Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Joe. I've got a new podcast
Speaker 1: project for you that I'm doing with my friend Vincent Alas.
Speaker 1: There's no Steve, no Devin, so this is not Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: It's a new podcast called The Shocking Details. Check out
Speaker 1: our website at dub dub dub the Shocking Details dot com,
Speaker 1: and of course we're on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and
Speaker 1: everywhere else. But I wanted to say this. We were
Speaker 1: messing around with some different audio gear for this one
Speaker 1: and the sound quality isn't quite the best, but rest
Speaker 1: assured in the future episodes will sound a lot better.
Speaker 1: So enjoy from Thinking Sideways podcast. I'm yes, that is correct, Joe.
Speaker 1: I'm here on the banks the fugeit sound where a
Speaker 1: mystery is unfolding tonight after numer Agency each Side landing
Speaker 1: software air presario and Microsoft co founder Bill Gates has
Speaker 1: been reported missing, and things only get stranger from there. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Mr Gates was aboard his lear Jet returning from a
Speaker 1: conference in British Columbia, surrounded by business associates, when he
Speaker 1: excused himself to use the plane's restaurant. A few minutes later,
Speaker 1: his personal assistant went to check on him and found
Speaker 1: that he was not in the washroom at the back
Speaker 1: of the airplane, nor was he anywhere aboard the craft.
Speaker 1: A massive search is underway at this time, but as
Speaker 1: speculations and rumors swirl, authorities admit they are no closer
Speaker 1: to locating the billionaires whereabouts. So imagine that one day
Speaker 1: you pick up the paper and it tells you that
Speaker 1: somebody really rich and famous has just disappeared, say Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Bill Gates didn't just disappear while
Speaker 1: he was on his way to the quickie marter for
Speaker 1: a pack of smokes like most people do now. He
Speaker 1: actually vanished, as you heard, from his corporate lear jet
Speaker 1: in mid flight, and nobody else in the plane even
Speaker 1: saw it or heard it happened. I mean, that sounds impossible,
Speaker 1: it sure does, But something like this actually did happen.
Speaker 1: Somebody vanished from his corporate jet about ninety years ago.
Speaker 1: Alfred Lowenstein was one of the richest guys in the
Speaker 1: world at this time, and he had to relieve himself.
Speaker 1: And this is he rises from his seat and he
Speaker 1: walked back to the back of the plane where the
Speaker 1: restroom was housed, and he passes his business associate Arthur Hodges.
Speaker 1: He saw him lumber towards the back to the rear
Speaker 1: of the craft the English Channel, shooting by underneath him.
Speaker 1: His secretaries and his loyal valet back, Fred Baxter, they
Speaker 1: all see him, they all see him go. But just
Speaker 1: like that, Alfred Lowenstein, financier, innovader, philanthropist and one very
Speaker 1: rich fellow, was gone, just like that bombast And this
Speaker 1: was on a warm July night over the English Channel. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't return. After ten or fifteen minutes, Mr Baxter,
Speaker 1: the valet, wants to check on his employer, Mr Lowenstein.
Speaker 1: He found that the head was empty. There was quite
Speaker 1: literally not any sign of Lowenstein aboard this plane, which
Speaker 1: was a focused seven tri motor, not a very huge plane. Frankly,
Speaker 1: Baxter made his way to the cockpit and handed a
Speaker 1: note to the pilot telling him that Mr Lowenstein had disappeared.
Speaker 1: That's the impossible had happened. He had vanished somehow off
Speaker 1: of a plane. So let's back up, who vanished? Who
Speaker 1: was Alfred Lollenstein? What in his biography could have left
Speaker 1: so many theories in the wake of his vanishing. Well.
Speaker 1: Mr Lowenstein was born in Brussels, in eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: but nineteen fourteen he established a successful bank and made
Speaker 1: extensive investments in electric power and artificial silk, which were
Speaker 1: two new and very growing industries at that time. In
Speaker 1: nineteen six he founded International Holdings and Investments Limited, which
Speaker 1: was kind of almost a venture capital company. Raised large
Speaker 1: amounts of money from investors who wanted to climb on
Speaker 1: board the Lowenstein money making train, so at the time
Speaker 1: of his death, lonstein And was one of the richest
Speaker 1: men in the world. In nineteen eight he married Madeline
Speaker 1: the Zone was from a prominent Belgian family. She was beautiful, elegant, sophisticated,
Speaker 1: but reportedly not very warm. We're emotional. The marriage wasn't passionate,
Speaker 1: but Alfred and Madeleine made the most of their arrangement.
Speaker 1: For Alfred a trophy wife and a male heir, and
Speaker 1: for Madeline stability and you know, more money than she
Speaker 1: could have never dreamed. Lots and lots of money doesn't hurt.
Speaker 1: May not have been the stuff of romance novels, but
Speaker 1: I don't think either had much to complain about. Reportedly
Speaker 1: actually got along quite well. But back to our plane
Speaker 1: ride when Mr Baxter, the valet looked in the head.
Speaker 1: As I said, lon Stein wasn't there, which was strange.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere else he could have been. The plane is
Speaker 1: essentially divided into four sections, a cockpit, passenger compartment, the head,
Speaker 1: which is also where the entrance to the plane is
Speaker 1: the entry door, and beyond that the cargo area, which
Speaker 1: cannot be accessed from inside the plane. So there was
Speaker 1: literally nowhere he could have gone. And so when Baxter
Speaker 1: found the empty head, he went forward, as I said,
Speaker 1: and handed a note to the pilot, Donald Drew, saying
Speaker 1: he had disappeared. Now at this point, the aircraft is
Speaker 1: still over the English Channel, about five miles north of Dunkirk, France.
Speaker 1: There remains speculation as to exactly why Drew chose to
Speaker 1: land the plane on a beach versus putting it down
Speaker 1: at the nearest airfield. If he explained himself when it happened,
Speaker 1: that explanation has been lost to time now. The beach
Speaker 1: at this time was under the control of the French military,
Speaker 1: and they, of course, when they noticed a strange airplane
Speaker 1: sitting down on their beach, they went out there with
Speaker 1: some questions. The when they were apprized of what had happened.
Speaker 1: They instructed the crew too fly to the nearest airfield
Speaker 1: and phoned the police. Uh And when they did this,
Speaker 1: they offered a fairly simple explanation for what they thought
Speaker 1: had happened. The pilot and the co pilot both sold
Speaker 1: the police that the exit door of the air plan
Speaker 1: open fairly easily, and that they believed that perhaps Alfred
Speaker 1: Lowenstein had bumped against the door. The door flew open
Speaker 1: and loen Stein fell out of the plane. They eventually
Speaker 1: recovered the body after about three weeks, and it only
Speaker 1: led to more questions than answers, and it was an
Speaker 1: unrecognizable corpse, badly decomposed. Fisherman found it, and when they
Speaker 1: found him, he was wearing Lonstein's watch, lowen Stein's gets
Speaker 1: me to his silk underwear, his socks and his shoes
Speaker 1: and the rest of his clothes he was wearing were
Speaker 1: never found. Lowenstein was wearing shoes, but then somehow his
Speaker 1: pants came off. That's an odd one. I don't quite
Speaker 1: get that one. And maybe the fisherman took the pants.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But a private autopsy was done at
Speaker 1: the request of Lonstein's wife, Madeline. He was found to
Speaker 1: have a crack skull and several broken bones, which is
Speaker 1: not a consistent with a long four thousand foot fall
Speaker 1: into the English Channel from an airplane. Doctors concluded that
Speaker 1: he had died from the fall and nowise. They found
Speaker 1: nothing abnormal. There was no poison in his system, he
Speaker 1: had no big medical issues, there was no indication of
Speaker 1: foul play, no defensive wounds Madeleine had Alfred buried in
Speaker 1: her family's cemetery in an unmarked grave. She also declined
Speaker 1: to attend his funeral, but the case it wound down
Speaker 1: eventually in the press. Eventually, curiosity about his death was
Speaker 1: minimal from officials to say the least part of which
Speaker 1: being that he died outside of any official jurisdiction. That's right,
Speaker 1: he was over the English Channel and with that he
Speaker 1: was gone again. So another mystery for us to solve.
Speaker 1: But we have. There's various series. Could have been suicide,
Speaker 1: could have been an accidental death, as a pilot and
Speaker 1: co pilot thought, and some people even thought perhaps murder,
Speaker 1: And there was even some discussion of perhaps an or
Speaker 1: express sort of murder scenario where everybody on the plane
Speaker 1: took part in the killing. I like the theory that
Speaker 1: maybe he tried to disappear. It could be that, And
Speaker 1: maybe he faked his own debt. It's that so he
Speaker 1: could skip town. Yeah, that's that's a viable theory. Onso,
Speaker 1: But go back to the beginning here. Let's go bring
Speaker 1: him out a few more details here. July four, Lowenstein
Speaker 1: and his entourage left the Croydon Airfield in the south
Speaker 1: of London. It was apparently the number one aerodrome in
Speaker 1: England at the time. Yeah, So they take off about
Speaker 1: six pm and the plane was to The plan was
Speaker 1: to fly to Brussels, about two hundred miles east on
Speaker 1: Lowenstein's private airplane. As you informed us, that's a Belgian
Speaker 1: made Folker seven trimotor. Yeah, a fun little plane. It
Speaker 1: was capable of cruising out of breath ticking one six
Speaker 1: miles an hour. So they should have been about a
Speaker 1: two hour flight, assuming the headwinds or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The weather was good. Sunset at Dunkirk was about nine
Speaker 1: oh seven pm, so it was a daylight flight. So
Speaker 1: it's also talking about who's on there. Yeah, the suspects that, yeah,
Speaker 1: our possible murder suspect, witnesses or what there are some
Speaker 1: people on the plane. There was Donald Drew who was
Speaker 1: the pilot, Robert Little who was a co pilot, and mechanic,
Speaker 1: Fred Baxter that was Lowenstein's valet, Arthur Hodgson who was
Speaker 1: a secretary and business associate, Eileen Clark who was a stenographer,
Speaker 1: and Paula Biddellon who was also a stenographer. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Also he actually Lowenstein liked to travel with a couple
Speaker 1: of stenographers because he was a very very energetic, busy guy,
Speaker 1: and he was constantly dictating memos and letters, and so
Speaker 1: having two stenographers there to bounce back and forth between
Speaker 1: apparently was his just standard way of doing business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons he got so rich. It's
Speaker 1: the guy was just so energetic. But it should be
Speaker 1: noted that by this point in his life he had
Speaker 1: developed a few health problems. He was a workaholic and
Speaker 1: a stressful job. He had apparently a very high blood
Speaker 1: pressure and yes, it had some recent lapses which may
Speaker 1: have been related to the stress and perhaps the high
Speaker 1: blood pressure. He had some absent mindedness, which included one
Speaker 1: incident where he nearly walked into the propeller of his plane.
Speaker 1: That's that would be the Fockers seven trimotor nearly walked
Speaker 1: into it. So I mean that would maybe lead to
Speaker 1: the theoretical explanation that it could be an accident that
Speaker 1: he just sort of missr mcgout out the back of
Speaker 1: the plane. Yeah, he could have like mistaken the door
Speaker 1: of the head for the for the door of the
Speaker 1: exit door of the plane. And it would have been
Speaker 1: dark at this time. No, it would have been light still,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how light it was inside that airplane,
Speaker 1: of course, And that has been that has been proposed
Speaker 1: as a as a theorious that perhaps he mistook one
Speaker 1: door for the other. But I have a problem with that,
Speaker 1: which is this um the way it worked is is
Speaker 1: to say, wait, they didn't have a separate door. There
Speaker 1: was a door between the passenger compartment and the little
Speaker 1: compartment of the back that had the entry fourier and
Speaker 1: that had the head, and there was a door between
Speaker 1: that and that door doubled as the door to the head.
Speaker 1: So when that door was on, that door was open,
Speaker 1: that the head was closed. And when that door and
Speaker 1: now and people are boarding and deboarding the plane and
Speaker 1: in flight, if you needed to use the head, then
Speaker 1: you just went back and shut that door. Between the
Speaker 1: main cabin and that little fourier and use the head.
Speaker 1: The head at that point has no door on it.
Speaker 1: It's open. So if you walk back into that little
Speaker 1: foyer and close the door between it and the main
Speaker 1: passenger cabin, then then there was no chance of mistaking
Speaker 1: the head door for the exit door, because the head
Speaker 1: would have no door on it. He could look in
Speaker 1: there and see a toilet. Yeah. Well, and then also
Speaker 1: the police attempted to open the door mid flight on
Speaker 1: a similar aircraft. Well, yeah, this is doing. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: tried at cruising speed, which I said was about a
Speaker 1: hundred and six miles an hour, and they tried to
Speaker 1: force the door open and they found that well, it
Speaker 1: didn't want to open. I mean, just try opening your
Speaker 1: car door. It's on the freeway sixty miles an hour
Speaker 1: and see what you know, it's not easy, right, makes
Speaker 1: sense and its perfectly imagine that really double the speed.
Speaker 1: So so the whole idea that he fell out of
Speaker 1: the plane seems a little silly to me. Refresh my memory.
Speaker 1: When the plane landed, did they find this door open
Speaker 1: or closed? Closed? It was closed? Yeah, shut, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: nothing nothing seriously wrong. There There was one theory that
Speaker 1: one person put out is that is that perhaps the
Speaker 1: pilot and the co pilot that inspired to murder Lewinstein,
Speaker 1: and they placed the door that was faulty, that didn't
Speaker 1: latch correctly on the in the entry to the plane
Speaker 1: landed on the beach, so that one of them could
Speaker 1: hop hop out of the plane and pull that door
Speaker 1: off the plane and the swap it with the door
Speaker 1: to the luggage compartment, which was an identical sized door
Speaker 1: which worked correctly. And that's one ding I find that
Speaker 1: a little hard to believe because even if the door
Speaker 1: didn't latch correctly, it still would not have come open easily. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now we're getting into murder. If these guys wanted
Speaker 1: to kill him, what why would they do that? Why
Speaker 1: would the pilot kill him? Well, I know, and well
Speaker 1: for one thing for it of course, you know, being
Speaker 1: a highly successful millionaire, he's obviously screwed some people in
Speaker 1: the past, and so he had a few enemies in
Speaker 1: that respect. It could have been a hit as somebody
Speaker 1: paid the pilot in the co pilot to murder him
Speaker 1: as a possibility, and uh, and and the possibilities of
Speaker 1: suicide and murder kind of mixed together here because in
Speaker 1: spring and summer an anonymous document was being circulated financial
Speaker 1: circles in Europe which accused Lowenstein of quite a few
Speaker 1: financial crimes in the course of building his little empire.
Speaker 1: And this actually caused a big hit on his holding
Speaker 1: company's stock. It did plummet, and so on paper at
Speaker 1: least his fortune did did actually go down quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and people involved in business dealings with Lowenstein began to
Speaker 1: see him as a liability. Papers reported he'd been turned
Speaker 1: down for a million dollar loan, so apparently it was
Speaker 1: maybe a little hard up for for walking around cash
Speaker 1: and uh and so is it possible that his financial
Speaker 1: part was about to fall apart and the pressure got
Speaker 1: to be too mus just would explain the suicide thing.
Speaker 1: But also he had business partners and is holding company.
Speaker 1: This is where murder comes in. If they saw him
Speaker 1: as more of a liability than an asset at this
Speaker 1: point in time, then perhaps they thought they should just
Speaker 1: get him out of the way, and then they could
Speaker 1: just say, well, he's gone, no harm, no foul, let's
Speaker 1: go back to business as usual. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: from part of the bad puneet that that looks good,
Speaker 1: But Yeah, when you really start thinking about it, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that holds up murder. If it's suicide,
Speaker 1: how's he get out of the plane? Which I had
Speaker 1: to open the door and couldn't do it, that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was in his fifties. I'm not sure what kind
Speaker 1: of shape he was in, but it would have been
Speaker 1: pretty difficult to force the door open far enough to
Speaker 1: to get out of the plane. I mean maybe he
Speaker 1: could have somehow forced it and squeezed through it. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe. And then in terms of murder,
Speaker 1: there has to be I mean, Joe, there has to
Speaker 1: be an easier way to kill a guy then, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, tiny space with six witnesses, are four other
Speaker 1: witnesses whoever was involved. Yeah, well there's got to be
Speaker 1: I mean I would think there's poisoning or maybe run
Speaker 1: him over with the car. I mean, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways to kill somebody, and it looked like a
Speaker 1: random mugging on the streets of London. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: just not a very elegant way to go to that murder. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. And but there's a there's one
Speaker 1: guy who was actually probably more than anybody else researched
Speaker 1: this case. And that the guy's name is William Norris,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book called The Man Who Felt
Speaker 1: from the Sky, which was published in seven and he
Speaker 1: is the foremost proponent of the murder theory. He believes
Speaker 1: that Pilot Drew and Copilot Little were hired by Lowenstein's
Speaker 1: business partners to kill him. Uh. Some other possible suspects
Speaker 1: might include his wife or some of his enemies. As
Speaker 1: I said, I don't think that his wife really is
Speaker 1: a viable suspect personally. So why his partners wanted to
Speaker 1: kill him? As I already mentioned, there was that anonymous
Speaker 1: document that was the rounds, So they wanted to They
Speaker 1: wanted to perhaps avoid being drug under by him if
Speaker 1: he did wind up going down for a bunch of
Speaker 1: financial crimes, which seems like a reasonable mode of Again,
Speaker 1: it would be there's easier ways to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and of course you know, in a sense,
Speaker 1: the other problem I have with this theory is that
Speaker 1: when he when the word came that Lowes Stein had disappeared,
Speaker 1: when I hit the news, stocks and his company dropped
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So these guys, actually, these guys actually
Speaker 1: lost money, his partners lost money when he disappeared. And
Speaker 1: then when you know, if you were if you were
Speaker 1: to kill Ellen Musk, yeah, what happens to SpaceX? Yeah,
Speaker 1: stock would probably follow great money making friends indubably would fall.
Speaker 1: Did I just say indubitably? Oh my god? Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think they really would have done more damage to themselves
Speaker 1: by killing him. But again, I don't know how strong
Speaker 1: the case for financial malfeasance was against Lonstein. Either you
Speaker 1: have any idea who distributed this document, this anonymous document.
Speaker 1: I think the name eventually did come out, and I
Speaker 1: think I was. I think I messed up and didn't
Speaker 1: note it in my notes share damn it. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, doesn't I think we know who it was,
Speaker 1: and it was maybe considered a suspect um. I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I mean I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And I think that if you if you really want
Speaker 1: to murder him, if you got that big of a
Speaker 1: grudge against him, maybe this is just me in my mindset,
Speaker 1: I would I would be thinking I wouldn't telegraph my
Speaker 1: motive to everybody by by you know, panning this anonymous
Speaker 1: letter and then killing him when by the way, when
Speaker 1: when eventually your name is going to be linked to
Speaker 1: the letter and he'll be a prime suspect. Maybe the
Speaker 1: idea was to knock him out of his position of
Speaker 1: power with the letter, and when that failed, date crafted
Speaker 1: that could have been. That could have been, I suppose so.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the idea was to just like black in
Speaker 1: his name enough so that when he disappeared, people instead
Speaker 1: of being shocked and just made it just be kind
Speaker 1: of relieved. Maybe that was the idea. I don't know.
Speaker 1: All these plans are yeah there then it is rather elaborate.
Speaker 1: But but William Norris, the author did some extensive research.
Speaker 1: As I said, he did find that both Drew the
Speaker 1: pilot and Little the co pilot, after that flight lived
Speaker 1: well beyond their means for quite a long time. And
Speaker 1: as for the valet, the secretary of the stenographer as well,
Speaker 1: if they didn't participate in the murder, they must have
Speaker 1: been at least paid off in under this theory, or
Speaker 1: maybe made to disappear. And actually Arthur Hodged and the
Speaker 1: secretary and the Tustonographers actually do vanish from history after
Speaker 1: this point, so maybe they were murdered, done away with Baxter.
Speaker 1: But Mr Baxter The Valet, on the other hand, did
Speaker 1: not vanished. He was hired by lowen Stein's son, Bobby Lowenstein,
Speaker 1: but he did die several years later, about four years later,
Speaker 1: I think, from an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound well
Speaker 1: made with Bobby Lowenstein's revolver. By the way, all the
Speaker 1: sketchy this is so, it's so weird, how like there's
Speaker 1: there's people disappearing and suicides. Once it seems like there's
Speaker 1: some there's something to it, there's something sketchy about this.
Speaker 1: Somebody vanishes and the suicide. Of course, suppose years later.
Speaker 1: One of the theories that I have, and I'm maybe
Speaker 1: jumping ahead of myself here, is that if you're thinking
Speaker 1: that perhaps backs through the Valet was murdered and made
Speaker 1: to look like a suicide, maybe he found out something
Speaker 1: he wasn't supposed to know. Maybe he found out that
Speaker 1: Lowenstein had disappeared, was living somewhere else under a different name,
Speaker 1: and once that, once that, once he found that out,
Speaker 1: he had to be gotten rid of. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, if we're gonna get onto that theory,
Speaker 1: I favor in general, much more pedestrian explanations of things
Speaker 1: like this, Yeah, I mean to you. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the thing that kind of makes the sense, in most sense,
Speaker 1: is that he pays off the people on the airplane,
Speaker 1: lands the airplane in France, as you would say, beats
Speaker 1: feet out of there. Yeah. The least comment they said,
Speaker 1: we lost him. Yeah, and he fell out of the plane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like he's in a car headed for Belgium, headed
Speaker 1: for Russia, heading for wherever he wants to go. He
Speaker 1: could have even actually he could have even not told
Speaker 1: most of the people on the plane. He could have
Speaker 1: just told the pilot say here's what i'm gonna do,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna pay, or maybe he told both pilot
Speaker 1: and co pilot and paid them off handsomely and said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to go into back and and well,
Speaker 1: actually thinking about it, let me think here. So I
Speaker 1: have had this thought that perhaps he hadn't had that
Speaker 1: plane that long, perhaps he bought it for a reason,
Speaker 1: and that and that is that from the from the
Speaker 1: head or or from the four eight compartment, perhaps he
Speaker 1: could have installed a hidden door. So if he wants
Speaker 1: to fake his own disappearance and death, so he's got
Speaker 1: his plan all prepped and everything he goes back. He's
Speaker 1: already he's already cleared the pilot, and he said landing
Speaker 1: on the speech, and and so then he goes to
Speaker 1: the head, but goes and heights with the luggage instead.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he touches down the beach, then
Speaker 1: he gets out the luggist compartment door and lace flat
Speaker 1: and the pilot of course under instructions. You know, mosy's
Speaker 1: down the beach. Aways taxis down the beach, and then
Speaker 1: lon Stein picks himself up and walks across the beach.
Speaker 1: At this point, he's far enough in the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror he just looks like some random dude walking down
Speaker 1: the beach. So he walks across the beach and there's
Speaker 1: a road right there off the beach where he's got
Speaker 1: perhaps hypothetically somebody weighing in a car to pick him up.
Speaker 1: I think, what's I think. What's challenging about the disappearance,
Speaker 1: all the disappearance theories for me, is that we don't
Speaker 1: know enough about lon Stein's finances. We don't you know,
Speaker 1: did he have some money scrolled away? Did you have
Speaker 1: a million bucks in a Swiss bank account that we
Speaker 1: don't know about? Well, you know this is again me
Speaker 1: and my mindset. If I were saying anybody stinking rich,
Speaker 1: I see, if I were Bill Gates or anybody, I
Speaker 1: would have say five ten million bucks in just cash,
Speaker 1: you know, just scrolled away in various hiding places. I
Speaker 1: would have some gold, I would have all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have all my money just in in stocks
Speaker 1: and bonds and things like that. I'd want to have
Speaker 1: some cold, hardcats. And in the nineteen twenties is the
Speaker 1: era of barre bonds of extremely large currencies. He could
Speaker 1: be and we we know that he was invested in
Speaker 1: a lot of different businesses. So I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: the one of all the ones that that we've come across.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think there's actually an entertaining case
Speaker 1: for me, is that I would say, oh, it probably
Speaker 1: was just an accident, but it kind of is the
Speaker 1: one that makes the best sense. Especially they didn't land
Speaker 1: on an airfield. That's really would keep me in on it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about this, they land on the beach. Why
Speaker 1: do they land on the beach. Well, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a few things about that that was to take a
Speaker 1: look at, take into the beach, because that kind of
Speaker 1: flipped my whole thinking on it. Pilot the copios told
Speaker 1: the police that the door opened easily. Yeah, they should
Speaker 1: know that when that air steam is pushing on the door,
Speaker 1: it's never going to open easily. Their pilots, So let's it.
Speaker 1: So let's let's look at all the evidence. Consider this,
Speaker 1: the pilot, Donald Drew, puts the plane down on a
Speaker 1: deserted beach. Drew and Little both told the police that
Speaker 1: the door on the airplane opened easily, and that was
Speaker 1: not true exactly, and both there a little appeared to
Speaker 1: have lived beyond their means after the disappearance. The incident
Speaker 1: took place over the English Channel, outside of the jurisdiction
Speaker 1: of any estate. Yeah. And of course, as I said,
Speaker 1: the Fokker trimotor belonged to lowin Stein, so he had
Speaker 1: control over and he could have modified it compartment to
Speaker 1: hide in a hatch to escape from Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: considering all those things, I say, we've got a little
Speaker 1: the suicide, the murder, and the murder again, I just
Speaker 1: think I just find that too hard to believe. And
Speaker 1: I typically in cases like this, I usually decide I
Speaker 1: usually go for something other than he arranged his own disappearance.
Speaker 1: But in this case, I don't know. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I kind of like the disappearing theory, like you said
Speaker 1: the same page. And there's another possibility, which is that
Speaker 1: maybe he didn't even get on the plane to begin with,
Speaker 1: and while everybody's everybody's like looking over the English Channel
Speaker 1: for him, you know, or and if anybody suspected something,
Speaker 1: Let's say, you know, somebody sharp minded like you and
Speaker 1: I suspected that he faked the whole thing and he
Speaker 1: was like he'd actually gotten off at Dunkirk and gone
Speaker 1: away and they were looking for him there he's actually
Speaker 1: already on a plane heading to say America, and he's
Speaker 1: he was never even over the English Channel to begin with.
Speaker 1: So that's another possibility. That's I think it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting possibility. The other thing that really caught my caught
Speaker 1: my eye was that his wife buried him in an
Speaker 1: unmarked grain. Yeah, that's interesting, and that I mean because
Speaker 1: the you know, I know that forensics were probably pretty
Speaker 1: young back then. Oh you know, the ultimate thing would
Speaker 1: be to dig him up. I mean, even today, we
Speaker 1: could probably get some amount of d n A or
Speaker 1: dental records or something to see if that body was
Speaker 1: really his. Putting him in on our grave increases the
Speaker 1: likelihood that that that corpse gets lost. Yeah, there's that.
Speaker 1: That's also it was built. It was actually buried in
Speaker 1: the Zone family graveyard. It was a private graveyard. So
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what the logistics Legally speaking, I
Speaker 1: assume you can still get a cord order to have
Speaker 1: something exumed, but if it's private property like that, it
Speaker 1: might be a little harder. Well, and then you could
Speaker 1: come up with the thing that if you did get
Speaker 1: the card order or whatever, it all comes through that
Speaker 1: the records are incorrect, The records have been lost, records
Speaker 1: were intentionally offuskated so that it would be harder to
Speaker 1: dig that body up. I mean, how many rich men
Speaker 1: are buried in unmarked grace. Not many? Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's an intriguing thing. And I but if his
Speaker 1: body could be found, it would be worthwhile, I think
Speaker 1: to actually do a little rubble d n A against him.
Speaker 1: And I assume it's known where his son Bobby, who
Speaker 1: has to be dead by now, it's I assume it
Speaker 1: is no more Bobby is buried, So let's, you know,
Speaker 1: let's dig up the bodies and see if there are
Speaker 1: match I mean, I'm sure there's still a Low and
Speaker 1: Stone bloodline out there somewhere they can Oh yeah, probably
Speaker 1: somebody is still alive. But it might not even have
Speaker 1: to dig Bobby up right. Yeah, So okay, what what
Speaker 1: whether any other theories or is this kind of we
Speaker 1: settled on this because I'm the more we talked about it,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sold on self disappearance. Yeah, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: sold on that too. I think he decided to, you know,
Speaker 1: and it may well be you know, the he said
Speaker 1: when this so called anonymous document came out accusing him
Speaker 1: of all sorts of crimes, it was it was just
Speaker 1: all pure liable perhaps, and it might have been enough
Speaker 1: truth there that perhaps he was concerned about perhaps an
Speaker 1: indictment or two, and thought, well, maybe it's time to
Speaker 1: just get out of town. And that's that's That might
Speaker 1: be another way of you know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: financial regulation was like in Terrible Yeah, it might that much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But and it might well be that that he sort
Speaker 1: of knew that if he left then the FED would
Speaker 1: not step in and dismantle his companies or penalize his
Speaker 1: partners or his family or any of that stuff. Of
Speaker 1: if he just died, they would just drop the whole matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. And so essentially by disappearing and
Speaker 1: quote unquote dying, then perhaps he escapes not just indicting
Speaker 1: himself and maybe imprisonment, but also the destruction of his companies,
Speaker 1: which were kind of key to his partner's well being
Speaker 1: and his family's well being. So perhaps he just thought,
Speaker 1: I'll just go off and live on a little island
Speaker 1: somewhere on the several million bucks that I've got scrolled
Speaker 1: away in this Swiss bank account, you know, which then means,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere out there there's a there's a grave
Speaker 1: from five of a of a man living under an
Speaker 1: assumed name. Yeah, someplace. Yeah, he lived under an assumed name.
Speaker 1: Probably probably got himself a new girl and then fathered
Speaker 1: another kid, you know. You know, it's something. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you're out there and you are the you know,
Speaker 1: the I think Dolly's descendant of Mr Lowenstown, we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Yeah, we'll put you in the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we totally what we'll do. We'll do a little follow
Speaker 1: up episode here And if you're out there, Mr Lowenstein,
Speaker 1: and it happened to still be alive for some reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome to use the podcast, would so else? I think
Speaker 1: that probably reps it up. If you'd like to get
Speaker 1: ahold of us, you can send us an email at
Speaker 1: The Shocking Details Podcast at gmail dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also check out our website that's dub dub dub the
Speaker 1: Shocking Details dot com. We're on Twitter that would be
Speaker 1: at Shocking Details and of course we're also on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Go to Facebook dot com, slash groups Slash Shocking Details
Speaker 1: Podcast until next week to the loop