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Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the
Speaker 1: podcast I Am Devin, joined as always by Steve and
Speaker 1: Joe the Boys. Today we're gonna talk about God. Today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a mystery. Yes, it's actually
Speaker 1: a mysterious disappearance that happened on Christmas Day. The disappearance
Speaker 1: was of a postman in Ireland was, by the way,
Speaker 1: a big deal in Ireland still actually is a little
Speaker 1: bit of Yeah. I saw actually an article from two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve they were gonna like go search for him
Speaker 1: yet again. Yeah, yeah, I still haven't found him them.
Speaker 1: This episode was actually suggested by a number of people. Kira,
Speaker 1: also Mary and Kilkenny and David were the three names
Speaker 1: that we actually bothered to write down before where we
Speaker 1: started just saying yeah, it's on the list. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like three of a good number. Listen, We're better
Speaker 1: than we were at one time when we were so
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with emails that I would go into the list
Speaker 1: and I would find the date and the method of
Speaker 1: the suggestion in the story name and links and not
Speaker 1: who had suggested it, because somehow we forgot. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not so much of a mess anymore, I don't forget.
Speaker 1: I checked. So let's start with our postman, shall we. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the missing Postman is No, that's the wrong postman. That
Speaker 1: was z post but not the missing I literally just
Speaker 1: didn't even know what you were talking about for a minute.
Speaker 1: Once I referenced you, crap, Well, it's just the old
Speaker 1: and awful anyway. Our postman's name was Larry Griffin. He
Speaker 1: was born in Waterford, Ireland in eighteen eighty. He served
Speaker 1: with the British Army from eighteen to nineteen o seven,
Speaker 1: and he spent most of his first army stint in India.
Speaker 1: And then he was discharged and married a woman named
Speaker 1: Mary makes sounds Mary Mary ye. And then when World
Speaker 1: War One started he re enlisted. A lot of people
Speaker 1: did as a lot of people did. He was honorably
Speaker 1: discharged in June of nineteen sixteen, having suffered some pretty
Speaker 1: bad injuries. His arm was damaged. Whatever that maybe a
Speaker 1: little damage. It sounds like he had use of it. Really, yeah.
Speaker 1: I suspect it was, you know, lack of I think
Speaker 1: it was a loss of motion, range of would suspect
Speaker 1: something like that. I think something blew up beside him
Speaker 1: because his arm was damaged. Part of his ear and
Speaker 1: many of his teeth from one side of his face
Speaker 1: were missing. Some kind of ordinance probably went off near him.
Speaker 1: Suspect pictures of them, and maybe these were taken before
Speaker 1: the war. I don't know, but he looks he looks okay. No,
Speaker 1: I think it was. I think it was mostly I
Speaker 1: think it was. That was the major reason. They don't
Speaker 1: care if your ear looks ugly, and if your teeth
Speaker 1: are all messed I think they do care if you
Speaker 1: can hear out of but if you messed up looking yeah,
Speaker 1: but still functional, they don't care. But I think that
Speaker 1: the probably limited arms was the issue nextually by World
Speaker 1: War One standards, he got off pretty light. He did
Speaker 1: he really light, and he actually was given some awards
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen for his bravery. So whatever happened, it
Speaker 1: was a brave act. I took out He took out
Speaker 1: a German machine gun nest just with one hand. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just threw his arm, just kidding, using rocks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: After his discharge, he got a job as a postman,
Speaker 1: moving to kill mc thomas with his wife and three
Speaker 1: of his children. He had additional children. Actually don't know
Speaker 1: how many children total he had. I think it was
Speaker 1: four too, but it's kind of just this. Nobody really
Speaker 1: cares apparently, but one of his children was working I
Speaker 1: believe in England, and then the other three lived with
Speaker 1: them in um what we're now going to call kill
Speaker 1: Mac for the rest of the episode. Actually that's actually
Speaker 1: the abbreviation. That's what all people call. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you lived in that town, would you pronounce the
Speaker 1: entire freedom name every time they call it. Kill Mac. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in those days, for God's sakes. So in those days,
Speaker 1: it was apparently customary for postmen to deliver mail on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day, though often they were given great hospitality for
Speaker 1: doing their job. On that day. They would have been
Speaker 1: offered meals and drinks at pretty much every house they
Speaker 1: called on. There was some discussion about whether or not
Speaker 1: it was actually postman would call for tips, but I
Speaker 1: believe it was hospitality that they received. But people like
Speaker 1: rubbish men and other things that collected we would expect
Speaker 1: tips on Christmas Day, which I think is actually even
Speaker 1: here in America today, tipped their tip the amen in
Speaker 1: the holidays. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, present cookies and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Larry, it is reported had at least
Speaker 1: two different dinners on Christmas night at two separate houses,
Speaker 1: and a lot of drinks. So I want to point
Speaker 1: out the number of meals that this guy has had
Speaker 1: because to me, it his state later on as it's
Speaker 1: described is a bit confusing. It depends on who you ask, well, actually,
Speaker 1: but for the amount that he has eaten, I it
Speaker 1: makes me always question his state of inebriation. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you can get drunk even if you've had
Speaker 1: a ton of food. I suspect that he was also
Speaker 1: drinking while he was eating. It wasn't just sitting down
Speaker 1: to a meal, you know, I get that. My point
Speaker 1: is he wasn't on an mp stomach just knocking back shot.
Speaker 1: So that's why, absolutely, I just wanted, as I always do,
Speaker 1: I just want to throw that out there so people
Speaker 1: keep that in mind. I think that might maybe that
Speaker 1: the people of Strade Valley probably after this just chipped
Speaker 1: in and got the postman a bottle for Christmas, probably
Speaker 1: get to send it home with him. So actually, so
Speaker 1: actually that brings up a good point. Let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about this a little bit. We Larry lived in kill
Speaker 1: Mac but his postman route was actually in Stradberry Root
Speaker 1: postal Root. What did I say, postman? I think it
Speaker 1: was actually and he has stops in between also, but
Speaker 1: I think but it was all in the Stradbally area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and so his house was about six miles
Speaker 1: or ten kilometers away. It was eight miles. Uh strad
Speaker 1: Valley is eight miles away from kill Mack. And so
Speaker 1: they bicycle it's so bad. I mean, you can walk
Speaker 1: a walk a mile in twenty minutes. It all depends
Speaker 1: on whether it's like level or uphill. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing is pretty level anyway, it doesn't really matter that much.
Speaker 1: What we know about Larry and what he did on
Speaker 1: that day is Christmas Morning. He got it up and
Speaker 1: went to Christmas Mass like most Catholics do. Then he
Speaker 1: delivered a few gifts to local families and kids that
Speaker 1: I think that his family was friends with, and then
Speaker 1: around noon he put on his uniform, got on his
Speaker 1: standard issue bike and took off for strad Valley. He
Speaker 1: would have been expected back around seven pm, maybe a
Speaker 1: little later, depending on what happened, well, depending on the
Speaker 1: nature of the evening, you know, drinking and eating and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. However, that night it started to snow.
Speaker 1: So when Mary, his aforementioned wife, saw that he just
Speaker 1: wasn't home and it was snowing, and she just kind
Speaker 1: of thought, well, he probably just stayed over in Strade
Speaker 1: Valley because it's hard to ride a bicycle, and he
Speaker 1: had probably and she knew he had probably been drinking,
Speaker 1: and he probably just said, you know, it's safer for
Speaker 1: me to just stay here than to make the trek back.
Speaker 1: That's a logical thing to do, of course. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know this is pre cell phone, so it's not
Speaker 1: as though he could have just picked up a phone
Speaker 1: and called her. She actually, yeah, probably didn't even have
Speaker 1: a phone in the house, and if it did, it
Speaker 1: was a party line and whatever. Anyway, she probably just
Speaker 1: said whatever, he'll be home tomorrow morning. After this all
Speaker 1: blows over the next morning. However, at about seven o'clock,
Speaker 1: I think it was a local, a man local to
Speaker 1: Strade Valley. I don't know. Maybe he was walking on
Speaker 1: the road between Strade Valley and Killmack and found a
Speaker 1: postman's bike laid carefully a few feet off the road. Larry,
Speaker 1: can I ask what does the description? Because I've never
Speaker 1: I've always just seen laid careful that is the description.
Speaker 1: What do you think that means? I think it means
Speaker 1: not haphazardly tossed and doesn't look like somebody had just
Speaker 1: fallen off of it, that they had been it. Maybe
Speaker 1: they had been walking it and carefully laid it over
Speaker 1: on side, because it didn't a kickstand. Again, I never
Speaker 1: found a good description, so I was curious. I'm just
Speaker 1: making an assumption. And you know, the thing is is
Speaker 1: I would assume, given that it was a postman's bike,
Speaker 1: I would have assumed that it would have a kickstand
Speaker 1: on it. But you know, they clearly didn't use it
Speaker 1: for this. You know, I don't know when the kickstand
Speaker 1: was invented. I know I don't either. This is this
Speaker 1: actually kind of the kickstand was invented pretty early on
Speaker 1: when they had those stupid bicycles with the giant front
Speaker 1: and rear wheels, and the only way that Parkham was
Speaker 1: to stand him. You just had a servant run behind you.
Speaker 1: That's actually, but it's actually I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: it stopped snowing early on in the snow turned to rain,
Speaker 1: if maybe, because I mean, otherwise you'd see tracks and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, like the tracks, you know, if somebody
Speaker 1: rode the back up or walked the bike up and
Speaker 1: then laid it down there, walked away and kept on
Speaker 1: going towards killing back, or walked back. I have I
Speaker 1: have no idea. There's no mention of any kind of
Speaker 1: tracks or anything like that, so I assume it must
Speaker 1: just stopped snowing. Must have anyway, Larry, Larry was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found and remains so to this day. The
Speaker 1: local man is unnamed, but he reported the bike to
Speaker 1: the police in Strade Valley, not in Killmack. I'm not again,
Speaker 1: I'm not. It's all local police, is how it's always named.
Speaker 1: And I know that the police department that did the
Speaker 1: most of the investigation was based in Strade Valley and
Speaker 1: I don't know if they also served kill mac and
Speaker 1: other regions. But yeah, but we're going to call police
Speaker 1: officers because it's easier. But so they were the first
Speaker 1: people to receive this report that the bike and Larry,
Speaker 1: it's my understanding, was kind of the only postman that
Speaker 1: served that area, so they just thought, well, it's probably
Speaker 1: Larry's bike. I don't know if it had a name
Speaker 1: on it or something like that. It's possible it probably
Speaker 1: actually had some kind of number on it because it's
Speaker 1: a postal issue. It's post office bike. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like I would imagine it's got something identifying it
Speaker 1: as opposed to like, well it had his bags and
Speaker 1: the somewhere on it, almost like a license plate, kind
Speaker 1: of not necessarily a license plate, but something they identified.
Speaker 1: I think in those days that wasn't a relaxed about
Speaker 1: that stuff Ireland back. But either way, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: That they probably had his name like scratched into, you know,
Speaker 1: into a nail bag or something. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: so the police decided, while we're going to do a search.
Speaker 1: I have seen reports that there were police and postmen
Speaker 1: and a bunch of local farmers civilians, like they're like
Speaker 1: almost a hundred people or more. We're looking for Larry
Speaker 1: that day, on the day after Christmas Day, which in
Speaker 1: Ireland is St. St. Stephen's Day, my favorite day because
Speaker 1: it's my day. State on that day, some other Steve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a state, you know what, I'm in a state
Speaker 1: on that day, which yeah, apparently so between strad Valley
Speaker 1: and kill Mack is mostly marshlands, big bogs. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to our for instance, Tunguska episode, you know those
Speaker 1: bogs can be quite deep often. They started the people
Speaker 1: initially kind of thought that maybe in his drunken state,
Speaker 1: he had accidentally fallen in, so they started looking in
Speaker 1: that area, but they there was no trace of him
Speaker 1: at all anywhere. When they couldn't find Larry on they
Speaker 1: the investigators, the police department there decided that maybe they
Speaker 1: should report this to their higher ups. So they did.
Speaker 1: They called Chief Superintendent Harry O'Mara to let him know
Speaker 1: that Larry had gone missing from He was based out
Speaker 1: of Waterford, which I guess would have been the local
Speaker 1: head brass office, county seat or something like that. It
Speaker 1: was Waterford County. His first act was to travel to
Speaker 1: strad Boy to question the police who had been investigating.
Speaker 1: And there they were named officers Delay, Frawley, Murphy, and Sullivan.
Speaker 1: They are the main named police officers. They might have
Speaker 1: actually been the that is the entire bunch of Irish
Speaker 1: names right there. I think. Actually they were the only
Speaker 1: police officers in that area at the time, and they
Speaker 1: were all but they were all based in right there
Speaker 1: in strad Valley, Yeah, where our postman was last seen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Frawley was married and so he lived actually above the
Speaker 1: post office in straw BALI not in Kim Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the others lived in an officers barracks, so they were
Speaker 1: allowed to I don't know whatever. They all denied seeing
Speaker 1: Larry leave the village, and also all of them, particularly Delay,
Speaker 1: claimed the Larry was sober. I do love that the
Speaker 1: officers were like, no, no, no, we didn't see Larry.
Speaker 1: We didn't see him, but we know we was sober.
Speaker 1: It was definitely sober. It's kind of funny when your
Speaker 1: worst witnesses in the case what happened to be the
Speaker 1: local police. Yeah, that is actually kind of what happened here.
Speaker 1: Other people from strad Valley said that Larry was quote
Speaker 1: unquote a bit jolly, a k a drunk While he
Speaker 1: was investigating. O'Mara was also able to establish that Larry
Speaker 1: had not made it to the houses at the end
Speaker 1: of his route, which were on the road back to
Speaker 1: kill Mac, nor was his bike on the road at
Speaker 1: four am when a different local man was walking along
Speaker 1: the road, presumably back to his house from the town.
Speaker 1: This is Christmas at four am. Christmas. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: take after Christmas, but at four am in an area
Speaker 1: that probably doesn't have street lighting, it's really freaking dark.
Speaker 1: But I'm amazed that they grabbed onto this. It couldn't
Speaker 1: have been there at this time because this guy didn't
Speaker 1: notice it. Well, so, yeah, that's fair. Certainly, I'm inclined
Speaker 1: to believe that the conclusions that o'mera was able to
Speaker 1: draw from his investigations were by and large correct, but
Speaker 1: it's totally fair to say we don't know the situation.
Speaker 1: You know, we there weren't street lights, right, but we
Speaker 1: don't know if by that point the moon had come
Speaker 1: out and it was glowing off of the snow and
Speaker 1: it was super bright, and he was able to say
Speaker 1: no with with the absolute certainty the bike was. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know, but so we The timeline then becomes
Speaker 1: some time between four am and seven thirty am, Larry's
Speaker 1: bike made it a few miles out of town, and
Speaker 1: this point you aren't suspicious about something. You are far
Speaker 1: behind where o'mera was at, because it started to become
Speaker 1: very suspicious. Pretty much a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: you know who else was suspicious? Yeah, well yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know the local priest actually he was like doing
Speaker 1: doing all Father Brown on these guys. He was actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about that. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: actually right now. Okay. Yeah, So O'Meara continued to investigate
Speaker 1: because he just kind of thought, you know, there was
Speaker 1: some something we're going Yeah. On January six, local priest
Speaker 1: named Father O'Shea told O'Meara that he should question a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy from Stradbally named John Power. Seems
Speaker 1: that the father had likely heard a confession from John
Speaker 1: that made him think that the strad Bali police might
Speaker 1: be covering something up. Turns out probably don't, don't. Emera
Speaker 1: set up an interview with young John Powers at a
Speaker 1: different police station that didn't include our named officers. Already,
Speaker 1: he's not trusting these guys already. What he told Amara
Speaker 1: was actually very different than the story that the police
Speaker 1: officers had told him about that night. He told them
Speaker 1: that he had witnessed a set of events on Christmas
Speaker 1: Day night, and that there were three other people with
Speaker 1: him that night who could corroborate his story. His story
Speaker 1: was basically that he had been standing outside the window
Speaker 1: of Wheeland's Pub with three these three other men who
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a second. And by the way, sorry
Speaker 1: to interrupt you. I just want to say, if you
Speaker 1: get on Google Street you and go to Stread Valley,
Speaker 1: there's like a center part of town, like a crossroads
Speaker 1: right there. There's a little almost town squarish kind of
Speaker 1: like a little parkas thing right there, and you'll see
Speaker 1: all these places at a reference here. The Wheeland's Pub
Speaker 1: is like right there that's still operational. Toe and still open.
Speaker 1: And then right next to it is the post office
Speaker 1: which garda policeman Frawley lived above, and then the hall
Speaker 1: is like to the right and across the street, and
Speaker 1: the police barracks is next door to that. Still anything away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably in pretty much the same condition. Just that,
Speaker 1: probably a little updating, but yeah, go ahead and just
Speaker 1: go check it out. Yeah, because I I kind of
Speaker 1: just assumed people would look it up. I didn't spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time kind of describing where things aren't
Speaker 1: relation to each other. So so anyway, the story that
Speaker 1: John Powers told was that he had been standing outside
Speaker 1: the window of Wheeland's Pub and with the other three
Speaker 1: men from six pm on Christmas Day and then they
Speaker 1: had seen Larry and Officer do Lay outside the post
Speaker 1: office at six thirty and then they walked past them
Speaker 1: and around the corner. Officer do Lay was pushing a
Speaker 1: bike and Larry appeared to be really drunk um and sick.
Speaker 1: Well sorry, the quote is trying to empty the contents
Speaker 1: of his stomach, not Yeah. Power said that he remained
Speaker 1: outside Wheeland's for another hour and he did not see
Speaker 1: do Lay or Larry again. So based on this testimony
Speaker 1: evidence whatever it is superintended. O'mea. O'Meara, of course goes
Speaker 1: back to question Delay again, and Delay says at this
Speaker 1: point basically, well, yeah, okay, fine, Yes, I was with
Speaker 1: Larry that night, but he was definitely totally sober. And
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you about it because I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't lie about it because no, I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you about it because I just didn't think it
Speaker 1: was important. He literally literally the quote attributed to him
Speaker 1: is that he said that it was of no consequence
Speaker 1: that he had actually seen Larry on the night that
Speaker 1: he disappeared, just that wasn't important, of course, not right,
Speaker 1: to which anyone with a brain, of course, would say, well,
Speaker 1: clearly you are hiding something more on this. Later, O'Mara
Speaker 1: continued to investigate, and you know, the story around this
Speaker 1: is really hazy because there's a lot of conflicting accounts
Speaker 1: of things. This is my least favorite kind of story
Speaker 1: because everybody is contradicting each other and changing and themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, any time anybody was interviewed, their story changed substantially.
Speaker 1: These guys did not get together and get their stories
Speaker 1: all alone, clearly not. But even the locals. They would
Speaker 1: talk to locals and it seemed like their stories would shift.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty compelling testimony that they thought they could
Speaker 1: get a conviction on that later when they called that person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they called them into the to testify in court, and
Speaker 1: they were like totally totally different stories. So we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. But this haze is kind
Speaker 1: of we're trying to clear it away a little bit,
Speaker 1: and this is just one of many. It seems to
Speaker 1: be pretty much accepted by both the research that I did.
Speaker 1: It seems to be the most consistent story, and like
Speaker 1: you know, reading around the internet, people pretty much agree
Speaker 1: this is kind of the most consistent stuff. But again
Speaker 1: it's not changes a million times. So the people who
Speaker 1: lived in strad Valley were able to solidify the story
Speaker 1: that it sounds like about after six pm, a clearly
Speaker 1: drunk Larry had called had called on sorry head, visited
Speaker 1: Officer Frawley's flat, the one that's above the post office, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he had actually apparently showed up with Officer do
Speaker 1: Lay where they all of them had some more alcohol.
Speaker 1: More being an operative term on Christmas in that town.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what I do all day, and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of other stuff going on. There's not
Speaker 1: much going on in that town. Yeah, And from there,
Speaker 1: the three men went outside, and the officers, in their
Speaker 1: clearly sober state, decided that Larry was too drunk to
Speaker 1: go home. So apparently Officer Frawley went to Wheelands to
Speaker 1: see if they could let him stay there for the night,
Speaker 1: sleep it off, whatever, But he realized that he had
Speaker 1: been followed into Wheelands by h Sergeant Gain. Yeah. Apparently
Speaker 1: it sounds like the actual what's the word I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: the actual sergeant well in charge, in charge, But he
Speaker 1: sounds like he was the more of the law and
Speaker 1: order guy in the crowd there, the local police, and
Speaker 1: so he was the one that that followed was by
Speaker 1: the book. Well, so yeah, I think that I think
Speaker 1: that Delay realized, oh my god, he's following me into
Speaker 1: the pub. I better turn around and back right out
Speaker 1: of because the people in the pub. Yeah. So from there,
Speaker 1: apparently Officer Delay took Larry around the corner, which would
Speaker 1: have been I guess when John and his friends saw
Speaker 1: Larry with Delay, because there was a back door in
Speaker 1: the back door into the pub, and they both went
Speaker 1: into Wheeland's by the back door, and then neither of
Speaker 1: them were seemed to leave again. This, of course was
Speaker 1: all news to O'Meara, because this version of the story
Speaker 1: had not been presented to him yet, which yeah, which
Speaker 1: was a problem, because he had interviewed the police officers
Speaker 1: now not once but twice and had not heard this
Speaker 1: story from any of them, so that was probably a problem.
Speaker 1: These guys are not supposed to do. This was the
Speaker 1: early days of what we call organized policing, you know,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't very organized. Well, it was early early
Speaker 1: days form the Irish Republic as well, so that might
Speaker 1: have part of it. They were not quite as professional
Speaker 1: in those days. So pretty much it's accepted that Larry
Speaker 1: was at Wheeland's that night drinking, and that the police
Speaker 1: officers were probably a little bit involved in his disappearance,
Speaker 1: whether whether right, whether explicitly caused it or at least
Speaker 1: they had seen him on that night, and clearly they
Speaker 1: were trying to cover something up because they kept saying, no,
Speaker 1: he was sober, or we just didn't even see him.
Speaker 1: There are a few other details that I want to add,
Speaker 1: but I actually want to just incorporate those into theories
Speaker 1: or suspects or whatever we're in. Yeah, whatever whatever today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's get into that. But first let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Is this the point where we break out the guinness? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: our whiskey and guinness and soda pop or whatever more whiskey.
Speaker 1: Yeah cool, alright, cool, Let's talk about theories or suspects
Speaker 1: or whatever, because it's kind of both. It's everything. It's
Speaker 1: as let's aliens and yeah. So the first theory that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, just really briefly, because it's
Speaker 1: kind like nobody really thinks has happened. But mine is
Speaker 1: that it was a personal accident caused by Larry on
Speaker 1: the road with no other human intervention or cover up whatsoever.
Speaker 1: He was drunk. He was drunk. Yeah, he uh delicately
Speaker 1: put his bike down, wandered into the bog and disappeared. Foret,
Speaker 1: when you drank a lot, sometimes you have to stop
Speaker 1: and answer the call of nature, you know, and listen.
Speaker 1: I think we've all been there where you were pretty sauced.
Speaker 1: But there's suddenly are some things that you do by
Speaker 1: road and very gently and with a little bit of grace,
Speaker 1: and so you don't just like drop the bike and
Speaker 1: clatter it on the ground and stumble. He still stumbled,
Speaker 1: but just you could presumably do that. I just would
Speaker 1: expect that if this were the case, they found something. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of problems with this. Actually.
Speaker 1: One is they've never found anything and and and that's
Speaker 1: what Joe was talking about earlier. That was one of
Speaker 1: the things that they were looking for. Even as recently
Speaker 1: as two thousand and twelve they were excavating more bogs
Speaker 1: they were still have not found anything. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: I believe also a road in in a nearby village
Speaker 1: and near the Strade Valley that was actually being be
Speaker 1: paved or worked on at the time of the disappearance.
Speaker 1: And I thinking was that perhaps he had been buried
Speaker 1: underneath the road and then he was paved over essentially.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so they've they've looked pretty much even with
Speaker 1: modern technology, they still haven't found him. It is the
Speaker 1: mystery is still alive in Ireland. You know what, actually
Speaker 1: have a question in regards to this, because Joe brought
Speaker 1: this up earlier that it was weird that there was
Speaker 1: no footprints and all of that. I actually was just
Speaker 1: suddenly thinking about it. Do we know where specifically it's snowed,
Speaker 1: because there are times in this town where it will
Speaker 1: snow in one place and not be snowing four or
Speaker 1: five miles away. It might have only been snowing and
Speaker 1: kill mac for all. I was wondering about it kind
Speaker 1: of a micro climate scenario. I don't know answer to
Speaker 1: that question. I have not heard any accounts of it
Speaker 1: having snowed in strad Valley. That is true, but I
Speaker 1: just assumed that it's all kind of the same. You
Speaker 1: would think that they're close enough that it would be
Speaker 1: the same, but I just realized that it might be right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happens that my house, you know, weather wise, is
Speaker 1: totally different than what happens at a lot of other
Speaker 1: places in Portland. So that's that's a good thought. One
Speaker 1: of the other problems with this theory is that you
Speaker 1: remember how I was talking about the search and how
Speaker 1: policemen and civilians and postmen had been searching. They got
Speaker 1: to answer the call, so they did notice the empty
Speaker 1: mail bag, waterproof coveralls, and a cape were strapped to
Speaker 1: the bike, like you would expect for somebody who was
Speaker 1: at the end of their route. But the way that
Speaker 1: the cape was strapped to the bike, the postman said,
Speaker 1: was not the way that a season postman would strap
Speaker 1: a cape to the bike, because it would actually cause
Speaker 1: cracks the way it was folded up, and it would
Speaker 1: lose its like rubberized canvas. Is I think it was
Speaker 1: just waxed canvas, or even just canvas for all I know,
Speaker 1: But I think it was probably waxed canvas at that time.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would have been the relatively cheap
Speaker 1: way to do something like that. But but and and
Speaker 1: I know that that it will crack when you know,
Speaker 1: if you fold something up like that, it will it
Speaker 1: will start a that's not meant to take that kind
Speaker 1: of right. So the feeling is that Larry was seasons
Speaker 1: enough that even if he had been really drunk, it
Speaker 1: just would have been the natural way that he folded
Speaker 1: that cape would have been the correct way every time,
Speaker 1: because it would have been the only way he ever
Speaker 1: folded it. Many times. I'm confident he did a ton
Speaker 1: of times. So that brings a lot of doubt onto this.
Speaker 1: And somebody made a note here in my script as
Speaker 1: well that the everything that they found was dry, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that it had apparently been precipitating in some
Speaker 1: nature overnight, so it would lend itself to seem like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just laying out all night m hm, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Or micro climate or micro it could have
Speaker 1: been seventy and sunny on Christmas Day. Micro I mean
Speaker 1: it's like tiny, tiny climates, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: just surrounding the bicycle itself. Yeah, it was a bicycle climate.
Speaker 1: It's like the cartoons, cloud just follows the person. Okay,
Speaker 1: so pretty much nobody thinks this actually happened. Um, so
Speaker 1: let's move on. I have a couple other theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: next theory is it was a murder. This is where
Speaker 1: we're going to start adding more details to that night,
Speaker 1: and then we'll kind of talk about some of the
Speaker 1: suspects and why it could have or could have not been. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Strade Valley police were hot fur lead. That was
Speaker 1: not them, obviously. They continued to investigate as well while
Speaker 1: O'Meara was doing his investigation, and they arrested two local men,
Speaker 1: Jim Fitzgerald and Thomas Corbett. Jim was a fifty five
Speaker 1: year old local laborer and Thomas, also a local laborer,
Speaker 1: was twenty five. Jim had taken Thomas, who's often referred
Speaker 1: to as Tommy as well. He had taken Tommy and
Speaker 1: his pregnant girlfriend into his home because they didn't have
Speaker 1: a place to live Tommy's girlfriend. So Tommy and Tommy's
Speaker 1: girlfriend who was pregnant lived with Jim because Jim was
Speaker 1: a nice person, and I mean, maybe maybe a little,
Speaker 1: but that was something. It's it seemed like it was
Speaker 1: a unique circumstance that he was being. Yes. One thing
Speaker 1: to stop and mentioned before we go any further on
Speaker 1: this is that apparently at the time, it was illegal
Speaker 1: for pubs to serve alcohol on Christmas Day and the
Speaker 1: day after, which is St. Stephen's Day. And I have
Speaker 1: revoked the band on drinking on my day because I
Speaker 1: personally think that you should drink on My day. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to your never caive down and also the this
Speaker 1: this particular lot was passed by the way only in
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, so just a few years before this incident.
Speaker 1: And you said you did some digging into this, and
Speaker 1: there were some other days that a lot, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but no, that the lot of the Seven Lot as
Speaker 1: far as I know, and again I didn't investigate extensively,
Speaker 1: but a banned serving or selling liquor on Good Friday,
Speaker 1: Christmas Day, and best of all St. Patrick's Day, although
Speaker 1: the St Patrick's Day band was was actually repealed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. Yeah, and and just like the past year, seventeen,
Speaker 1: they finally got rid of the band on on liquor
Speaker 1: sales on Good Friday, so now it's only Discristmas Day. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: they would be really upset to come to this country
Speaker 1: and see what we do on St. Patrick's Day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not so much about snakes, more about just drinking as
Speaker 1: much as you possible they can. In case it wasn't
Speaker 1: clear earlier, as we mentioned, Whelands is a pub. Wheland's
Speaker 1: Pub still is to this day. I think the original
Speaker 1: grandson is running. I think it's still a family that's
Speaker 1: runs it. Yeah, I'm not totally clear if it was
Speaker 1: also an inn at the time or just a pub,
Speaker 1: or if they just maybe had like a little extra room. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a two story building and probably the family lived
Speaker 1: in the second on the second floor. But the question
Speaker 1: becomes because so the reason that I like bring this
Speaker 1: question up even is because, as mentioned, Delay seemed to
Speaker 1: think that Larry there might be room for Larry to
Speaker 1: sleep it off in Wheeland. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: they just he just seemed to think maybe they had
Speaker 1: a little extra room in the house or if they
Speaker 1: actually did, that was a thing they offered, was a
Speaker 1: room or to sleep it often and that actually, if
Speaker 1: you think about it from a pub's perspective, that is
Speaker 1: a great money making Basically a closet with the teeny
Speaker 1: cot it's easy to clean off and you you've charged
Speaker 1: a drunk a couple of pence and push him in
Speaker 1: and say see you in the morning. Dummy, don't come out,
Speaker 1: and if he comes out, you say, oh, you want
Speaker 1: to go back in there. It's a couple of pence more.
Speaker 1: I mean that that is that is just cheap and easy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I would absolutely yeah, called drunk tax, and
Speaker 1: it might actually just be something they provided for free.
Speaker 1: It's just good customer service, you know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was unlikely that somebody was going to drive home.
Speaker 1: There was only one car in town. It was the
Speaker 1: police car. I'm kidding. I actually don't know how many
Speaker 1: on one carr. According to a lot of the articles
Speaker 1: I read, the only car in town belonged to and
Speaker 1: I remember who it was, but they always said it
Speaker 1: was the only car in town. Thomas, Yes, that's who
Speaker 1: it was. And he by the way, I lived right
Speaker 1: across the street from Weiland's Public. Well, it was hard
Speaker 1: to not live right across the street from it. But Weland's,
Speaker 1: you know, like we said, still in operation today. They
Speaker 1: still have very strong feelings about this. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: it in a minute. Probably they don't like to hear
Speaker 1: about it. But they're also still very much just serve
Speaker 1: the local community and that's that. So I think that's
Speaker 1: probably how it was there as well. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: now as a tourist and going and have a drink.
Speaker 1: Actually read there's one single Yelp review of Wheland there is,
Speaker 1: and it was from somebody who was from America and
Speaker 1: who was touring through, and they said, we saw Whelands
Speaker 1: and it was a pub, and we were driving through
Speaker 1: and we need someplace to stop. So we stopped and
Speaker 1: we went in, and it was clear that we were
Speaker 1: not welcome since we were not local. Yeah, but they stayed.
Speaker 1: They said they gave it a good review. I mean,
Speaker 1: but they were like, it was clear we did not
Speaker 1: fit in a liquor. I don't know, I didn't. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're a little off topic here. So Jim and Thomas
Speaker 1: Tommy both admitted to having been at Wheeland's that night
Speaker 1: and to having seen Larry. Jim's story was that another
Speaker 1: man named Morrissey had pushed Larry over maybe a dispute
Speaker 1: over some money, hit his head on a stove, and
Speaker 1: he pushed him hard enough to knock him over over. Well, reportedly,
Speaker 1: it was not so hard to knock Larry over that night.
Speaker 1: He actually felt knocked himself over a number of times.
Speaker 1: Probably he had been sober, he would not have fallen,
Speaker 1: but apparently he fell over and hit his head on
Speaker 1: a stove and died. Um. And you can read the
Speaker 1: actual account from Jim of this, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to follow. It's pretty conversationally wandering, but that's as
Speaker 1: far as I can surmised, that's what happened in his story.
Speaker 1: Tommy's story was a little different. His story was that
Speaker 1: they had gone to Wheeland's but hadn't been allowed in
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, maybe their capacity, Maybe it was when
Speaker 1: the sergeant was kind of around, because again they were
Speaker 1: serving liquor and so you had to keep it on
Speaker 1: the download. And I'm not sure the way it's described,
Speaker 1: like Fitzgerald and Tommy, it sounds like they went in
Speaker 1: the back way and they didn't. Actually, it sounds like
Speaker 1: Tommy didn't not actually go into the main the bar area,
Speaker 1: just stood in the kitchen drinking. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why that was customer or something. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it was, or they were full in the other room
Speaker 1: or the sergeant. So in the original telling of the story,
Speaker 1: when Um O'Mara Amara finally went and interviewed the police
Speaker 1: officers for the first time, they claimed that they had
Speaker 1: been to Wheeland's. Actually, I think it was a couple
Speaker 1: of times after that he interviewed them because somebody was like,
Speaker 1: we saw them going into a wheelands that night, and
Speaker 1: the police officers said, yeah, we were doing raids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing raids. Did it twice? Two raids bargianna checking
Speaker 1: to make sure no illicit drinking was going on, right,
Speaker 1: which was maybe not actually the reason um they were raiding,
Speaker 1: but it could have been that that was, you know,
Speaker 1: the moment that the sergeant was in and and the
Speaker 1: Wheeland said, well, we're just you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I don't really know what, but they were in this
Speaker 1: kind of back room, and that was Jim's story. Tommy
Speaker 1: story was that they had actually not been allowed in
Speaker 1: UM at first. So they went across to the hall,
Speaker 1: which is across the way, as Joe mentioned, which was
Speaker 1: basically just another place where people drank, and then they
Speaker 1: played cards and Tommy had gotten into a fight with
Speaker 1: somebody there. That the story of the fight is actually
Speaker 1: corroborated by a number of people. It's one of the
Speaker 1: three things that everybody seems to know certain Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I don't really know where the truth is in
Speaker 1: these stories. I don't even know if it's possible. It's
Speaker 1: certainly possible. I guess that they were both slashed, and
Speaker 1: Jim went to Wheelands and was like, Tommy's right behind me,
Speaker 1: and Tommy for whatever reason, was like, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: over the hall, or they were like Tommy, you can't
Speaker 1: come in here. So he went over gotten fight and
Speaker 1: came back and thought Jim was with him the whole time.
Speaker 1: I don't really know where tom was. Just here. How
Speaker 1: do you lose your buddy in a village that size.
Speaker 1: I think you're just drunk and you don't really you're
Speaker 1: not paying attention. Yeah, But like I said, pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody has changed their story a number of times, and
Speaker 1: then includes both Jim and Tommy, which is so very frustrating,
Speaker 1: super frustrating because there's just nothing consistent. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is and this is actually where we get into this
Speaker 1: a little bit. The police arrested um Tommy Cashane, the
Speaker 1: car owner, and Ned Morrissey both right after the interview,
Speaker 1: based on the testimony of Jim, because they said that
Speaker 1: Thomas Cashane was also there, and he also, I think
Speaker 1: as part of this testimony, said that someone said that
Speaker 1: like maybe it was Thomas cash in and said that
Speaker 1: he was going to bring his car. They put the
Speaker 1: body and there get rid of it. So the only
Speaker 1: car in town. Yeah, because there's not really like a
Speaker 1: development on that story necessarily. Of the story kind of
Speaker 1: ends with well, Morrissey pushed him and he fell, and
Speaker 1: then everybody around was kind of like whatever, like he'll
Speaker 1: get up, and then somebody said, oh, he's dead, and
Speaker 1: then somebody else was yelling at him to get up,
Speaker 1: and I think Morrissey was Morrissey turned him over and
Speaker 1: then and then said get up, and he just never
Speaker 1: never moved except for that right after that. This is
Speaker 1: why Jim's story there's it's very frustrating because they he says,
Speaker 1: Morrissey turned him over and there was a little blood,
Speaker 1: but not much. And you know, Morrissey said get up,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. He never moved again, but he was
Speaker 1: mumbling about and it was like, well, wait what he
Speaker 1: was he mumbling about something? Or was he dead? I
Speaker 1: don't understand what was happening. But one of the reason
Speaker 1: for Fitzgerald's Jim Fitzgerald's confusion on the whole matter was
Speaker 1: it turns out that he told another police officer quite
Speaker 1: a long time after this, like months afterwards, that actually
Speaker 1: he had not been there, had not and not witnessed this,
Speaker 1: that he had just heard it. He said he heard
Speaker 1: it third hand from somebody who was there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's why Thomas Coshane and uh Ned Morrissey were
Speaker 1: arrested at first, and the police seemed to think they
Speaker 1: could get some kind of conviction based on Jim's original testimony,
Speaker 1: and maybe they thought some other people who had been
Speaker 1: in the pub. They named so many people. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people, yeah, I think, but yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a Wheelans, I think the Wheelands. I think four
Speaker 1: of the wheel And family were arrested. Well, yeah, so
Speaker 1: they policeman and several exactly, so they arrested Thomas and
Speaker 1: ned and then charged them, also charged them with like
Speaker 1: theft of postman property or something something like that a
Speaker 1: few days later. Okay, yes it is, though there's no
Speaker 1: really evidence to suggest that they actually did steal anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, the bike and everything was returned. And maybe
Speaker 1: it was the uniform. I think it was the hat
Speaker 1: specifically were charging them for. But there was something about
Speaker 1: the mailbag too, but I don't remember if the mail
Speaker 1: bag was was what the bike it was it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it might have been actually just touching it. Maybe
Speaker 1: it might be that if you're not remember the post office,
Speaker 1: you're not even allowed to handle that mail bag. I
Speaker 1: hope that's not true in America, because then I'm actually
Speaker 1: it is. If you kick a mail bag in America,
Speaker 1: you can go to jail kick it or handle it.
Speaker 1: If you just kick it, you know, if you abuse
Speaker 1: a mail bag in anyway, that's actually stroke it lovingly.
Speaker 1: And like I was gonna say, I usually have to
Speaker 1: move a mail bag to clean my house. So hopefully
Speaker 1: just taking a mail bag up was not you probably
Speaker 1: won't get arrested for it, just as they really Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you, Yeah, why don't you inquire on my behalf
Speaker 1: I would let them know where we live now. Great,
Speaker 1: so yeah, okay. So a few days later, after Thomas
Speaker 1: and Ned were arrested the I think it was for
Speaker 1: your right of real mom and dad and two of
Speaker 1: their children and two of their kids. Then on February three,
Speaker 1: officers do Lay and Murphy were arrested and charged. Though
Speaker 1: I'm not totally sure how Murphy was the one that
Speaker 1: got wrapped up in that, because it sounded like it
Speaker 1: was Frawley that was the one that was actually wrapped
Speaker 1: up in actually. And then on March seventh, they were
Speaker 1: all let go after some kind of trivial trial time.
Speaker 1: Well they weren't let go per se. They were all
Speaker 1: reassigned other other areas around the country or other precincts.
Speaker 1: I thought, no, no, no, no, no no, I'm sorry. All
Speaker 1: of the people that I just listed that had been
Speaker 1: arrested and charged, they tried them all together in one
Speaker 1: single trial, and the judge was like, Okay, you gotta
Speaker 1: give me more than this. O'Meara like, you can't just
Speaker 1: give me one guy who has somehow changed his story
Speaker 1: sitting on the stand. The trial was that they kept
Speaker 1: moving things out by we need done a week or
Speaker 1: two to get this and oh when you know, the
Speaker 1: week or two for that, and then it became what
Speaker 1: six or eight months, not about four, but well, yeah,
Speaker 1: originally it was supposed to be kind of a quick thing.
Speaker 1: And then Jim Fitzgerald comes in to testify. That's when
Speaker 1: he changed his story, which actually turned to the story
Speaker 1: was sort of b s because he claimed to have
Speaker 1: beendon when he never was probably and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't really see him see that stuff, so in
Speaker 1: a sense he was he was almost telling the truth,
Speaker 1: although it looked like he lie out the stand, but
Speaker 1: I guess he was sort of telling the trucher said, well,
Speaker 1: actually I didn't actually see that, although he didn't explain that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I heard it from somebody else, he didn't
Speaker 1: say that. So that's when they got the first continuance
Speaker 1: for a week so the prosecution can firm up its case,
Speaker 1: because that was literally all they were going. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: didn't have much else to do. Well, I think they
Speaker 1: had a little bit of evidence. They took, like the
Speaker 1: stove out of Wheeler's pub. Yeah, they actually took they
Speaker 1: use some confessions they did, they did some forensic testing
Speaker 1: at the time, I remember, and they actually I think
Speaker 1: they did forensic testing on like all of Wheeland's, including
Speaker 1: the upstairs, and the only human blood they found was
Speaker 1: in the trash and was connected to one of the
Speaker 1: daughter's menstrual cycles. Is the only the only trace they found? Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they even they swabbed the stove extensively and
Speaker 1: there was no sign it wasn't clean. But there was
Speaker 1: no human blood anywhere, you know, So they just didn't
Speaker 1: have evidence. There was no evidence, but there was, so
Speaker 1: they just they were all let go. So I guess
Speaker 1: we can kind of briefly talk about some of the
Speaker 1: people who were brought in and charged and kind of
Speaker 1: discussed them. I would say the first we should talk
Speaker 1: about is um Thomas Cushion. And as far as I know,
Speaker 1: Jim is the only person who has come forward with
Speaker 1: that story. And it sounds like there were a ton
Speaker 1: of people in there and Whelands at the time. Even
Speaker 1: by Jim's own account, there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: in that same room who reportedly even spoke to or
Speaker 1: reacted to the incident where Larry fell down. I just
Speaker 1: find it very hard to believe that he's the only one,
Speaker 1: even though maybe he did wasn't actually there that he
Speaker 1: would be the only one who would speak up about
Speaker 1: that about Jim Jim FitzGeralds. You mean, yeah, if they had,
Speaker 1: if that actually happened, well, um, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that at a certain point, when you enter
Speaker 1: into a conspiracy, you're breaking a lot. At a certain point,
Speaker 1: you're kind of you know, in for a penny, in
Speaker 1: for a pound, you know what I mean. I think
Speaker 1: that these these people really uh and obviously the motive here,
Speaker 1: it would have just been reported as an accident, you
Speaker 1: call the doctor, called the cops. But they were drinking
Speaker 1: illegally in the pub Christmas Day, and several of those
Speaker 1: people had a lot to lose. I mean, number one,
Speaker 1: the wheelands would lose their license, in their livelihood, and
Speaker 1: the policeman would lose their jobs. And then Tom Tom
Speaker 1: cash and was a school principle. He would have lost
Speaker 1: his job. And so everybody had a motive. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's like, dudes, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: many patter ways to approach this whole thing. Literally, the
Speaker 1: cassitions could have said all of you get the hell
Speaker 1: out of here, and we're gonna say Larry wandered in
Speaker 1: and we tried to put him to bed, and he drunk.
Speaker 1: Larry started stumbling around and fell like bringing that many
Speaker 1: co conspirators and especially when you're all drinking. Yea, it
Speaker 1: was dumb. I mean everything everything they did to handle
Speaker 1: this thing like like that. For example, this is what
Speaker 1: happened if they took the bike, which is what appair appeared.
Speaker 1: Apparently somebody planted the bike on the road back to
Speaker 1: kill mac Uh. They should have wheeled it further down
Speaker 1: the road before they dropped it. They only took him
Speaker 1: about a quarter of the way to kill mac and
Speaker 1: then left it by the side of the road, well
Speaker 1: closer to kill than le. So the one little thing
Speaker 1: here that I didn't really mention is that it's the
Speaker 1: one road that goes from strad Valley to Killmack. But
Speaker 1: there's one little intersection on that road that intersects with
Speaker 1: five other roads and pretty much like right there is
Speaker 1: where they found the bike. So I can understand why
Speaker 1: somebody might be like going to the junction, and that's
Speaker 1: as far as I going, here's the bike, and it
Speaker 1: could be anywhere in anyway. Yeah, especially and it was cold,
Speaker 1: maybe it was swing because that early in the morning
Speaker 1: they're starting to have the hangover come on. But I
Speaker 1: think that whoever did leave the bike there, you know,
Speaker 1: probably later on had regrets about not maybe really got
Speaker 1: a couple of miles further down the road, or just
Speaker 1: tossing it in the bog. Yeah, that would have been
Speaker 1: a good way to go to So um, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can talk about the Wheelands, we can talk about
Speaker 1: all the officers, but I guess we can just hop
Speaker 1: right to my last and favorite theory, which is that
Speaker 1: it was an accident and then a cover up. I
Speaker 1: actually heard a story that I guess, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: probably in the village had said that actually what happened
Speaker 1: is that the police officers had haken Larry up to
Speaker 1: their barracks to sleep it off that night, by the way,
Speaker 1: also across the street from Wheelers Pub, right across the street,
Speaker 1: and that what had happened is the stairs at the
Speaker 1: time coming down from the barracks didn't actually have a
Speaker 1: railing on it, and that he was drunk, had woken
Speaker 1: up drunk up there, walked down the stairs, fallen off
Speaker 1: and died, and that they decided to cover that up
Speaker 1: for some reason. I don't necessarily believe that so much
Speaker 1: as some other accident. But regardless, I do think that
Speaker 1: Larry probably got drunk and some kind of accident happened
Speaker 1: to him. But then there was this massive conspiracy of
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody who lived in the village to cover
Speaker 1: it up. There was actually a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of mines in the area,
Speaker 1: mineral and it's it's pretty much believed that he was
Speaker 1: dropped down a mine shaft and then covered up. Yeah. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: as part of the search effort, I mean, they searched
Speaker 1: a bunch of those minds. They also dug up there's
Speaker 1: a local beach. They dug up the entire beach. They
Speaker 1: also dug up a bunch of graves and the local
Speaker 1: church graveyard. Yeah, they've done a lot of stuff. But
Speaker 1: I you know, it's certainly if you know the area, well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible that they could have I still, I
Speaker 1: just still struggle with the sheer number of people involved.
Speaker 1: You think somebody would have cracked well, and well my well,
Speaker 1: my problem is that these people all seemed to have
Speaker 1: a similar story, and then they diverged, and then they
Speaker 1: began to turn on each other, and there was this
Speaker 1: what appeared to be some really vicious fighting going on
Speaker 1: between them, and I if that were the case, if
Speaker 1: they were all really involved, I could just see somebody
Speaker 1: being so fed up and just saying, effort, you were there,
Speaker 1: you did this, you did that, like just spilling the
Speaker 1: So my guest is is really that you know, everybody
Speaker 1: had been drinking all day, and everybody was pretty sauce,
Speaker 1: and at some point it was a smaller group, right,
Speaker 1: at some point, everybody's kind of like, well then I
Speaker 1: lost track of him, right, and maybe one of the cops, yeah,
Speaker 1: or I'm or maybe or maybe two of the cops
Speaker 1: or something. But that that what happened was, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he did fault. Let's say that Jim was telling
Speaker 1: the truth and that he did fall down and Wheland's
Speaker 1: Pub and hit his head on the stove, and that's
Speaker 1: how he died. At some point, somebody says, well, we
Speaker 1: know up to that point, and we were all doing
Speaker 1: something really illegal, and so to admit that we were
Speaker 1: there makes us culpable for that illegal thing. So we
Speaker 1: just got out of the room, we left, and then
Speaker 1: that's it. And then that explains all this in fighting
Speaker 1: of nobody actually knows what I mean, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: two or three very end, except maybe two or three
Speaker 1: people actually know, but in the whole group as a
Speaker 1: whole doesn't really know what happened next. And so that
Speaker 1: explains this, like, well, I think it was this person
Speaker 1: doing this thing, but really what the truth is is
Speaker 1: that maybe you were so black out drunk or just
Speaker 1: like so slashed that you all you could pay attention
Speaker 1: to is getting yourself out of that situation that you
Speaker 1: realized was bad and you weren't paying attention to anything else.
Speaker 1: And that's it. I can get behind that, because again,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed before, it minimizes the pool of people
Speaker 1: who were involved, and the people who were on the
Speaker 1: outside know a little bit, but not enough to actually
Speaker 1: say the right thing to give it away. Still, here's
Speaker 1: the problem I have with these people is they should
Speaker 1: have discussed this and gotten their stories straight. I mean,
Speaker 1: my god, bonehead should have How many times have we
Speaker 1: been drinking together in years past and we'd all had
Speaker 1: too much to drink and something happened as a body
Speaker 1: and we got to get rid of the bloody But
Speaker 1: and then everybody's stories different because everybody remember he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you remember what so and so did oh, yeah
Speaker 1: he did this right. No, no, no, he did that.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not saying you get together that night
Speaker 1: when you're all hammered and hammer at your story, then
Speaker 1: no pun intend I'm not I'm saying next day when
Speaker 1: you're all sober. But I think that was I think
Speaker 1: that would be. The difficulty, though, is that if there's
Speaker 1: suddenly this giant search the next morning, right away, it
Speaker 1: looks really suspicious that you all come together and have
Speaker 1: that conversation, and if you do it in pairs or
Speaker 1: small groups, it would become a game of telephone. People
Speaker 1: in the front had one version another. The trick, right,
Speaker 1: is that it sounds like the police officers did have
Speaker 1: their story story straight at first. Right. Their story was,
Speaker 1: we didn't see him, but he was sober. We didn't
Speaker 1: do it right, we didn't see him, we don't know
Speaker 1: what happened, but he was sober. And then suddenly somebody
Speaker 1: else said no, he was with them, and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh damn, you forgot to tell the wheeling. This is
Speaker 1: they forgot to tell a lot of people. This is
Speaker 1: the problem is that when you tell, when you tell
Speaker 1: lies that are going to be very easily and quickly unmasked,
Speaker 1: and it was incredible. We're not saying that these people
Speaker 1: were like particularly intelligent. And I guess the last reason
Speaker 1: that I think that this was like a big conspiracy
Speaker 1: is that to this day, any kind of inquiries about
Speaker 1: this with the locals and Strade Valley is met with
Speaker 1: like extreme hostility. Yeah, yeah, how about you just the
Speaker 1: right off right like that? It's far almost you know
Speaker 1: that ninety years later you could go into that town
Speaker 1: and say, hey, do you know anything about this disappearance
Speaker 1: and for people to just swear at you and tell
Speaker 1: you to get out. You know, I think they're going
Speaker 1: about it all wrong. I mean I would have a
Speaker 1: little museum to the whole thing myself. I would open
Speaker 1: it up and I would postcards and key chains, and
Speaker 1: was like, they're gonna like they're gonna put Grandpa in
Speaker 1: jail anymore at this point though. That's the thing, is
Speaker 1: that Joe has got a point this long gone. Who
Speaker 1: gives a crash. Locals communities that are tightened it like
Speaker 1: that and don't like outsiders. They don't care about the
Speaker 1: possibility of making money off the loons that are coming by.
Speaker 1: They just don't want the loons to come by. But
Speaker 1: I just think of about the fun prospects, like if
Speaker 1: you make the museum and then you've got all these
Speaker 1: exhibits and they're sort of in chronological order of the mystery,
Speaker 1: and yet as you go from stage one to two
Speaker 1: to three, to four to five to six, the hell
Speaker 1: contradict each other. Wouldn't that be perfect? So I know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do with all of your thinking sideways
Speaker 1: money is You're going to buy a place in Strade
Speaker 1: Valley and open up, and I will be I will
Speaker 1: be the missing podcaster of Strade Valley. You will be
Speaker 1: found hard and feathered in a bog in a bog
Speaker 1: in a mind check. Okay, do you guys have any
Speaker 1: other theories? That's all I got? Yeah, I mean really,
Speaker 1: I think is really sad. I wish that we knew
Speaker 1: what happened to him. It doesn't really sound like it
Speaker 1: was anyone's faults. Well then Morrissey, I think it is
Speaker 1: was the culprit. But I don't think he intended to
Speaker 1: hurt him out. I mean yeah, my impression is that
Speaker 1: he kind of just you know, like on the shoulder,
Speaker 1: like hey, Bud, like why don't you back off, and
Speaker 1: Larry was just so drunk that he was just like
Speaker 1: whoa loss is balance and tumbled into the stove. Yeah. Probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Probably nobody's real fault. It's if I hadn't meant for
Speaker 1: this silly non drink no no selling liquor on Christmas law,
Speaker 1: everything would have been everything would have been okay, abolished
Speaker 1: that law. Yeah, well, I'm sure it's coming one of
Speaker 1: these days. Two out of three are already down, so
Speaker 1: Christmas is next. It won't be too much longer, probably,
Speaker 1: So there you go. That's our story. If you want
Speaker 1: to see any of the links to some of our research,
Speaker 1: or listen to this episode, or find a list of
Speaker 1: episode it um, or find links to merch or I
Speaker 1: don't know, other stuff that's fun. I guess I don't know,
Speaker 1: you can check out our website. Website is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. If you would like to have your
Speaker 1: name read off at the beginning of an episode like
Speaker 1: this a k A. Suggest one, or send us you know,
Speaker 1: talk to me about how horrible my Irish pronunciation is,
Speaker 1: anything like that, you can email us. Our email address
Speaker 1: is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You can
Speaker 1: connect with us on social media. They should write that
Speaker 1: email in Gaelic though, yeah they should. Yeah, actually would you?
Speaker 1: I don't really know how it would be said? What's subtitles? Yeah? Um.
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Speaker 1: It's like four days early, so it's totally worth it.
Speaker 1: All of that having been said, I think we are
Speaker 1: going to get lost. I'm gonna get it. Get us.
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas. Bye guys,