that
Speaker 2: the physical location could have assisted in the investigation will
Speaker 2: be full stop gone by next year. What do we
Speaker 2: mean when we say investigation, So in Deep Cut Barracks
Speaker 2: between nineteen ninety five in two thousand and two, young
Speaker 2: trainees began dying under what we would we would like
Speaker 2: the most diplomatic way to put it is mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 2: They all died from gunshot wounds and they were all privates,
Speaker 2: Jeff Gray, Eryl, James Sean Benton, and James Collinson. Their
Speaker 2: deaths were all ruled suicides by the military, despite strong
Speaker 2: and continuing objections from friends family members, some government officials,
Speaker 2: and numerous experts. We're talking, you know, well journalists as well,
Speaker 2: but we're also talking pathologists, ballistics experts, coroners and so on.
Speaker 2: So as early as two thousand and two, there were
Speaker 2: calls for an inquiry, and then, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the big problems the military was investigating in itself, and
Speaker 2: there were later police investigations along with reviews of army
Speaker 2: training procedures.
Speaker 3: And then two years later, in two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: the government announced that a review of the situation occurring
Speaker 3: at Deepcut concluded that the deaths of these four privates
Speaker 3: were probably again here we go, probably self inflicted. It's
Speaker 3: a review that you can read right now. It was
Speaker 3: conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. It's available online. It's really
Speaker 3: in depth, very very in depth. One thing we found
Speaker 3: in researching this episode is that the numerous inquiries that
Speaker 3: have occurred since the time of these deaths are so
Speaker 3: filled with information it becomes a bit difficult to navigate them.
Speaker 3: But we assure you that it is worth your time.
Speaker 3: This specific one, performed by Nicholas Blake QC, focused on
Speaker 3: the problems that were occurring within the system itself, the
Speaker 3: organization of the military, and you know, really just the
Speaker 3: situation at deep Cut itself with regards to supervision and
Speaker 3: what the you know, the trainees were doing, how they
Speaker 3: were looked after, and what they had access to.
Speaker 2: And I want to add here I have spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time reading.
Speaker 1: Some very you know, very.
Speaker 2: Important but very dry reports, and British legal writing is
Speaker 2: a different language. I think we were talking off Aaron
Speaker 2: I was saying, British legal writing warps your mind. But
Speaker 2: the way it would be written in a report like
Speaker 2: this would be something more like an in depth analysis
Speaker 2: of what may accurately be described as the overall linguistic
Speaker 2: approach to the articulation of concepts in the British legal system,
Speaker 2: conducted by ben Bull and PCVA stuff they don't want you,
Speaker 2: no sub committee to iHeartMedia finds that numerous individuals have
Speaker 2: encountered circumstances both deleatorious and circuitous, and they're going forward
Speaker 2: cognitive function a circumstance the trace to that which could
Speaker 2: also be called British legal writing c NX see appendix
Speaker 2: for at.
Speaker 1: All like this is this is written? I feel like
Speaker 1: this is written.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't want to accuse people of trying
Speaker 2: to make it illegible for the average person, but it's
Speaker 2: I think they shot themselves in the foot if they
Speaker 2: were going for accuracy.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, we've read contracts, you know, and we
Speaker 4: we have legal documents that come across our inboxes for
Speaker 4: various work things, and they're written pretty pedantic, hard to
Speaker 4: understand language that seems a little pointed at times where
Speaker 4: it's obviously meant to be. That's why you got to
Speaker 4: hire a lawyer, because you gotta have someone in the
Speaker 4: club who can like decipher this for the lay person.
Speaker 4: This is entirely some next level of.
Speaker 3: That I would I would categorize that writing as maximum formality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And speaking of maximum formality, I have to say, like,
Speaker 4: for part of the research that I did into this topic,
Speaker 4: I watched this great BBC Panorama documentary. They've done covered
Speaker 4: a lot of interesting stuff over the years, like they
Speaker 4: did one on scientology that I quite enjoyed, and it's
Speaker 4: just a great series. It's been around for a long time.
Speaker 4: But you know, we're talking about one particular barracks. We're
Speaker 4: also talking about the idea of systematic abuse, which is
Speaker 4: obviously very poignant right now with the stuff we're going
Speaker 4: through in our history as a country and as a
Speaker 4: human race. But we're not necessarily trying to damn the
Speaker 4: entire British military here. We are looking at a specific case,
Speaker 4: and the British military will deny that these things are
Speaker 4: systematic and that they do try to root out any
Speaker 4: quote unquote bad actors in the system. But you know,
Speaker 4: for anyone who has served in the military, I know
Speaker 4: it can feel when people who have not served in
Speaker 4: the military are criticizing these structures that it can feel
Speaker 4: a little bit like, you know, how we're or you
Speaker 4: get off or something. But I feel like there are
Speaker 4: the researches here, the data is here, maybe not enough
Speaker 4: to apply it to the whole system, but it sure
Speaker 4: makes you think. And I think now's a great time
Speaker 4: to talk about these these deaths.
Speaker 3: So let's jump back to that two thousand and four
Speaker 3: review conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. Within it, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of recommendations about what could be done better, perhaps,
Speaker 3: but again it's focused squarely on the system itself and
Speaker 3: the way the military is organized. If you look deeply
Speaker 3: into it, it shows that these four deaths which again
Speaker 3: the report characterizes as self inflicted or suicide. It does
Speaker 3: say that many have occurred due to a number of
Speaker 3: dangerous contributing factors at specifically Deep Cut barracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are things like you'll see these observations, and
Speaker 2: then you'll also see if you if you fast forward
Speaker 2: to you know, page three hundred and forty or so,
Speaker 2: you'll see things. You'll see recommendations for how these could
Speaker 2: be fixed. The problems, according to the QC's report, QC
Speaker 2: stands for Queen's Counsel.
Speaker 1: Think of it like a super lawyer.
Speaker 2: The problems are things like lack of control over access
Speaker 2: to firearms in the barracks. They were very loose with that,
Speaker 2: poor supervision which I think we have specifics on later
Speaker 2: in the show, poor accommodation, lack of discipline and prevalent
Speaker 2: like Lord of the Fly style bullying, unofficial punishments, sexual
Speaker 2: harassment and abuse, running rampant, no real complaint mechanism, which
Speaker 2: is something we see in a lot of organizations, honestly,
Speaker 2: and low quality instructors. The review, as you might imagine,
Speaker 2: did not satisfy the parents and loved ones of these
Speaker 2: four dead trainees. So the police conducted for other inquiries,
Speaker 2: for subsequent investigations. These have never been made public there somewhere,
Speaker 2: unless the evidence was destroyed, which is a possibility, but
Speaker 2: they've never been made public. And these parents believe their
Speaker 2: children did not die from suicide. They believe their children
Speaker 2: were murdered and that the UK government was and is
Speaker 2: actively covering it up. So why do they think that
Speaker 2: we'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: We mentioned the names here, but let's explore the specific
Speaker 2: details of these deaths, and also these are the four
Speaker 2: known deaths. That doesn't mean there aren't more.
Speaker 4: So first we have Jeff Gray, who's from London, seventeen
Speaker 4: years old. He was found dead with two gunshot wounds
Speaker 4: to the head on September seventeenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: It was officially internally ruled like within the military organization,
Speaker 4: ruled a suicide. Was on guard duty. And this is
Speaker 4: the thing. We talked about this a little bit off air,
Speaker 4: and Matt was kind of telling Paul about the story.
Speaker 4: This was a very common kind of well, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: call it like a chore or like a duty, like
Speaker 4: a thing that everyone was expected to do and take turns.
Speaker 4: They were guarding in these wooded areas, the outskirts of
Speaker 4: the barracks all night long, very sleep deprived, and something
Speaker 4: that everyone was expected to do. He was on guard duty.
Speaker 4: He had left his group to perform a maneuver they
Speaker 4: call prowler patrol, where you go on your own around
Speaker 4: the outskirts of the you know, just basically like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's the kind of thing you see in like war movies,
Speaker 4: where someone you know, standing post and then every so
Speaker 4: often they go and walk around and make their rounds
Speaker 4: to make sure no one's lurking in the bushes or anything.
Speaker 4: So he did that. Anecdotal evidence that we've found suggests
Speaker 4: that someone else, it's entirely likely, in fact probable, that
Speaker 4: someone else fired the shots that ended Jeff's life. There
Speaker 4: are four witnesses that have testified to seeing a figure
Speaker 4: running from the place where Private Gray's body was found.
Speaker 4: We've also found evidence in the research that suggests that
Speaker 4: someone moved his body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're going to talk more specifics about this
Speaker 3: stuff as we go on. For now, we're just going
Speaker 3: to tell you the basic details of these individuals. Another
Speaker 3: young soldier who died was named James Collinson. He was
Speaker 3: from Perth. He was also seventeen, like Jeff. He died
Speaker 3: on March twenty third, two thousand and two, from a
Speaker 3: single gunshot wound to his head while he was on
Speaker 3: guard duty. His body was found near a perimeter fence
Speaker 3: there at the facility. And it just should be noted
Speaker 3: here that several of the areas of Deep Cup barracks
Speaker 3: have these very large perimeter fences where the guard duty
Speaker 3: essentially was performed near these fences.
Speaker 2: Then there's the third case. We're jumping around a little
Speaker 2: bit in time here, but the third case is Cheryl James.
Speaker 2: She's eighteen, she was from Land Gulf Lne in Wales,
Speaker 2: and she was found dead from a single gunshot wound
Speaker 2: to the head on November twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: Like those other two cases we've mentioned, she was on
Speaker 2: guard duty. Her body was found in the woods nearby
Speaker 2: her abandoned post.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Cheryl allegedly was the target of widespread sexual
Speaker 4: harassment by commanding officers, which is a culture that we've
Speaker 4: seen many many accounts of being kind of pervasive within
Speaker 4: Deep Cut, whether just in passing or potentially as a
Speaker 4: tool of control. There are various accounts of this. People
Speaker 4: deny these allegations, but I just I think it's important
Speaker 4: to mention that there's a lot of discussion about these
Speaker 4: things being very real by folks who have passed through
Speaker 4: this facility over the years.
Speaker 3: And you know, I would also say, each one of
Speaker 3: these individuals is their own person. They were the own
Speaker 3: protagonist in their story. As we mentioned on this show
Speaker 3: a lot, and in some of these inquiries, the deep
Speaker 3: background on these folks it you know, there are complications
Speaker 3: in every person's life and that's you know, one of
Speaker 3: the major things that was looked at in these inquiries.
Speaker 3: So we again I am stressing, we are just giving
Speaker 3: you the absolute top down view at this moment on
Speaker 3: these people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The last of the deep cut four, by which we
Speaker 2: mean the acknowledged deaths in this ongoing investigation, was Sean Benton.
Speaker 2: Sean was twenty years old.
Speaker 1: He was a local.
Speaker 2: He's from Hastings, East Sussex. Benton died from five gunshot
Speaker 2: wounds to the chest after he was also on a
Speaker 2: guard duty assignment. After he was also on patrol of
Speaker 2: the perimeter. And he was, like some of the other
Speaker 2: cases on an unauthorized solo patrol. This occurred on June ninth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. As we mentioned, military, the military internal
Speaker 2: investigation quickly and in their mind definitively said that all
Speaker 2: four had shot themselves with their own rifles while on
Speaker 2: guard duty, although the coroner at the time recorded a
Speaker 2: verdict of suicide in only one case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just just a real quick add a detail
Speaker 4: to Sean, he is I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
Speaker 4: But the only one where we actually have a detailed
Speaker 4: suicide note that he left behind. There's an article that
Speaker 4: it's on the Daily Mail. It's you know, I know
Speaker 4: is a little bit of a kind of take it
Speaker 4: with a grain of salt at times, but this is
Speaker 4: a document that they published that they got a hold of.
Speaker 4: It was this note where he claimed that he was
Speaker 4: being discharged from the army and that he couldn't cope
Speaker 4: with returning to civy street life, that all he ever
Speaker 4: wanted was a career in the army. And we'll come
Speaker 4: back to this, and there's definitely this is, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: by far, one of the more unusual cases of the
Speaker 4: of the four here. But Sean was characterized having had
Speaker 4: some history of psychological problems and potentially a history of depression.
Speaker 4: But we'll revisit that.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 3: And yet he ended up with five gunshot wounds to the.
Speaker 1: Chest, right.
Speaker 4: But also we do have we do have what is
Speaker 4: being referred to as a suicide note from him, but
Speaker 4: there's some problems with that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and each of these, each of these cases quickly becomes,
Speaker 2: I think, its own separate, distinct morass of conflicting information.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the one thing they have in common is an
Speaker 2: active cover up. But it's not our jump to it's
Speaker 2: not our job to tell you that. We just want
Speaker 2: to give you the facts of the matter. While while
Speaker 2: these events occurred decades ago, right, the multiple reports all
Speaker 2: indicate that, regardless of how these young privates died, Deep
Speaker 2: Cut itself was in the midst of a desperate and
Speaker 2: quiet crisis. We have investigative journalists like Brian Cathcart who
Speaker 2: have found that the institution routinely exposed trainees to bullying, sex,
Speaker 2: and flagrant like ridiculous disregard for rules relating to firearms,
Speaker 2: like even more lackadaisical than a bunch of buddies who
Speaker 2: just get shotguns and go drinking beer and shooting at
Speaker 2: cans with their friends.
Speaker 1: It was bad.
Speaker 4: Additionally, the Ministry of Defense or MODS will refer to
Speaker 4: a moving Ford, has been accused of withholding, possibly even
Speaker 4: destroying evidence related to this case. We've got Jim Collinson,
Speaker 4: forty years old, the father of James, compared getting information
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, think about it like your child
Speaker 4: has died under mysterious circumstances. They're not you know, you
Speaker 4: know your child. You don't understand how could they do this?
Speaker 4: Suicide is such a difficult thing in that way, and
Speaker 4: to not get any answers would just prolong that morning period.
Speaker 4: And you know, you expect that if the Ministry has
Speaker 4: nothing to hide, they would be forthcoming with information about
Speaker 4: the case. But apparently it was just not to be.
Speaker 4: Jim Collinson, again, the father of James, said getting information
Speaker 4: from the MOD was like getting blood from a stone.
Speaker 4: There's a quote from him saying the MOD wouldn't come
Speaker 4: forward and explain what happened to our son that night.
Speaker 4: Then three days after his funeral, I phoned up a
Speaker 4: senior official at Deep Cut and asked him how the
Speaker 4: investigation was going. He replied, one body one gun. Draw
Speaker 4: your own conclusion. Yikes. I mean, come on, just let's
Speaker 4: have a little bit of bedside manner at the very least.
Speaker 4: And that seemed to have been their attitude overall. James
Speaker 4: was just just a number. This case closed. You know,
Speaker 4: it's the same with the police. When they close a
Speaker 4: case or close a murder, they don't want to think
Speaker 4: about it ever again, they have moved on. There's no empathy,
Speaker 4: there's no room for empathy in these organizations. Sometimes it
Speaker 4: seems to be not to say that's the case for
Speaker 4: every officer, but it seems in general, this whole idea
Speaker 4: of emotionlessness is a big part of the military and
Speaker 4: these kinds of organizations. We've got another account for me.
Speaker 3: I would just say that if a police officer dies,
Speaker 3: the investigation into that death, I would say, is far
Speaker 3: more rigorous than the death of a citizen would be,
Speaker 3: just because of the resources, internal resources that would be
Speaker 3: going into finding out what happened to a fellow officer.
Speaker 3: And I think maybe what you're signaling here is that
Speaker 3: it feels as though if a member of the military,
Speaker 3: any military is killed or dead for any reason outside
Speaker 3: of wartime, outside of active engagement, then it feels as
Speaker 3: though the most the most strenuous things should be done,
Speaker 3: the most intense steps should be taken to find out
Speaker 3: exactly what happened. And maybe it seems as though we
Speaker 3: are not seeing that and did not see that.
Speaker 2: The banality of evil rights most you know, So with
Speaker 2: institutions of this size, fiction often gets it wrong. It's not,
Speaker 2: as it is so rarely the case that there is
Speaker 2: some sort of antagonistic super villain who thinks I am
Speaker 2: the bad guy and I am doing evil things. A
Speaker 2: lot of times, it's just a person with a very
Speaker 2: narrowly defined scope of responsibility. And these investigations can become normalized.
Speaker 2: I say it all the time on this show. It
Speaker 2: is disturbing how quickly things become normal. So, if you
Speaker 2: were investigating certain circumstances of horrible things like deaths day
Speaker 2: in day out, then what becomes the worst event in
Speaker 2: someone's entire life for other people becomes a Tuesday, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's not right, but it's what happens. There's desensitization.
Speaker 2: The parents have been vocal about this for decades. Des
Speaker 2: James is the father of Cheryl. James, said he brought
Speaker 2: up like the QC. He brought up the ongoing problems
Speaker 2: with the system we're describing. He actually said, we believe
Speaker 2: the central issue is not how Cheryl died, but why
Speaker 2: her death was not thoroughly investigated at the time. I'm
Speaker 2: to your point, Matt. He said, any meaningful investigation into
Speaker 2: our daughter's death in nineteen ninety five was denied. The
Speaker 2: Army assumed or death was a suicide, and he says
Speaker 2: there's clear evidence to support that fact. Army documents that
Speaker 2: we have in our possession refer to our tragic suicide
Speaker 2: once and that's the Army's quote. There tragic suicide on
Speaker 2: December fourteenth, nineteen ninety five, and that's one week before
Speaker 2: the coroner's court even convened an inquest, meaning the Army,
Speaker 2: before like an autopsy or a coroner's investigation occurred. The
Speaker 2: Army went ahead and just said it was self inflicted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I mean again, with suicide, there's
Speaker 4: so many it's obviously really triggering subject from many people.
Speaker 4: There's a lot that happens when something is ruled a suicide.
Speaker 4: So you know, for example, if someone has an insurance
Speaker 4: policy on themselves and they are they ca take their
Speaker 4: own lives, that's insurance policy doesn't pay out. Not to
Speaker 4: say there any of that's going into these decisions, but
Speaker 4: I'm just saying is it's a big deal to rule
Speaker 4: something a suicide. It means something. So to just flippantly
Speaker 4: do that and just say case closed, it just it
Speaker 4: feels very irresponsible, and it feels like they're just looking
Speaker 4: out for the optics of it and trying to absolve
Speaker 4: themselves of any wrongdoing as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's some stuff I found about Jeff
Speaker 2: Gray that I took personally, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: and his parents were more explicit. But we kept finding
Speaker 2: more to this story. Every string we pulled, every puzzle
Speaker 2: piece we interlocked, led to another puzzle piece, another string
Speaker 2: of what appears to be a tremendously occulted web of
Speaker 2: ongoing problems here, because, as James also said that he
Speaker 2: had on record, there were no less than five other
Speaker 2: attempted suicides at Deep Cut and they just weren't externally reported.
Speaker 2: And then you mentioned earlier the panorama, the panorama video
Speaker 2: from BBC that appears to confirm some of this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they found a document that lists several additional suicide attempts,
Speaker 4: unsuccessful suicide attempts. I guess that's what an attempt is, uh,
Speaker 4: And it catalogs all of the various methods that were
Speaker 4: used by these cadets, including overdosing on acetam menafin or paracetamol.
Speaker 4: Isn't that that's what they call It's the same thing, right,
Speaker 4: so they call it in the UK, and also slitting
Speaker 4: their own wrists. But in this document, there's no there's
Speaker 4: nothing that mentions any of the bullying, which I guess
Speaker 4: maybe wouldn't be the appropriate document for that to be listed.
Speaker 4: But it just there feels like there's a disconnect here.
Speaker 4: This doesn't feel like something that is normal or should
Speaker 4: be accepted.
Speaker 3: Agreed, And we're going to get more into the bullying
Speaker 3: as we continue on here what that means and what
Speaker 3: it looks like today even or in the recent past.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to Jeff Gray. His parents, as you said, Ben,
Speaker 3: have been extremely explicit in their statements about their son's death.
Speaker 3: I have a quote here. We are of the opinion
Speaker 3: that there is a cover up surrounding Jeff's death, and
Speaker 3: one of the major reasons for that. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of major reasons for that, But I guess one
Speaker 3: of the most surface puzzling things is something we already
Speaker 3: talked about. That Jeff was shot twice in the head.
Speaker 3: Proved it when the inquest was done into his death.
Speaker 3: There is evidence suggesting that Jeff's body was moved after
Speaker 3: he was killed, and as we noted before earlier in
Speaker 3: this episode, that there were footsteps heard running away from
Speaker 3: the fence in the area where Jeff's body was found,
Speaker 3: that some intruders, some outside people were there that night,
Speaker 3: at least one they it seems like they may have
Speaker 3: waited over an hour to place Jeff's body in the
Speaker 3: area where it was originally found after he was killed elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And to put it, to put it plainly, the specific
Speaker 2: quote from the parents of Jeff Gray and their statement
Speaker 2: is is this, we feel that the army has tried
Speaker 2: to make us believe some fairy tale where Jeff shot
Speaker 2: himself twice, hid for an hour, climbed over a fence
Speaker 2: a couple of times, then laid down and died. And
Speaker 2: hearing it presented that way, hearing it presented that way
Speaker 2: cuts close because that you know, that's what happened. That
Speaker 2: appears to be the bare bone circumstances of the sequence
Speaker 2: of events that occurred from the time he was alive
Speaker 2: to the time he was found dead. Now it's I
Speaker 2: know a lot of us in the crowd are especially
Speaker 2: longtime listeners. When you've heard us discuss allegations of homicide
Speaker 2: framed a suicide, you already know this and we should
Speaker 2: acknowledge it. People can and have, and sadly, in the
Speaker 2: future probably still will commit suicide via firearm and be
Speaker 2: able to shoot themselves under some circumstances more than once
Speaker 2: in the head or chest, but.
Speaker 1: It is rare, to say the least.
Speaker 2: We're going to examine more of this. We've alluded to
Speaker 2: a couple of things we're diving into here. After a
Speaker 2: word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Give her back, we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about another inquest that was performed much later. It was
Speaker 3: released June third, twenty sixteen. It was performed by Brian
Speaker 3: Barker CB again Queen's Counsel. One was a specific inquest
Speaker 3: into the death of Eryl James, and we want to
Speaker 3: talk about some of the underlying conditions that were happening
Speaker 3: there at deep cut conditions that perhaps set up some
Speaker 3: of the younger people there, because again we're talking about
Speaker 3: teenagers in a lot of this. To young adults, we're
Speaker 3: just gonna speak about the environment in which they were existing.
Speaker 3: So within this report, it was noted that in the
Speaker 3: field army, the usual ratio of corporals to soldiers or
Speaker 3: you know, just higher commanding officers to the to like
Speaker 3: privates and to lower ranking soldiers would generally be around
Speaker 3: one to eight to one to twelve. So one commander,
Speaker 3: twelve officers under that commander, one commander, eight officers under
Speaker 3: that commander. And sometimes they call this when when a
Speaker 3: unit is holding or when it's a holding unit, so
Speaker 3: like a unit that's just kind of on standby. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it would be one commanding officer to twenty and generally
Speaker 3: maximum one to thirty would be appropriate. However, at deep cut,
Speaker 3: the ratio of a commanding officer to these lower ranking
Speaker 3: officers was rarely less than one to eighty and on
Speaker 3: occasions up to two hundred. So imagine that in a
Speaker 3: teacher student ratio, I think a good way to look
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 4: Imagine it's.
Speaker 3: You can imagine those other ratios like one teacher to
Speaker 3: eight to twelve students. I mean that would be amazing.
Speaker 3: That would be very closely learning, having a lot of
Speaker 3: one on one interaction. One to twenty and thirty is
Speaker 3: probably about what you would see in a public school
Speaker 3: here in the United States, but one to eighty or
Speaker 3: two hundred is I just don't know how there's any
Speaker 3: real oversight there.
Speaker 4: And also like how they's justification for that, you know.
Speaker 4: It's like, sure, you could say, well, I really like
Speaker 4: your analogy about schools, because I do think this is instruction,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, it's not like arts and crafts,
Speaker 4: but it absolutely is. It requires instruction and training and
Speaker 4: the ability to have a little bit of one on
Speaker 4: one time to some degree with individuals. And I know
Speaker 4: a lot of army exercises and drills happen on mass
Speaker 4: so maybe that doesn't apply, but it still just seems
Speaker 4: egregiously out of proportion, especially when you consider the access
Speaker 4: to firearms that you're talking about, and like, you know,
Speaker 4: the lack of oversight in that department.
Speaker 3: You know, well, Dan just didn't even know what's going
Speaker 3: on at the barracks at any given time.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And this is so this is a crucial point because
Speaker 2: we're a lot of what we're talking about is how
Speaker 2: these were initially reported, and reports themselves. Investigations inherently require
Speaker 2: oversight and supervision, and that just wasn't occurring at the
Speaker 2: level it should have been occurring at these barracks. And
Speaker 2: it was not an isolated incident. It was not a
Speaker 2: one off bad Saturday when two people called out sick
Speaker 2: or something. This was ongoing, and it was ongoing for decades.
Speaker 2: The environment there has been described by multiple accounts people
Speaker 2: who went through the training as dreadful, as brutal, as cruel,
Speaker 2: as horrific. I mentioned earlier that the banality of evil here,
Speaker 2: which holds true, always tells us that very few people
Speaker 2: think of themselves as an antagonist.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Everybody's their own main character. Everybody's the hero of the story.
Speaker 2: Why doesn't the rest of the world only love me?
Speaker 2: I couldn't do anything wrong. I have my reasons. But
Speaker 2: if there is a single human face we could put
Speaker 2: on this story as what most people would see as
Speaker 2: an antagonistic force, it would be one Sergeant Andrew Gavigan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Gavagan comes up time and time again. He was
Speaker 4: he testified in front of one of these inquests that
Speaker 4: took place a little bit later, but he is someone
Speaker 4: whose name constantly comes up among people that have passed
Speaker 4: through this facility, and not in a positive way at all.
Speaker 4: In fact, Eryl James's father in that Panorama documentary spoke
Speaker 4: of him in terms of boy, would I like to
Speaker 4: be alone in a room with this guy? I would
Speaker 4: do what any father would do. And the reason is
Speaker 4: there are a lot of widespread allegations that not only
Speaker 4: was Gavagan kind of the ring master of a lot
Speaker 4: of these systematized bullying tactics to dehumanize, allegedly dehumanize and humiliate,
Speaker 4: kind of the idea of breaking down, you know, a
Speaker 4: a cadet and making them up stronger by breaking them
Speaker 4: or whatever, which you know, as we know, it doesn't
Speaker 4: always work like that. He is also accused of some
Speaker 4: sexual misconduct with Cheryl. The allegation was that he invited
Speaker 4: her to these barracks or not invited if your commanding officer,
Speaker 4: he ordered her to these barracks in the undercover of
Speaker 4: night and then allegedly made some sexual advances. He has
Speaker 4: denied this multiple times, as he has characterized some of
Speaker 4: these bullying techniques as having been done quote in humor,
Speaker 4: So do with that what you will. Ben, You're the
Speaker 4: one who pointed that line out to me, and I
Speaker 4: was shocked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in twenty eighteen, he denied the deep cut abuse.
Speaker 2: We're jumping around in time here, but I think this
Speaker 2: I want to emphasize just how recent this ongoing investigation is.
Speaker 2: He says some disturbing stuff in the same quest. One
Speaker 2: of the things he says that the local news in
Speaker 2: the UK latched onto is he did something that a
Speaker 2: lot of abusers do, which is gaslighting, right, And this
Speaker 2: happens anywhere. It's not just something that happens in romantic relationships.
Speaker 2: It happens at your job, it happens in your family,
Speaker 2: it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: The predators are out there.
Speaker 2: What he did, We're gonna tried and true tactic of
Speaker 2: abusers or people who have abusive tendencies is he simultaneously
Speaker 2: admitted that he was abusive, there was doing abusive things,
Speaker 2: while also diminishing and minimizing the valid claims of his victims,
Speaker 2: similar to like gaslighting.
Speaker 1: In a way.
Speaker 2: During this inquest, which is a legal affair, he said
Speaker 2: that he would refer to his outburst of temper by
Speaker 2: saying that was my twin brother. That was his joke
Speaker 2: about it. It wasn't me, it was by twin He
Speaker 2: told the people in the hearing at this inquest that
Speaker 2: it was all a good humor. The twin brother happened
Speaker 2: very rarely and it was controlled.
Speaker 4: But that's the thing that Ben, That's what shocked me
Speaker 4: and blew me away that he was so brazen about
Speaker 4: this in front of an official inquiry, because it just
Speaker 4: confirms what the what these reports are about him by
Speaker 4: many of these folks again who have passed through the
Speaker 4: deep cut barracks, this idea of his twin brother. He
Speaker 4: was characterized by many of the folks that I saw
Speaker 4: in the panoramic piece, who you know, knew him well
Speaker 4: as being a split personality, as having this this true
Speaker 4: Jekyll and Hyde kind of quality where he would just
Speaker 4: change on a dime into this other person.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And the fact that he brought that up himself, I
Speaker 4: think is very very telling and very interesting as to
Speaker 4: the sense of like untouchability now being in a position
Speaker 4: of power like that, and how he felt.
Speaker 3: I just want to point out here that sergeant I
Speaker 3: don't know how to pronounce a big Gavagan feels Remember
Speaker 3: that Sergeant Gavigan was a private at one time. Remember
Speaker 3: that he probably went through something very very similar I'm imagining.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to humanize him, absolutely not, But what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is he went through a system that probably
Speaker 3: did exactly what he is trying or was trying to
Speaker 3: do to the privates that he was then in charge of,
Speaker 3: And to me, it feels like a system that would
Speaker 3: just continue, as we've seen in other systematic abuse situations,
Speaker 3: where it becomes a line of people doing what they
Speaker 3: know and what they've been trained essentially to do.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really good point, Matt. I was hoping,
Speaker 4: if you guys don't mind, can we talk a little
Speaker 4: bit about some of the allegations of some of the
Speaker 4: scenarios of systematic abuse and bullying. So I think we've
Speaker 4: sort of we've obviously hit on the fact that that
Speaker 4: these allegations took place, but I don't know that we've
Speaker 4: really gone into any specifics outside of some of the
Speaker 4: sexual harassment.
Speaker 2: For anyone listening, especially if you are a survivor of
Speaker 2: abuse or if you were having to deal with people
Speaker 2: like this in your day to day life in any level,
Speaker 2: we do want to give a disclaimer. We are going
Speaker 2: to be discussing some explicit things, so please be forewarned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are multiple.
Speaker 2: Very specific allegations of violence of sexual abuse. Bullying really
Speaker 2: is a misnomer here. I think abuse is a much
Speaker 2: more accurate term.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Some of them include things like hanging cadets out
Speaker 4: of windows by their ankles. There's an account that because
Speaker 4: of an infraction of some degree, whether not keeping your
Speaker 4: locker need or perhaps I think it was talking down
Speaker 4: or talking back to a commanding officer, that a cadet
Speaker 4: was thrown out of a third story window. There was
Speaker 4: an account of a trench being dug and not being
Speaker 4: dug deep enough, and the cadet being asked to lay
Speaker 4: down in it, and then being dog piled on by
Speaker 4: commanding officers, one of which who stood on his back
Speaker 4: jumped on full force with two feet. And finally an
Speaker 4: account of a male cadet being staked down the article
Speaker 4: in the sun firstus being pegged down. I guess that
Speaker 4: just means tied down, you know, prone on a field
Speaker 4: with legs spread, and then a land rover military vehicle
Speaker 4: being driven very quickly towards him between you know, with
Speaker 4: the tires driving between his leg coming dangerously close to
Speaker 4: you know, hitting him in the genital area.
Speaker 3: So there's obviously some some pretty heinous things going on there.
Speaker 3: There were heinous things going on there at the Deep
Speaker 3: Cut barracks. And who's to say, you know, where these
Speaker 3: kinds of things are occurring in other places around the
Speaker 3: world where military training is being was taking place, or
Speaker 3: just in other places where there are young people learning.
Speaker 3: You know, we've seen allegations of all kinds of that
Speaker 3: type of abuse in colleges, in fraternities across the world.
Speaker 3: It's rough stuff. It's really rough stuff, and it has
Speaker 3: deep psychological effects on the people who are experiencing it
Speaker 3: on both sides. Actually, so maybe this is a good
Speaker 3: time to tell people what has happened since since all
Speaker 3: of these events have occurred.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've laid out a number of the continuing claims here.
Speaker 2: The military was investigating itself. It was criticized, and rightly,
Speaker 2: I mean, how could it be impartial? The Ministry of
Speaker 2: Defense at the very least denied valuable information when it
Speaker 2: was most needed. And having waded through so much stuff
Speaker 2: on this case, I have to say it's pretty offensive
Speaker 2: to find that infamous lack of accountability phrase kept popping up,
Speaker 2: you know, the one mistakes were made. Note the beautiful,
Speaker 2: insidious structure of the passive voice there. Someone made a mistake,
Speaker 2: says this kind of language, but not anyone specifically, and
Speaker 2: definitely not me the person writing it. Don't make me
Speaker 2: responsible for the consequences of my actions. Look, there's another
Speaker 2: important thing I want to hit. So there's a ballistic
Speaker 2: expert named Ken Swan.
Speaker 1: He's independent.
Speaker 2: He was working on behalf of surviving family members, and
Speaker 2: he is one of the reasons that the police have
Speaker 2: yet to release their four subsequent investigations, because he wrote
Speaker 2: to them and said, look, opinions, emotions aside, I did
Speaker 2: the math. This is my area of expertise. It is
Speaker 2: highly unlikely that any of these four people committed suicide.
Speaker 2: There's an interview with the Telegraph where he walks through
Speaker 2: his efforts. He physically went to deep Cut barracks, went
Speaker 2: to every position where these four people encountered these fatal
Speaker 2: gunshots and attempted to reconstruct the wound patterns. What he found,
Speaker 2: if it is true, is damning.
Speaker 3: He said, we have used some of the best shots
Speaker 3: in the British Army in my tests, but none has
Speaker 3: been able to recreate the same pattern at the distances
Speaker 3: these suicides were supposed to have taken place. In case
Speaker 3: of Sean Benton, the wounding pattern can only be achieved
Speaker 3: when firing at a range of fifteen feet. That does
Speaker 3: not point to suicide.
Speaker 2: And he styles on them just a bit in a
Speaker 2: quote I really appreciated. He says, there is always the
Speaker 2: possibility that I may be wrong, but I will believe
Speaker 2: that when someone can forensically prove that I am wrong.
Speaker 2: Otherwise I will stand by my findings. If that's not enough,
Speaker 2: there's another revelation. A female private who served at Deep
Speaker 2: Cut admitted to police in one of their investigations that.
Speaker 1: She ordered a colleague to shoot.
Speaker 2: At one of the four soldiers who are still alleged
Speaker 2: to have committed suicide. She said that she told her
Speaker 2: colleague to fire at Private Sean Benton because she thought
Speaker 2: he had fired at her. That speaks to how lax
Speaker 2: the firearm regulation was in general there, I believe.
Speaker 1: In her her.
Speaker 2: Account to the detectives, she says, yeah, I told him,
Speaker 2: I told you a colleague mind of fire at Benton,
Speaker 2: but I wanted him to hit the legs. Benton, of
Speaker 2: course is the one who got shot five times in
Speaker 2: the chest. And it's bigger. This is one of the
Speaker 2: other important points that we found. This is bigger than
Speaker 2: Deep Cut. There are multiple reports of suspicious deaths in
Speaker 2: the UK military, non combat deaths right, so they're not
Speaker 2: in the field, they're not in a armed conflict with
Speaker 2: an enemy force, and multiple parents and loved ones who
Speaker 2: disagree with the official findings. And just like the parents
Speaker 2: of the Deep Cut for these relatives are demanding answers,
Speaker 2: but they are often left unsatisfied with the results of
Speaker 2: these investigations. We found two other deaths that are indirectly
Speaker 2: linked to Deep Cut, not saying this is all like
Speaker 2: some kind of Pepe Sylvia situation, but these deaths weren't
Speaker 2: considered part of the Deep Cut four because they didn't
Speaker 2: occur on the premises.
Speaker 4: Yes. Private David Shipley, twenty years old from Barrow in
Speaker 4: Furnace found unconscious and faced down in an assault course
Speaker 4: pool in Germany on August seventeenth, two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: just days after he left from Deep Cut. Private Alison Croft,
Speaker 4: twenty two from Bradford was found hanged at Dalton Barracks
Speaker 4: in Abington, Oxfordshire, in October of two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: and although Croft had no official connection with deep Cut,
Speaker 4: officers from the two barracks often socialized together. Not to
Speaker 4: overstate the case as that being some kind of connection
Speaker 4: or implying this some kind of suicide pact or something.
Speaker 4: It's just interesting and there's clearly more to the story
Speaker 4: than the official investigations have revealed that I think we
Speaker 4: can say with some degree of certainty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are also other deaths within the military that
Speaker 3: should be looked at that aren't necessarily bullying, but perhaps
Speaker 3: would be considered extreme tactics of punishment that are doled
Speaker 3: out sometimes in these areas, these barracks, these facilities. There's
Speaker 3: one that you can look to if you'd like, a
Speaker 3: private named Gavin Williams who died after experiencing what is
Speaker 3: called beasting b East i NG where essentially, as punishment
Speaker 3: you are made to exercise beyond the extent of what
Speaker 3: any soldier would normally do or any trainee would normally do.
Speaker 3: And he died as a result of this.
Speaker 2: And we have to remember the point I don't think
Speaker 2: we hit here that I know all of our fellow
Speaker 2: listeners are thinking about during this exploration today. These are kids,
Speaker 2: these are these are teenagers, you know, they're They're put
Speaker 2: in an environment like you mentioned, Matt, that has a
Speaker 2: lot in common uh, hormonally and socially with things like
Speaker 2: fraternities or college days. So there's partying right and and
Speaker 2: partying alone. And like everybody who's ever been that age.
Speaker 1: Uh, I ask you.
Speaker 2: You don't have to tell us about it, but I
Speaker 2: ask you to think back to all the dumb stuff
Speaker 2: you did as a kid.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And does that mean does that mean that you should
Speaker 2: have died?
Speaker 1: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: And and I think you know, to that point about
Speaker 2: diving into the full extent of these people's personal lives,
Speaker 2: I think sometimes investigation no, you know what, why couch it?
Speaker 2: I know sometimes that investigations can can use that that
Speaker 2: information as a kind of posthumous victim blaming, which is.
Speaker 1: Reprehensible.
Speaker 2: I mean that it's unclean, but it happens in multiple
Speaker 2: cases far beyond the deep cut four. I'm interested in
Speaker 2: hearing you guys ideas on this. I mean, do you
Speaker 2: think the UK and the US. I don't want to
Speaker 2: be unfair. The UK has a huge problem with their reports.
Speaker 2: We were talking about this a little bit off air.
Speaker 2: They have a habit of, like reports on child abuse rings,
Speaker 2: have a series of inquests and very formal, official sounding
Speaker 2: language that lead nowhere, and the reports disappear and the
Speaker 2: evidence is gone, and they hope that the news cycle
Speaker 2: moves on. Do you guys think that there will be
Speaker 2: revelations on this Deep Cut four case or do you
Speaker 2: think it's going to be, you know, like Operation U
Speaker 2: Tree or something just consigned to history.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, if you think about the case of Cheryl, she
Speaker 3: died in ninety five and there was still stuff coming
Speaker 3: out in twenty sixteen, But there are these kinds of
Speaker 3: inquests that you're describing, where it's a deep background look
Speaker 3: at what was happening in her life up into the
Speaker 3: point when she allegedly committed suicide, looking at every minute
Speaker 3: detail of her personal life, the terrible things that had
Speaker 3: happened to her, the consequences of those things, how she
Speaker 3: dealt with them, how other people and her family dealt
Speaker 3: with them, her personal relationships. To your point about you know,
Speaker 3: essentially using that information to victim blame, which I would
Speaker 3: say it absolutely has been seen to function in that
Speaker 3: way in the past. I just wonder how you guys
Speaker 3: would try and prove that someone committed suicide or not
Speaker 3: without looking at their past of you know, possibly self harm,
Speaker 3: of suffering from depression, of their personal interpersonal relationships. I
Speaker 3: don't know how you would, at least after the fact,
Speaker 3: especially years after the fact, how you would be able
Speaker 3: to prove one way or.
Speaker 4: The other if it was suicide if you didn't do that.
Speaker 4: Did we discuss Ben what you had mentioned off air
Speaker 4: about the five gunshot, wounds to the chest, the justification
Speaker 4: for that. That's the one that blew me away, and
Speaker 4: we said we were gonna come back to Sean and
Speaker 4: his suicide note and some of the weirdness surrounding that scenario.
Speaker 4: But wasn't it determined that it was an automatic blast
Speaker 4: or something like that, that the gun was an automatic
Speaker 4: mode and so it shot a spray of bullets at him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 2: That was the official conclusion of one of the internal
Speaker 2: inquests or internal investigations.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's interesting because that story too, goes through a
Speaker 4: couple of different iterations when you read about it, where
Speaker 4: there's one version that says that he fired shots at
Speaker 4: another officer, and then that he was talked down, He
Speaker 4: was attempted to be talked down from, like, you know,
Speaker 4: taking his own life, and then he did it in
Speaker 4: view of another officer. And it's a little like you said, Ben,
Speaker 4: reading these documents can be very a little tricky. So
Speaker 4: I'm not quite sure if I was, if I'm interpreting
Speaker 4: this correctly, but that that's what I saw. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you guys have had any other research materials
Speaker 4: about that case.
Speaker 3: Well, the only thing I would bring up here would
Speaker 3: be potential motive for covering up a homicide within an
Speaker 3: army facility like that, And I think just it's worth
Speaker 3: a quick discussion here. Think about the pr blowback that
Speaker 3: would happen if soldiers under your care. As a commanding officer,
Speaker 3: you've got let's say eighty of these lower ranking soldiers
Speaker 3: under your care, you find out that there was a
Speaker 3: firefight between a couple of your students essentially they're basically students.
Speaker 3: There's a physical firefight between your students and one of
Speaker 3: them died being shot five times. Would you, you know,
Speaker 3: report that officially, as in the students that I was
Speaker 3: meant to be looking after shot at each other and
Speaker 3: one of them killed another one, or would you try
Speaker 3: to make it look like a suicide. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that that's definitely what happened. I'm not saying that that
Speaker 3: is what would happen. I'm just saying that is a
Speaker 3: I would say, a possible motivation to want to make
Speaker 3: something like that look like a suicide and officially become
Speaker 3: a suicide.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And you know, another interesting thing about his case
Speaker 4: is that there was a suicide note that was found,
Speaker 4: but there are some inconsistencies with that, and according to
Speaker 4: the note, this is what the note said to Sergeant
Speaker 4: gave again again that the kind of villainous figure that
Speaker 4: we've talked about. I'm sorry for what I'm doing, but
Speaker 4: I just can't accept being discharged. I'm too embarrassed to
Speaker 4: go home, and I don't want to be on Civvy Street,
Speaker 4: and I don't want to have a factory job. I
Speaker 4: just wanted a career in the army. I know it's
Speaker 4: my fault for things I've done wrong. Only if I
Speaker 4: got a week's leave when I applied for things I
Speaker 4: could have been it could have been different. I could
Speaker 4: have calmed down instead of building problems up and then
Speaker 4: getting drunk and bursting into flames.
Speaker 1: It's terrible to read.
Speaker 2: So here we are and now now we're we pass
Speaker 2: this to you, fellow conspiracy realist. What do you think
Speaker 2: are these tragedies?
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely? What is there a cover up of foot uh?
Speaker 2: Do you, like the parents of these of these victims
Speaker 2: believe that to be the case? Or do you think
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's just a matter of tragedy and
Speaker 2: perhaps well intentioned incompetence on the part of some investigators,
Speaker 2: who are you know, of course themselves human and therefore fallible.
Speaker 2: Or are these deaths the result of enormous stress leading
Speaker 2: to suicidal acts? Or are some of these deaths homicide?
Speaker 2: If so, are these homicides in some way linked? And
Speaker 2: perhaps most importantly, what happens next? It's twenty twenty and
Speaker 2: none of these have been solved to universal satisfaction. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear your thoughts. You can find us
Speaker 2: on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, you can
Speaker 2: find us on the other one Instagram.
Speaker 3: Sorry, guys, yes, we're conspiracy stuff on most of those
Speaker 3: conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Just mentioning here. As we
Speaker 3: said at the top of the show, there is a
Speaker 3: ton more that you can dig into with each one
Speaker 3: of these people's deaths, and we recommend you do that.
Speaker 3: If you feel so inclined, and if you find something
Speaker 3: that you feel needs to be brought to our attention
Speaker 3: and the rest of us listening, please send it our way.
Speaker 2: One last important note here, it's something we endeavor to
Speaker 2: include at the end of any episode dealing with this content.
Speaker 2: Suicide is real. It is a real and serious thing.
Speaker 2: If you or a loved one are currently quarreling with
Speaker 2: or combating suicidal ideation, you are not alone. You are
Speaker 2: worth it. There are resources out there specifically for you.
Speaker 2: We like to recommend the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It
Speaker 2: is available twenty four hours a day. Here is the
Speaker 2: number one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. Again,
Speaker 2: that's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
Speaker 4: Thanks Ben. I think that's that's a really important resource
Speaker 4: to have. If anyone out there knows anybody that's going
Speaker 4: through any of this stuff, I would also just say
Speaker 4: it's just be a be a resource yourself, if you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not always apparent, but if you see
Speaker 4: morning signs, especially with someone that's very close to you,
Speaker 4: just check on people and make sure they're doing okay,
Speaker 4: and just just try your best to be supportive and understanding,
Speaker 4: because sometimes people are suffering in silence and then they
Speaker 4: don't want anybody to know. But I think it's more
Speaker 4: meaningful than one might realize, you know, when someone sees
Speaker 4: you and really tries to connect in that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last thing I would put here is you
Speaker 3: can also go to Samaritans dot org s A M
Speaker 3: A r I a n S dot org, where you
Speaker 3: can talk to somebody three hundred and sixty five days
Speaker 3: a year, twenty four hours a day if you're in
Speaker 3: need to call them please.
Speaker 2: And if you have thoughts on this episode or any
Speaker 2: of the topics covered, idiot, we would like to hear
Speaker 2: from you. You don't have to use social media if
Speaker 2: that's not your bag of badgers. We also have a
Speaker 2: number where you can call us twenty four hours a
Speaker 2: day and leave a message, especially with information on this
Speaker 2: or any other topic, if the spirit so moves you.
Speaker 2: We always like to give our own number out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can call us. Our number is one eight
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Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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