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Speaker 1: and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't you never know stories
Speaker 1: of things we simply don't know the answer to. Hi. Then,
Speaker 1: welcome to a special short episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe,
Speaker 1: joined as always by Steve and Devin and Um. As
Speaker 1: some of you know, we've had an intern for a
Speaker 1: little while, UM, and we are really confident in his
Speaker 1: abilities as a podcaster at this point, so we decided
Speaker 1: to invite him to this like very short round table
Speaker 1: and UM, hopefully it'll work out and we'll see where
Speaker 1: it goes from here. So do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 1: I'm Justin. How are you doing tonight? St Devon Joe
Speaker 1: doing quiet? Well, you know, it's like he hasn't before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's met us before. He's our intern. Yeah, So welcome
Speaker 1: to Justin. Yeah, so, um, welcome to this round table, Joe.
Speaker 1: It's your episode. Okay, well, yeah, let's let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: This is one that's been bouncing around the internet for
Speaker 1: a while. Um, Curtsey Unsolved Mysteries. Yeah, yeah, Unsolved Mysteries.
Speaker 1: The TV show did do an episode on this one. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the crew of the Casey Nicole. What happened to them?
Speaker 1: So our story begins April eleventh, nineteen, or maybe April tence,
Speaker 1: or maybe April twelve, because I've seen all three dates
Speaker 1: in different accounts, and I decided to go with April
Speaker 1: eleventh because the date makes the most sense when you
Speaker 1: add up the days of the whole year us again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know to four, I can do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So four men boarded the Casey Nicole, which was a
Speaker 1: thirty four foot fishing boat. The four where Nathan and
Speaker 1: Nie Smith, brother, Billy Joe, Ni Smith, his nephew, Keith Wilkes,
Speaker 1: and Franklin Brantley a k A. Frank, who the Nie
Speaker 1: Smiths had known for a long time. All then lived
Speaker 1: in Dairy and Georgia. How old were these guys? Uh?
Speaker 1: See Nathan thirty two, Billy Joe twenty three, Keith eighteen,
Speaker 1: and Frank twenty three. So they most of them had
Speaker 1: been on the sea for a number of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except for Keith. I don't think Keith had spent a
Speaker 1: whole lot of time, you know. Yeah, But what they
Speaker 1: were doing is they were going to go out for
Speaker 1: a seven day fishing trip. And I assumed this was professional,
Speaker 1: not not just for pleasure. Abought the same time at
Speaker 1: a thirty four ft boat. I'm not sure how many
Speaker 1: fish you can hold on something like that. Uh. Five
Speaker 1: days later, April sixteenth nine, Nathan n Smith was found
Speaker 1: floating in a large wooden box about twenty miles east
Speaker 1: of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The others were missing.
Speaker 1: The coast Guard kicked off a massive air and sea
Speaker 1: search with help from local private boat owners and commercial fishermen.
Speaker 1: Casey Nicole was found that night I six, about forty
Speaker 1: five miles off the coast. But all they founded the
Speaker 1: other three men was a life vest in a sleeping
Speaker 1: bag about five miles from where Nathan was rescued. Two
Speaker 1: days later, the search was called off and Billy, Joe, Keith,
Speaker 1: and Frank have have never been seen since. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: so justin you did just about all the research on
Speaker 1: this one, and the cars. This is your maiden podcast
Speaker 1: voyage here. Uh so I I've we've been thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe you should present this mystery. You cool, thought you're ready? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all right, going back to the beginning, Um the
Speaker 1: Casey Nickel left Darien at zero dark thirty on the eleven,
Speaker 1: almost twenty four hours later. Something went wrong with this boat.
Speaker 1: According to news reports at the time, it could have capsized.
Speaker 1: Some Internet sources say it was taking on water. Between
Speaker 1: the news and the internet, I'm not sure which one
Speaker 1: we we can trust here. Flip a coin, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. But it's a thirty or four footboat, so
Speaker 1: capsizing a bit unlikely, doesn't you know. Yeah, although it
Speaker 1: seems like it maybe did. I don't know how the
Speaker 1: hell that happened. Well, if it took on water, it
Speaker 1: could have capsized. So maybe they were about sixty five
Speaker 1: miles off shore. And Nathan said that he got up
Speaker 1: around three thirty four am in the morning, started the
Speaker 1: engine and started driving to somewhere to go fishing. And
Speaker 1: they that's the thing, right, like, when you go fishing,
Speaker 1: out said, you just go out early, Right, it's not
Speaker 1: unusual that somebody would be awake at that time. I
Speaker 1: don't think so that's that's kind of standard, Okay. I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure they're like surfers not suspicious
Speaker 1: that he was awake at that time. Okay, he noticed
Speaker 1: the boat was heavy with maneuvering and it wasn't going
Speaker 1: over the waves. It was kind of plowing through them
Speaker 1: because it was just not maneuvering as well. That's not great,
Speaker 1: not when you're sixty out. Yeah. He woke up his brother,
Speaker 1: Billy Joe, and told him to wake up the others.
Speaker 1: So Billy Joe went to the bow of the boat
Speaker 1: where Franklin and Keith were sleeping, and and noticed that
Speaker 1: there was a foot of water in the cabin and
Speaker 1: between the bunks. It's really good. Well, that would explain
Speaker 1: why it was plowing through the waves instead of going
Speaker 1: over them. It's not so buoyant anymore. Time at this
Speaker 1: point to turn on the billage pumps. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: turned those on and they don't appear to be working.
Speaker 1: So they recently the boat had been pulled out of
Speaker 1: the water for maintenance, some repairs. Maybe those repairs were
Speaker 1: done by a family member charging I don't know, Uh,
Speaker 1: somebody forgot to reconnect the billage pumps. Maybe always plug
Speaker 1: it back in. Yeah, So they go into panic mode.
Speaker 1: They start calling out may Day's because well, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: on the radio or just like yelling. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think the radios under water. Okay, so on the radio,
Speaker 1: got it. This isn't Jaws, you know, they bust the radio.
Speaker 1: The brothers, Nathan, Keith and Frank, they're they're doing a
Speaker 1: bucket line trying to get that water out. Billy is
Speaker 1: not getting any response on the radio. Maybe the radio
Speaker 1: wasn't working. Maybe they're too far out and just just
Speaker 1: nobody around in the warning, so maybe nobody was awake.
Speaker 1: It's possible. And uh, the engine quits, possibly because it's
Speaker 1: taken on water and it's flooded. So now they're losing
Speaker 1: the battle and they go to Plan B, which is
Speaker 1: their life raft, and the life raft sucks. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I would say. The life raft is there to
Speaker 1: save your life, but doesn't seem to be the case.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show before. My extensive
Speaker 1: experience on cruise ships. Um, you know, life draft is
Speaker 1: like your very last chance, right, I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. And then this one it sounds
Speaker 1: like was subpar. Yeah, maybe not in the best condition
Speaker 1: and it only sat to not four. Yeah that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's like Titanic with well, yeah, it's like the water.
Speaker 1: It's like you know when you go to the sporting
Speaker 1: good store and they say they advertise a two man
Speaker 1: raft and it's big enough for one man, and a
Speaker 1: four man is big enough for two. Yeah, I'm sara.
Speaker 1: They bought this in good faith, thinking, hey it says
Speaker 1: four man raft. But they're yeah, they're a or like tense, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get like sleep six people and you're like, I
Speaker 1: can fit three in here exactly. By two they go
Speaker 1: to the raft and two of them are in the boat.
Speaker 1: The other two are kind of hanging on, sitting on
Speaker 1: the on the rim where. Yeah, but they all got
Speaker 1: their desks on. So the sun's coming up now because
Speaker 1: they've been battling this whole deal and getting darkness, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so now they think, well things are getting better.
Speaker 1: We're you know, we're going to get to discovered because
Speaker 1: suns out. But their raft is leaking. Luckily, a hatch
Speaker 1: cover is drifting by, so they grab it and tie
Speaker 1: it to the raft, trying to give it extra floatation.
Speaker 1: Now that the sun is out, they could see the
Speaker 1: casey nickel and it hasn't completely sunk, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of like, what was the other boat thing
Speaker 1: you guys did where it was like the unsinkable boat.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it doesn't doesn't sink all the way.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of submerged. Look creepy. Well, particularly if
Speaker 1: it did capsize and we don't know, you know there's
Speaker 1: an air pocket in there. Yeah, definite capsize. That'll help
Speaker 1: keep it afloat a little bit. Absolutely, I mean part
Speaker 1: of it. Obviously. You don't want to be on the
Speaker 1: deck when it capsizes, but you can maybe climb back
Speaker 1: on because it will still float. Yeah, they see the
Speaker 1: capsize half sunken boat off in the distance now open water.
Speaker 1: Can you tell how far away it is? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's in accounts of this, it seems to me
Speaker 1: it seems like some say close by, some say three
Speaker 1: four miles away. Can you see it if it's three
Speaker 1: or four miles away? I don't know. I think so,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you have an idea that
Speaker 1: it's there. You can see something, but you may not
Speaker 1: have it exactly. Yeah. That also, it seems like a
Speaker 1: long way to drift. It really does. Doesn't mean unless
Speaker 1: the current is really strong, well, unless or if there's
Speaker 1: a lot of wind. Yeah, I guess maybe if like
Speaker 1: the tide is going in or out pretty heavily. Well,
Speaker 1: I think tide effects both obtuslys equally. But if there's
Speaker 1: a lot of wind, then obviously the life raft is
Speaker 1: as a higher profile, it's going to be affected a
Speaker 1: lot more by the one. You have you seen any
Speaker 1: of you've seen pictures of the life raft? Do you
Speaker 1: know what kind of life raft it was? Now, I've
Speaker 1: seen pictures in the web, but I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: they're not just screen caps from the v N Solved
Speaker 1: Mysteries episode, I don't know. I don't think they are.
Speaker 1: I think they are too, yeah, because you know, there
Speaker 1: are those life rafts that they have on like bigger
Speaker 1: ships that are contained in those capsules which you might
Speaker 1: have on a smaller ship as well, that have the
Speaker 1: covering on top of them. They look like big pyramids, right,
Speaker 1: versus the ones that are just like little dinghies. I
Speaker 1: don't think that on this fishing boat that's what they
Speaker 1: were they were springing for. If they were just out
Speaker 1: of repairs, well, I don't think they're like that much
Speaker 1: more expensive. You're making a face that makes me think
Speaker 1: they are Okay, I take it back. Okay, So okay,
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, are somebody's right now? Somebody who's Well,
Speaker 1: here's what Nathan said. It looks like it maybe it
Speaker 1: was maybe three or four miles from us. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of chance we got, but
Speaker 1: at least maybe one of us can make it to
Speaker 1: the boat and get some kind of help. Well that's
Speaker 1: what I've struck out to do. I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: what kind of sense that makes, but I have a
Speaker 1: question here. Wait, so he swam. Yeah. Did they not
Speaker 1: have oars in their life raft? No? You That's why
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It was this like inflatable thing. These little
Speaker 1: life rafts. They come in this like little pod. They're
Speaker 1: not that big there, you know, maybe like a two
Speaker 1: ft three ft wide when you just pull a thing
Speaker 1: and they just inflate out. They don't have oars and
Speaker 1: stuff in them. They have like emergency rations and like
Speaker 1: a little water and of like light. But that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what I imagined was on this ship with something inflatable,
Speaker 1: likely out of a pod, not something that's like an
Speaker 1: old like from Titanic, right with the with the wooden
Speaker 1: oars and yeah, No, I don't think it's like that.
Speaker 1: They don't have oars usually on on things like that,
Speaker 1: because if you have oars, it's like a lot of rooms.
Speaker 1: That I'm wondering this is that if if something popped
Speaker 1: up next to the life raft and they're they're tying
Speaker 1: it to the boat to get extra flotation, it seems
Speaker 1: like there would be other flotsam that they could have
Speaker 1: grabbed and used to paddle. It was flots what about jetsam? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like no, I mean, yeah, maybe, but maybe not. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they were actually three or four miles away from
Speaker 1: the wreckage, there wouldn't talk. Probably. I I just don't
Speaker 1: get it, you know, I mean, I really don't get it.
Speaker 1: Some of these sub parts of this story don't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. And in the same
Speaker 1: boat as Joe no pun intended, I'm asking this question
Speaker 1: pun pun intended. I think it's because they're on a
Speaker 1: rubber life raft and not a wooden one. So once
Speaker 1: this thing deflates or takes on water, they're in the water.
Speaker 1: So go to something that's somewhat floating as opposed to absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and if you can climb up on the
Speaker 1: whole of this boat. You know, then that's a better
Speaker 1: place to be than immersed in the ocean, right, And
Speaker 1: and you kind of think the ship might I guess
Speaker 1: probably there's some thought process of the ship might be
Speaker 1: salvageable parts of it at least, you know. But but
Speaker 1: to your guys point, they don't know how far away
Speaker 1: this thing is. They can't tell. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: when you're walking down the strip in Vegas, that casino
Speaker 1: looks really close and then by time you get there,
Speaker 1: you're dead. Exactly. That happens to me all the time.
Speaker 1: So Nathan sets out and claims that he spent many hours,
Speaker 1: like seven swimming to know he didn't time. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: mean I believe he claimed that he did, but I
Speaker 1: don't believe. I mean, it was probably like thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: He probably probably took some breaks. I think he was
Speaker 1: wearing a PFD. And when you d yeah, lifevest okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And have you have a flotation device? Have you ever
Speaker 1: tried swimming in a in a PFD? Yeah? Backstroke, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one way to do. They teach you a special stroke. Actually,
Speaker 1: how did you like this? Yeah? Okay, she's doing things
Speaker 1: with her hands. Yeah, you know what is. It's like
Speaker 1: that you lay on your back and then you kind
Speaker 1: of like because you don't exert very much energy, and
Speaker 1: you like kind of kick with your feet and then like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't even know how to describe
Speaker 1: this motion. It's kind of a who it dance with
Speaker 1: your arms. It exerts like almost no energy. And since
Speaker 1: you're laying on your back, your heads above the water
Speaker 1: and you get to go, I'm laboring a point. I'm sorry. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're probably right that's what he did. He probably didn't
Speaker 1: do that. He probably was trying to like swear stroke
Speaker 1: or something. And I'm sure he took lots of breaks. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: an hour seems excessive though, doesn't it. It really does.
Speaker 1: We can check his time clock. But yeah, he says
Speaker 1: that it took him seven hours, But when you're doing
Speaker 1: something crazy like that might take longer, something stressful like that.
Speaker 1: He said when he arrived it was just before dark,
Speaker 1: so it depends on when he set out. That could
Speaker 1: have been seven normal. But again this is from him, right, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, why would he lie about that? Well, there's
Speaker 1: you know, who knows. So he spends the night, he
Speaker 1: makes it and he spends the night on the Casey,
Speaker 1: so he climbs up onto the hall and just spends
Speaker 1: his spend, drapes himself over it, and spends the night
Speaker 1: clinging to the hall. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: comfortable sleep Leonardo's style. Yeah, that's when things get a
Speaker 1: little strange though. Uh. He's hanging on and he sees
Speaker 1: a freighter. This is next morning. Yeah, yeah, So he
Speaker 1: hangs on all night and the next morning he sees
Speaker 1: a freighter coming by, and it stops three or four
Speaker 1: times and circles around, and that kind of looks like
Speaker 1: it might be picking up people in my mind. So,
Speaker 1: you know, in the vicinity of where he expects the
Speaker 1: life raft to be exactly that's where he swam from.
Speaker 1: Where But you know, did the currents take them away?
Speaker 1: I mean, already this is his own best judgment. He says.
Speaker 1: It looks like it made four stops, maybe five, and
Speaker 1: each time it would stop in circle, and it was
Speaker 1: in the direction where my mates were, So I figured
Speaker 1: that maybe it had stopped to pick them up. This
Speaker 1: one on for three hours and then the freighter sailed off.
Speaker 1: That seems excessive. You've been on a cruise ship. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how long does it take to talk that stupid thing?
Speaker 1: Fifteen minutes? No, no, no, I was on a ship
Speaker 1: for a long time. It's like fifteen minutes. It's now
Speaker 1: think that cruise ship had to circle before. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing is is ships are much faster than people
Speaker 1: think they are. They can be. I mean they can be.
Speaker 1: You're right, And I guess like, if you've got something
Speaker 1: delicate in the water, you're going to be careful around it. Right.
Speaker 1: If you've got these people who are kind of floating,
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to circle them as fast as
Speaker 1: you possibly can. Yeah, probably not going to do that
Speaker 1: because you might suck them into your engines, your dolphins.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe what they were actually doing is
Speaker 1: they weren't rescuing them. Maybe they were actually just statistic
Speaker 1: and theories. Okay, I'm sorry, they're just trying to suck
Speaker 1: them into their screws. No, we got to wait for theories. Right.
Speaker 1: So a large box floated by Nathan and it popped
Speaker 1: up to the surface, and he thought it was the
Speaker 1: bait box. We're thinking it's a bait box, like a
Speaker 1: wooden box, right, Yeah, So other people say it's an
Speaker 1: engine cover, yeah, you know what it news. He climbed
Speaker 1: onto it and this was his new home. This is
Speaker 1: his life now. Half in the next few days, So
Speaker 1: a few days, I mean then a few days without
Speaker 1: food and water and no sunscreen. He's hurting, So I
Speaker 1: have a question. Actually, So he climbed off of this
Speaker 1: hole which was still flow. It wasn't thinking still right,
Speaker 1: it was. It was in its kind of final resting state.
Speaker 1: It wasn't going, It wasn't going anywhere. So he must
Speaker 1: have assumed that the box would give him a better
Speaker 1: chance of getting to land. You know that people have
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the Jaws in scene when they can kind
Speaker 1: of kick and swim with the little flotation thing as
Speaker 1: opposed to just sitting on Even though he had a
Speaker 1: flotation device on him, he needed more um one word,
Speaker 1: sharks was a small bay box going to do more
Speaker 1: than a flotation. So a wooden box that you're sitting
Speaker 1: inside of, Okay, okay, I can conceptualize that. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: what you know. It sounds really uncomfortable to be in
Speaker 1: a in this box. And that was a sizeable box,
Speaker 1: I mean three or four feet long at least, right,
Speaker 1: But it's got to be more comfortable than clinging to
Speaker 1: an overturned boat the whole. It's got to be a
Speaker 1: more comfortable ride. Still, it's regrettable they didn't happen to
Speaker 1: have like a you know, see, like a a like
Speaker 1: a line from the boat that he could have tied
Speaker 1: the box off too, so he wouldn't be separated from
Speaker 1: the boat. That would have been nice. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: assumed that it was something that he could kind of
Speaker 1: paddle in and move more maneuverable than the whole of
Speaker 1: a sunken chip, or easily sit in and take a nap. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm on board. So his ordeal continued and
Speaker 1: tell Monday until nine am, and he was spotted by
Speaker 1: a passing boat. He was in really bad shape, dehydrated, sunburnt,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you know if you'd taken on any
Speaker 1: sea water that makes you a little crazy. Yeah, probably
Speaker 1: some hypothermia in there too, rag, Yeah, this is seawater.
Speaker 1: So he went to the hospital and you stayed there
Speaker 1: for several days. He reported hearing voices while drifting at
Speaker 1: sea that kept him alive because they were encouraging him.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I mean, what else are you gonna do? Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: As for Billy, Joe, Keith, and Frank, they he assumed
Speaker 1: they were picked up by the freighter, but they disappeared
Speaker 1: and he hadn't heard from them. Were never seen again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not reported that they were. They were rescued, So that's
Speaker 1: kind of strange. That's uh, these guys were picked up
Speaker 1: by a freighter but then never seen again. That's a
Speaker 1: little weird. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing out, but it turns
Speaker 1: out that there's more to the story. Justin thanks for
Speaker 1: your presentation. You did awesome, no problem. Well you're pretty
Speaker 1: good in gold Stars. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah to star
Speaker 1: Yell review. Yeah. So Nathan is back and dry land
Speaker 1: and there's here's where things get a little hinky. Months
Speaker 1: after the accident, the Nathan's sister, a Nita, got a
Speaker 1: phone call from a person speaking Spanish. She couldn't understand
Speaker 1: anything that he said other than her name and her
Speaker 1: phone number. Everything else was unintelligible. Here's a quote from her.
Speaker 1: All this person would keep saying was repeating her phone
Speaker 1: number and saying our name, and that's all. And you know,
Speaker 1: we just kept saying hello, hello, and it just cut off. Unquote.
Speaker 1: That's from Unsolved mysteries. Uh, and around reliable of course, yes,
Speaker 1: Steve's favorite thing. Roughly around the same time, the owner
Speaker 1: of the casey n Cole, whose name was Doug Tyson,
Speaker 1: got a similar call. And this is something I was
Speaker 1: trying to find out by the way I was. I
Speaker 1: was just curious if they had actually towed the casey
Speaker 1: to cold the sword to shore and salvaged it. And uh,
Speaker 1: I did a little I did a little side research.
Speaker 1: I never got that. I never saw anything that said
Speaker 1: that they did, But they must have. You don't just
Speaker 1: leave stuff like that laying out in the ocean where
Speaker 1: it could be a navigation hazard. Um, well, the Coastguard
Speaker 1: would go out and scuttle it. They could. They could
Speaker 1: maybe have scuttled it. I wasn't really sure, so I
Speaker 1: h that's a low priority for him, probably, I yeah.
Speaker 1: I called actually called the local Coastguard station and asked them,
Speaker 1: and they didn't respond. Well. Yeah, I talked to this
Speaker 1: ends and he said, well, I can't really tell you.
Speaker 1: What I'll do is I'll pass it up the chain
Speaker 1: of commands. And it never called back. And then I
Speaker 1: called back a couple of weeks later, and I talked
Speaker 1: to a petty officer who told me that all their
Speaker 1: logs from that far back would have been sent to
Speaker 1: the National Archives and really familiar. Yeah, and and of
Speaker 1: course that was twenty one excuse me, not twenty six
Speaker 1: years ago, so nobody around they would remember it. So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm at luck. Called called a reporter to
Speaker 1: local paper and she didn't know about it either. So
Speaker 1: did you google street view? Yeah? Street you for the
Speaker 1: middle of the ocean? Yeah? I did. Yeah, where we
Speaker 1: get yeah? Yeah? Okay, back to the owner of the
Speaker 1: casey to call. Uh So he got a similar phone
Speaker 1: call from a man speaking Spanish, and again the only
Speaker 1: thing that Tyson could understand was his own name and
Speaker 1: his phone number being spoken to him. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: about six weeks later that they put two and two together.
Speaker 1: Doug Tyson was visiting the niece Smiths and Anita mentioned
Speaker 1: that she's gotten a strange phone call from a guy
Speaker 1: in Spanish speaking Spanish, and that's when Doug and his
Speaker 1: wife remembered his strange phone call magically remembered. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the calls went on. Doug Tyson got two more similar calls,
Speaker 1: and Anita got three more. In nineteen uh on March six,
Speaker 1: Anita received a call in which a man spook one
Speaker 1: sentences in English quote, I am bringing them home unquote,
Speaker 1: and that was he did have accented language, by the way,
Speaker 1: the Spanish accent. That was last phone call. Where'd you
Speaker 1: find that? I found it at? Uh? Uh? Several different
Speaker 1: places actually, uh and and there were there was actually
Speaker 1: a bit of difference, as always between them. I did
Speaker 1: find him and I want it was I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the website, but it was a forum
Speaker 1: and it was hilarious. What one of these one of
Speaker 1: these guys said, which is after hearing about the phone calls,
Speaker 1: he says, well, why didn't they learn Spanish? Are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? Yeah? Why didn't? Yeah? Yeah, you get a
Speaker 1: phone call to you from somebody speaking Spanish. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta go and roll with local community college and start
Speaker 1: learning Spanish because I'm going to totally remember what I
Speaker 1: heard in a language I don't know. Well, now you
Speaker 1: should learn Spanish because the guy might call back. He
Speaker 1: might Yeah, yeah, there's Rosetta Stone. Yeah. As Rosetta said,
Speaker 1: I think that the better thing to do is to
Speaker 1: put just get a tape recorder and tape record and
Speaker 1: if the guy calls, tape record the calls and then
Speaker 1: go find somebody to speak Spanish, that would make more sense. Sense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and learn how to say in Spanish, tell me more
Speaker 1: and then that's it. That's all you need to know.
Speaker 1: So what do you guys think of these phone calls?
Speaker 1: Do you think these were valid or a con artist
Speaker 1: or prank's or even existed? Do you guys think you know, Actually,
Speaker 1: I believe that that the calls happened, um, but personally
Speaker 1: it's possible that they didn't happen. But I mean, prank
Speaker 1: calls happened, wrong numbers happened, It could have been all misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: They could have had nothing to do with the disappearance
Speaker 1: of the crew of the case in the coal. It
Speaker 1: seemed they were all a little connected though since they
Speaker 1: it is, I mean, that's what we talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot, right with the like that's a lot of coincidences.
Speaker 1: It would be a coincidence, it's true. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I guess I don't put a
Speaker 1: lot of stock into them, especially since the only real
Speaker 1: way that we know about them is online forums. That
Speaker 1: that is a big issue, big issue for me. But
Speaker 1: I do. I think they're interesting. That's probably the most
Speaker 1: intriguing part of the whole mystery. Well, it does appear
Speaker 1: though from the unsolved mysteries saying that that the family did,
Speaker 1: or at least they say they received these calls. Let
Speaker 1: me let me try and run with it this way.
Speaker 1: Then somebody calls who English is not their first language.
Speaker 1: So let's say they get the number out of a
Speaker 1: phone book for unrelated reasons, so they are able to
Speaker 1: repeat the phone number that they have just dialed in English,
Speaker 1: and because they're reading it, they can say the name
Speaker 1: in a very but it's obviously accented. They could be saying,
Speaker 1: is this you know the the what is the time
Speaker 1: and the date? What is the time and the date?
Speaker 1: Because you know there's that there used to be that
Speaker 1: phone number that you call and it would say the
Speaker 1: time and the date is But I'm I'm making a
Speaker 1: very blatantly stupid point about out the fact that they
Speaker 1: could have been asking something very generic and innocuous, but
Speaker 1: only had bits that these people who didn't understand a
Speaker 1: relatively thick accent were only able to make out. But again,
Speaker 1: small bits of information cipher. I mean, it's a huge
Speaker 1: coincidence right that the people whose family disappeared in this
Speaker 1: boating accident happened to be the phone number that this
Speaker 1: person who didn't really speak English called. Okay, what town
Speaker 1: did what town? Did this thing? Launch? And Georgia not
Speaker 1: like exactly a large town. But it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: a dozen other people got several phone calls a very
Speaker 1: similar nature but didn't report it because like somebody can
Speaker 1: it could have been that's possible, could be somebody to
Speaker 1: call it up and saying, hey, would you like your
Speaker 1: gutters cleaned? It's certainly possible. But I also do think
Speaker 1: that it is it's hard to just write off as
Speaker 1: it was the wrong number. I'm not in disagreement, but
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to give it that much stock just
Speaker 1: knowing that it's it's it's it's really hard to say,
Speaker 1: because if they were calling them, they're they're calling them
Speaker 1: to either you know, extort money from them, say we
Speaker 1: want money for the return of your loved ones. But
Speaker 1: in that case, why would they stop calling because because
Speaker 1: they died, well, because they died, or because well they
Speaker 1: realized and they must have realized at some point that
Speaker 1: there was a language barrier there, you know, and so
Speaker 1: I need to find myself somebody who can speak English
Speaker 1: to present our extortion demands. And they never really got
Speaker 1: around doing that. So maybe they got bored with the
Speaker 1: whole project and they decided to just kill them. I
Speaker 1: also don't have the sense that that family had a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money. Now, you know, It's not like
Speaker 1: you could be like, well, they're millionaires. Actually I tracked
Speaker 1: down Nathan on on Facebook and on the interwebs, and
Speaker 1: he is he is living uh, you know, he's not
Speaker 1: living high on the hog. Let's just say that. Well,
Speaker 1: here's my other question, though, regardless of their status in
Speaker 1: financial Okay, if if six weeks later he says, hey,
Speaker 1: so it's weird I got this phone call? Why and weird?
Speaker 1: That's weird I got the same phone call. Or hey,
Speaker 1: let's call the phone company and see if they can
Speaker 1: tell me where the phone call came from. Did that
Speaker 1: ever happen? Now? Okay, if you're missing a family member
Speaker 1: and you're thinking this is connected, you might follow it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but on the same token, why didn't they call back? Well,
Speaker 1: does the Nigerian email scammer keep you know, responding to
Speaker 1: you know, so if it was a if the if
Speaker 1: the phone call was real and it was a con man,
Speaker 1: then maybe they just abandoned the con could Yeah like
Speaker 1: our intern more. Yeah, our interns pretty smart. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like he has experienced with this or whatever. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a whole mystery in a nutshell. Does anybody have
Speaker 1: any theory? Of course? Okay, of course all we all
Speaker 1: have theories. Are now we all have pets really ready
Speaker 1: to talk about hit sounds like first, Yeah, I really
Speaker 1: really like my theory. All right, I don't believe these
Speaker 1: guys were possibly doing well. The theory is, this is
Speaker 1: the one I really like, is that they weren't doing
Speaker 1: what they said they were doing, which was fishing. Instead
Speaker 1: they were running. If you're out in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean and you've left a port and then you
Speaker 1: go back home, nobody checked your boat. It's like we
Speaker 1: we didn't catch anything because we didn't have any bait. Whoop.
Speaker 1: See sorry, we've been out here for seven days. But
Speaker 1: old happens to be filled with cocaine. That episode of
Speaker 1: Futuruma where they're out international waters and Vender goes, guess
Speaker 1: what you guys are accessories to? Yeah, exactly. So it's
Speaker 1: very possible that these guys were running some kind of
Speaker 1: drug scam and when the when the whole thing went
Speaker 1: to tear rs, their connection drove up and said, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you're sinking. Uh yeah, it turns out cocaine sinks too,
Speaker 1: so I gotta go and takes off Like it wasn't
Speaker 1: any kind of thing that was nefarious. It was just that,
Speaker 1: like this whole accident actually happens. This happens. But of
Speaker 1: course their friends show their quote unquote drug friends. It's
Speaker 1: always your drugs. The drug friends take the other three guys.
Speaker 1: Um it must I don't know, I mean it could.
Speaker 1: It could be that the drug deal win South. So
Speaker 1: let's say, you know, let's say the eighteen year old
Speaker 1: kid freaks out and shots are fired or knives are throne,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens to see, knives are throne, and
Speaker 1: so somebody, you know, so this happens. Cutlasses are drawn
Speaker 1: and and somebody's quartered and don't look at me like this.
Speaker 1: This stuff happens on the ocean, according to Bobie Dick.
Speaker 1: But of course, my point is is that either a
Speaker 1: drug deal win South is this theory, or they started
Speaker 1: what was the story of we're taking on water, the
Speaker 1: boat is having problems, it's real, was actually happening, but
Speaker 1: the boat that could have saved them when uh yeah, no, dude, later,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I totally believe that people run
Speaker 1: drugs on boats. So yeah, if this was in the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico or Baja California, I'm down with that.
Speaker 1: But over on the Atlantic side, that's a long way down.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, have you been to Miami. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a good point though, because the drugs are
Speaker 1: coming from like Columbia and two points north, And it's
Speaker 1: my only problem with George is not that far north.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's far enough north that it would
Speaker 1: be not suspicious. I mean, like the ports in Miami,
Speaker 1: like even little fishing boats, they're searched. The customs are
Speaker 1: because it is Miami, right, because there are so many
Speaker 1: drugs coming through there, they are way more vigilant than
Speaker 1: if somebody in like backwaters Georgia go out on a
Speaker 1: fishing trip and then comes back. They're not They're definitely
Speaker 1: not going to search that right the long way down
Speaker 1: the coast like pretty far. You're right, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I could I could sort of see a scenario where
Speaker 1: like that, there's like a small parader that's headed from
Speaker 1: say Columbia to New York, you know, and they just
Speaker 1: rendezvous with these this crew of people you know, out
Speaker 1: in the middle of the ocean on their way and
Speaker 1: transfer a cargo. Well, now, if you flip the direction
Speaker 1: that they're going north, I can buy the drug running.
Speaker 1: But if they were going south to Miami, I don't
Speaker 1: really buy it because then they're going to get searched
Speaker 1: to Miami. Yeah. Yeah, but that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I was thinking about. You know, this is popular on
Speaker 1: the web, but this particular theory is but you know,
Speaker 1: there's of course no evidence. And the other thing about
Speaker 1: it is if the drug dealing went south, then you
Speaker 1: would think there'd be some would have been some bullet
Speaker 1: holes in the case, you would think that I willed
Speaker 1: But if what if the Cassie Nicole had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the drugs. It was the freighter that picked
Speaker 1: them up and then realized, hoops, we picked some people
Speaker 1: up and they saw some drugs and we've been like
Speaker 1: smuggling drugs, so we have to kill them now. Of
Speaker 1: course they saw the drugs because they haven't read out
Speaker 1: the deck. Yeah, bags and bags of cocaine, right, the right.
Speaker 1: So that's that explains the disappearance on all these people,
Speaker 1: but also explains the sighting of the freighter exactly right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, and yeah. The problem with this one
Speaker 1: of the courses is why why would you even pick
Speaker 1: people up unless you'd like the idea of rescuing them
Speaker 1: and watching the expressions on their faces, it's telling you
Speaker 1: they're about to be horribly murdered. That seems silly. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's speaking of speaking of horrible people. I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: I have a theory that Billy, Joe, Keith, and Frank
Speaker 1: were rescued by a freighter, but the crew of the
Speaker 1: freighter took them off somewhere and sold them into slavery.
Speaker 1: So they didn't kill them because they saw the drugs
Speaker 1: they were slavers. Yeah, they just thought, well, they were
Speaker 1: necessarily slavers. But maybe they're from a part of the world.
Speaker 1: They're parts of the world where slavery is still a thing,
Speaker 1: a lot of parts of the world where white slavery
Speaker 1: particularly is a thing. Yeah, and so they might have
Speaker 1: just thought it how old and how old were they
Speaker 1: they were young? Yeah, yeah, they were young. Yeah. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a key to manual labor. That's so funny. Actually,
Speaker 1: when you say like slavery, you think strong backs. I
Speaker 1: think like sexual slavery. That that's all I think about too. Therefore,
Speaker 1: sex slaves and therefore males are pretty useless, especially well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's not necessarily true. That's not that's
Speaker 1: like not even close to true. Males young attractive male
Speaker 1: sex slaves, and I've seen pictures and they're not like
Speaker 1: the worst looking guys. There are parts of the world
Speaker 1: where that's like high demands. Okay, I'm on board with
Speaker 1: the slavery thing, so they probably work. I'm not pro
Speaker 1: slavery the theory. Yeah, yeah. This is the only problem
Speaker 1: with this is that, you know, if they've been dragged
Speaker 1: aboard the boat, you know and everything, you would think
Speaker 1: that they would have said, hey, our friend Nathan is
Speaker 1: right over there, it's four miles away, can we go
Speaker 1: get them. They didn't do that unless it was very
Speaker 1: apparent what was happening to them. Yeah, they would have
Speaker 1: had to immediately say, hey, good to me, Sure we're
Speaker 1: gonna take you off. To a slave market, um and
Speaker 1: and sell you into slavery. And then then they would
Speaker 1: think better just keep quiet about Nathan, because if they
Speaker 1: heard about Nathan, they'd been thinking, hey, cool, another slave.
Speaker 1: They might not even known their demise. They might have
Speaker 1: just been held at gunpoint and being treated aggressively. Or
Speaker 1: they don't bring up Yeah they don't. They don't talk
Speaker 1: about Nathan. But that is the thing. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that is mysterious about this whole thing is
Speaker 1: that if a freighter came by, and if a freder
Speaker 1: picked up those three, why didn't the freighter come for Nathan.
Speaker 1: I don't believe the freighter was there to pick them up.
Speaker 1: I think the freighter could have been a research ship
Speaker 1: or just something totally unrelated and you know, watching the
Speaker 1: dolphins or you know, whale tour and just half off
Speaker 1: on group on, and Nathan just had no idea. He
Speaker 1: just whom it was picking up his friends. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you know. I had a similar thought, which is that
Speaker 1: it was more than one freighter. Oh yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say that's it is. It's true that that's
Speaker 1: a suspicious number of like circles for the freighter to
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're all three in the same location,
Speaker 1: you just make the one stop. And and the other
Speaker 1: thing is if they if they have been separated, then
Speaker 1: what I would think that you would launch your tender
Speaker 1: and send a tender to go pick them up and
Speaker 1: bring them back. You have to be in a certain
Speaker 1: depth of water tender. And actually there are a lot
Speaker 1: of um again, cruise ships. Sorry, but the cruise ships
Speaker 1: don't carry their tenders. They don't know they're where they're
Speaker 1: in the port, so they go from port to ship
Speaker 1: to ports. So the only ship they would have to
Speaker 1: launch would be their life rafts, and you obviously don't
Speaker 1: do that because there's no way to get those back
Speaker 1: on board. So but it does seem like a lot
Speaker 1: of trips. I mean, you know, five or six circles
Speaker 1: to make to pick up three guys who are presumably
Speaker 1: in about the same place. That seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: That does seem like a lot. But yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: I was thinking that perhaps you know, Nathan was he
Speaker 1: was he'd been to a lot and he was exhausted
Speaker 1: after a swim. He's already I'm sure got dehydration, hypothermia.
Speaker 1: So he and he spent a pretty much sleepless night
Speaker 1: on the on the on the boat, and so he
Speaker 1: might have just been drifting in and out, you know,
Speaker 1: so he wakes up, he's a fraider, wakes up, he's
Speaker 1: another freighter, and that's several miles away, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: look ill kind of like and I kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot like yeah, a lot of like, so, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a freighter, here's a freighter. So you know that
Speaker 1: it might have just been several freighters. He wouldn't even
Speaker 1: really have to be drifting in and out. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could just be that it was just far enough
Speaker 1: on the horizon that you know, he thought it was circling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's going out of you and back into view.
Speaker 1: But it was really just like new Ones every time. Right.
Speaker 1: It's also entirely possible that he's just hallucinating the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that he was sunburned to hydrated,
Speaker 1: and God helped me. If he made the stupid choice
Speaker 1: of deciding to drink a little sea water headed hard
Speaker 1: that it's very hard to resist, I understand, but it
Speaker 1: crazy things to your brain. That is an instant recipe
Speaker 1: for hallucinations. So he could have just been thinking about
Speaker 1: his friends and to sigh and and in his little,
Speaker 1: you know, sun baked brain saw ships in the distance
Speaker 1: because ships are what you're hoping for. Ye, that's true.
Speaker 1: There is one more idea I came up with for Nathan.
Speaker 1: It's sort of my specialty in its murder murder foul it.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe he murdered everybody. I'm not saying he did,
Speaker 1: just saying that maybe somebody borrowed his fishing lure didn't
Speaker 1: give it back. Maybe the drug deal went down wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't think he would have killed his brother and everybody.
Speaker 1: But when you cover murder, you see people do the
Speaker 1: most weird things and things that you would ever expect.
Speaker 1: So is it that he murdered them all or things
Speaker 1: went south and that you know, through the commission of
Speaker 1: the murder the boat suffered damage and then well, I
Speaker 1: guess for me, the murder idea does help to explain
Speaker 1: these phone calls to right that it may not be
Speaker 1: that the phone calls were actually placed, but that people
Speaker 1: close to Nathan had motivation to say that the phone
Speaker 1: calls were made because they were trying to cover for him.
Speaker 1: I think that if I were in Nathan's position, I
Speaker 1: would just want to let the matter die rather than
Speaker 1: keep it alive. But uh yeah, that the problem I
Speaker 1: have with the murder theory, and there's people who's who've
Speaker 1: mentioned that, is that it's easy enough to imagine killing
Speaker 1: people and throwing their bodies overboard, But then how does
Speaker 1: he capsize the thirty four foot vote? How do you
Speaker 1: go about doing that? Or why would he because that's
Speaker 1: his ticket home. Yeah, that's true, that's exactly true too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he could have very easily reversed billage pump. Let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say he could have throws him overboard. He's like,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta scuttle this boat. They have se
Speaker 1: cos you know too. Yeah, next question, Sorry not to
Speaker 1: interrupt the next question. Why not just say the boat
Speaker 1: capsized and sunk, and here I am safe on this
Speaker 1: happy little vessel that is rubber, right. I mean, like
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the raft was bad, which would drive him
Speaker 1: back to the boat, right, Yeah, But the raft would
Speaker 1: have to actually be bad then, well, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing, wouldn't everybody he says, Nathan says that everybody
Speaker 1: on the raft the other threek, We're all no, no, Nathan,
Speaker 1: don't leave us. We gotta stay together. But and he
Speaker 1: was like, no, I'm going to go get help. But
Speaker 1: we don't really know what happened. I mean, he might
Speaker 1: have said, screw all, y'all, the rats got a leak.
Speaker 1: I'm leaving. I'm at it. You're based on truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he could have maybe not a outright murder, but
Speaker 1: a neglect or abandonment. Yea. Well, and I mean Nathan's favor,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean the other people also had the
Speaker 1: option of leaving the leaky raft and going back to
Speaker 1: the to the hull of the Casey Nicole. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did if it was big enough. Rows. It's hard to decide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there's a big battle and they were all,
Speaker 1: like you, clawing each other's eyes out. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hate and I hate. I shouldn't even say stuff
Speaker 1: like that because I'm sure it's not true. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure Nathan didn't do anything like that, but maybe he did.
Speaker 1: Our intern seems to think so. Yeah. I think the
Speaker 1: whole murder thing or whatever thing that you know, probably
Speaker 1: it's just the internet. Yeah, I mean I think it's bunk.
Speaker 1: I think nothing against you justin our intern, But you've
Speaker 1: been doing this for a less time than we have,
Speaker 1: so I can understand how you would get, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up in this, uh you know, kind
Speaker 1: of Internet conspiracy theory stuff. So I I but I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you bringing it to the table. It's it's good.
Speaker 1: It's it's good. Don't worry a kid, you're learning. Well.
Speaker 1: This concludes our investigation. As always, we solved the hell
Speaker 1: out of it. Um. So anyway, UM, if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more, go to our website
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways podcast dot com where you can listen to episodes.
Speaker 1: We'll have links out there for you guys do to
Speaker 1: go to, and you can, of course the complimentary comments.
Speaker 1: We have a bot that filters out nasty comments. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's about it, you guys. Last thoughts. No, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to like, thank justin our intern. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think you did a really good job on this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I you know, the reason that we took you
Speaker 1: on as an intern was because we know you were
Speaker 1: involved with this like other podcasts that I guess also
Speaker 1: had something to do with Unsolved Mystery, So we knew
Speaker 1: that you were going to be good fit. But we're
Speaker 1: We're really happy to see that you were good fit
Speaker 1: in this roundtable format and you really did a good
Speaker 1: job with the script, so thank you for that. And
Speaker 1: we're just kind of hoping I guess that, Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, I don't know, like, how are
Speaker 1: you feeling about this podcast versus like whatever the other
Speaker 1: project you were doing was before. I'm loving this. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this opportunity. I don't think I
Speaker 1: was I was able to do all these things before. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. So that's good. So I guess you can
Speaker 1: we'll continue with us, and you know, I guess that
Speaker 1: that other like generational question thing that was happening before.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you'll just um continue with Team Sideways and we'll
Speaker 1: be good to go. Excellent, awesome, Thanks, So do you
Speaker 1: do you want any help writing? Your Dear John Email