Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday with a little
Speaker 1: mystery true crime episode served up for you. It's the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Lars Metonk and I think it's me Tonk
Speaker 1: And if I'm not mistaken, Josh and I probably pronounced
Speaker 1: it all sorts of ways because that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we do, much to the annoyance of many of you.
Speaker 1: We're very sorry, but I hope you enjoy it. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 2: there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry
Speaker 2: and this is Stuff you Should Know at another True
Speaker 2: Life Mystery edition.
Speaker 1: A True Life Mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I don't want to say crime because I'm
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent sure crime was involved. I'm sure
Speaker 2: it still falls under the umbrella of true crime, but
Speaker 2: it's a mystery, a disappearance, how about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And this one is this can be frustrating to research.
Speaker 1: And this is our caveat in that this situation, as
Speaker 1: you will learn, happened in Bulgaria to a German Man
Speaker 1: and that's part of the reason it's hard to get
Speaker 1: great information. There are plenty of people on the Internet
Speaker 1: telling this story with different details, and it's just sort
Speaker 1: of one of those cases where like we can't get
Speaker 1: our hands on Bulgarian case files from the cops and
Speaker 1: read it ourselves. So we did find a redditor who
Speaker 1: did something last year who claims that he got information
Speaker 1: from Lars's mother, who you're going to meet, Sondra. She's
Speaker 1: not gonna be on the show. You're not going to
Speaker 1: really meet her meet through our words. But you know
Speaker 1: who knows this is someone on Reddit and all his
Speaker 1: sources were in German, so I couldn't double check those either, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean that's that's a caveat that works
Speaker 2: for just about any true crime or disappearance case these days,
Speaker 2: just because there's so many people who you know, take
Speaker 2: it in a story and run it through their own grinder,
Speaker 2: and you know, like you said, little details, little facts
Speaker 2: get changed here, and then somebody else picks up the
Speaker 2: same fact without double checking it, and now all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, it's all over the place, and you can't
Speaker 2: tell if that's because it's real or because a bunch
Speaker 2: of people just repeated the same incorrect facts. So We're
Speaker 2: gonna definitely do our best. But one of the things
Speaker 2: about this story is there are enough, you know, totally
Speaker 2: verified facts to it that you know, you don't really
Speaker 2: need to get completely lost in the details. People have
Speaker 2: gotten completely lost in the details, but they've still not
Speaker 2: solved the case. That hasn't helped anybody yet, So just
Speaker 2: the facts that are known are kind of strange enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's it's always more comfortable for
Speaker 1: us when it's like when there's a book that's been
Speaker 1: written about it, published by like a real publisher.
Speaker 2: Like Beverly Cleary.
Speaker 1: It's not just internet dudes. But you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of times these more recent sort of missing person cases,
Speaker 1: it is just internet dude.
Speaker 2: So you know, yeah, it is what it is. And
Speaker 2: the dude that we're talking about is named Lars Matonk
Speaker 2: and he's known as the most famous missing person on
Speaker 2: YouTube because.
Speaker 1: I hate that he is.
Speaker 2: It's pretty bad almost. It should have probably just scared
Speaker 2: us off of this episode to begin with. The because
Speaker 2: you remember what was the name of that con, the
Speaker 2: YouTube Convention. We went to that one time.
Speaker 1: Oh, it was like Internet con, but it wasn't that.
Speaker 2: It was close to that I can't remember. That almost
Speaker 2: put me off of YouTube forever.
Speaker 1: We blocked our memory bank as we did our biggest
Speaker 1: show ever there in front of about twelve people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty bad, but I'll think of it. But
Speaker 1: by the way, we should thank Dave Meischner, who's a
Speaker 1: listener who turned me onto this quite a while ago.
Speaker 1: So sorry it took so long to get to Dave.
Speaker 2: So we're talking again. We're talking about Lars matonk and
Speaker 2: he vanished from the face of the earth. As his
Speaker 2: mom put it, it was like the earth just swallowed him up.
Speaker 2: Back on July eighth, twenty fourteen, in a town, a
Speaker 2: resort town in Bulgaria on the Black Sea called Golden Sands, which,
Speaker 2: looking at pictures of it, it looks like a pretty
Speaker 2: charming little place. Big con, that's it. It might as
Speaker 2: well have been called Internet Con. Yeah, but did you
Speaker 2: look at pictures of Golden Sands to get a feel
Speaker 2: for the place?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, looks like any lovely seaside hamlet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I couldn't get the impression of whether it
Speaker 2: was more like Deston or more like Panama City Beach.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't. It seems like a big party spot,
Speaker 1: if that's what you're wondering.
Speaker 2: Okay, But like it also looked like it was fairly
Speaker 2: like clean and well run and not just like you know,
Speaker 2: just whatever kind of thing. I don't know, I place
Speaker 2: it between the two from what I can tell, But
Speaker 2: that's where that's where this event took place, where the
Speaker 2: disappearance took place. It's actually Varna, Bulgaria, which is the
Speaker 2: main town that Golden Sands Resort beach town is right
Speaker 2: outside of.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So as far as Lars, the young man who
Speaker 1: would go missing, he was born in February nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six in northern Germany. He was an only child. He
Speaker 1: was a handsome kid, very popular. He was athletic, he
Speaker 1: was smart. He did well in school. After he ended up.
Speaker 1: After he graduated, he ended up getting a job at
Speaker 1: the GDFSUS power plant about one hundred miles from where
Speaker 1: he grew up, fixing small electrical machines. He was an
Speaker 1: engineer and it seemed like he had a really good
Speaker 1: life and he enjoyed his job. He loved and this
Speaker 1: will figure in so put a pin in this. His
Speaker 1: one big love was his football club, his soccer team
Speaker 1: that he followed, which is in you know, this is
Speaker 1: not how they would pronounce it, but the Verder Bremen
Speaker 1: football club.
Speaker 2: Oh really, how would they pronounce it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's always just a little more German, let's see,
Speaker 1: you know, like the guy the Redditor, he narrates his
Speaker 1: own documentary and he said it in a way that
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to attempt.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all right, fine, So that whole football club
Speaker 2: thing actually plays a role in this because it may
Speaker 2: be at the center of his disappearance. We're not one
Speaker 2: hundred percent sure, but to kind of give you an
Speaker 2: idea of what kind of guy Lars Metank was. Metank was.
Speaker 2: His dad had a stroke a couple of years before
Speaker 2: he disappeared, and his mom had to take care of
Speaker 2: his dad full time. Lars was an only child, and
Speaker 2: he would come home I guess about one hundred miles
Speaker 2: from where he lived and worked almost every weekend to
Speaker 2: help take care of his dad, which is not every
Speaker 2: guy in their late twenties would do that, you know.
Speaker 2: And apparently he was dedicated enough that his mom had
Speaker 2: to kind of encourage him to go along with five
Speaker 2: other friends of his two week long vacation at Golden
Speaker 2: Sands in Bulgaria in July, the end of June beginning
Speaker 2: of July. He wasn't going to go, and his mom said, no,
Speaker 2: you should should totally go. You deserve a week off
Speaker 2: like this, So he went.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's a big party scene. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it is well known for young people from all over
Speaker 1: Europe going to take advantage of the resort deals, all
Speaker 1: inclusive places, the cheap booze, plenty of drugs to be had.
Speaker 1: Lars was the life of the party. According to his friends,
Speaker 1: I saw her anywhere from three to five friends. I
Speaker 1: know for sure two guys, and I think these were
Speaker 1: his high school mates who were most prominent, named Tim
Speaker 1: Schultz and Paul Roman. But they were hanging out, going
Speaker 1: to the beach playing soccer. The one weird thing that
Speaker 1: I think people may have made too much about online
Speaker 1: as far as internet sleuthing goes, is his friends remarked
Speaker 1: that he didn't have much of an appetite on the trip,
Speaker 1: was eating like soup and salad and fruit, whereas they were,
Speaker 1: you know, as an all inclusive resort, so they were
Speaker 1: just like feasting on everything. And I think they thought
Speaker 1: it was odd that he wasn't, but I don't make
Speaker 1: a whole lot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, neither did that one reditor or slash documentary and
Speaker 2: who said that he apparently had kind of gotten had
Speaker 2: been on a health kick, so he was kind of
Speaker 2: watching what he ate a little more. Yeah, some people
Speaker 2: have been like, there's your there's your answer right there
Speaker 2: that explains it at all. Yeah, basically, So, I mean
Speaker 2: the week went by pretty uneventfully. I think one of
Speaker 2: his friends later said on TV or in an interview
Speaker 2: that it went by really quick. On one of the
Speaker 2: I think that's second to last day, they went to
Speaker 2: watch a World Cup match. The World Cup in Brazil
Speaker 2: was going on at the time, and you may not
Speaker 2: know this about Europe, but they're really crazy about soccer,
Speaker 2: so much so that they have their own word for
Speaker 2: it football, which is goofy. But that's the way it goes.
Speaker 2: And so they went to this bar rock bar or Okbaar,
Speaker 2: which sounds like a cool place, and they watched the match,
Speaker 2: i think Costa Rica and the Netherlands. And while they
Speaker 2: were there, there were a bunch of soccer fans. They're
Speaker 2: watching this from all different clubs and countries, and there
Speaker 2: were some kids I guess who were recent high school
Speaker 2: graduates and were fans of FC Byron, which is the
Speaker 2: rival to Verder Bremen, And I guess they kind of
Speaker 2: got into it verbally only with Lars and his friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also saw places that there was actual
Speaker 1: physical confrontation. Oh yeah, you don't know for sure, but
Speaker 1: we do know that it wasn't the biggest deal and
Speaker 1: it wasn't the big fight that happened. Later on, after
Speaker 1: this night out, the guys apparently go to this McDonald's
Speaker 1: which is kind of an open air order at the
Speaker 1: open air window kind of thing, and Lars didn't want
Speaker 1: to eat because I guess he was on that health kick,
Speaker 1: and he sort of just stood nearby while his two
Speaker 1: buddies were ordering. They got their food, they turned around,
Speaker 1: he wasn't there. They don't see him for the rest
Speaker 1: of the night. But like I said, it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, spring break party central. So if one of
Speaker 1: your friend disappears for the night and you're a bunch
Speaker 1: of dudes, you might just think like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he ended up meeting somebody, or maybe
Speaker 1: he just went out and partied some more. But it
Speaker 1: didn't send up these huge alarms that he didn't come
Speaker 1: back that night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when he did show up again, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was later that night or the next morning,
Speaker 2: he said that he had been beaten up, actually jumped
Speaker 2: by three or four Bulgarian guys, and that he had
Speaker 2: gone to duck when one of them threw a punch
Speaker 2: and had actually taken a punch in his ear, which
Speaker 2: is a terrible place to get punched. And he said
Speaker 2: that he was quite convinced that it was those kids,
Speaker 2: those high school kids who were fans of Byron FC
Speaker 2: Byron that they'd gotten into it with at the bar
Speaker 2: earlier that night, because apparently they had said, this is
Speaker 2: just I only saw this in one place that they
Speaker 2: had said that they had shouted that it's easy to
Speaker 2: get to pay somebody to beat other people up in Bulgaria.
Speaker 2: And so this happened close enough and close enough proximity
Speaker 2: to that other altercation that he just assumed that's why
Speaker 2: those guys jumped him. I mean, there's apparently there was
Speaker 2: no other explanation for it. So that was his story.
Speaker 2: He showed up with an injured ear in the story
Speaker 2: that he had been jumped by some local Bulgarians.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and his friends apparently didn't necessarily believe that story
Speaker 1: because he wasn't you know, he didn't have black eyes
Speaker 1: or a bloody nose or anything. He looked fine and
Speaker 1: he was acting fine, so they weren't too sure about
Speaker 1: that story. Again, with the internet, slose, I've seen people
Speaker 1: saying that like he totally made up the story about
Speaker 1: the fight. But that is all just people speculating online.
Speaker 2: I know, if you ever want to see people just
Speaker 2: take a piece of information and then spin it to
Speaker 2: the n degree the most extreme possible interpretation of it,
Speaker 2: that you could do worse than hang out on the internet.
Speaker 1: So he goes to a doctor, he gets the diagnosis
Speaker 1: of a ruptured ear drum. Apparently went and saw a
Speaker 1: specialist at a hospital who confirmed it, said you should
Speaker 1: get surgery, and Lars is like, great, but I'm not
Speaker 1: getting that here. I'm going to go back come to
Speaker 1: Germany if I'm going to get surgery.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: And then this is sort of one of the keys
Speaker 1: is he was given biotic name cepheroxyme and he was
Speaker 1: given the strongest possible dosage, which was about I think
Speaker 1: it was five hundred milligrams.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's just a general I think a cephalexin
Speaker 2: based antibiotic that doesn't really usually have many side effects,
Speaker 2: and if it does have side effects, it's typically something
Speaker 2: like an upset stomach. I saw that there's a condition
Speaker 2: where it turns huge patches of your skin very dark
Speaker 2: all over the place, almost like your highlights have been shaded.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting to look at. But that has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with any other anything that Lars exhibited, any
Speaker 2: behavior exhibited. It's just antibiotics. I mean, if you've ever
Speaker 2: taken antibiotics, you know that there's not really usually many
Speaker 2: side effects to it.
Speaker 1: Right, So Lars catches well, again, different information. I saw
Speaker 1: that his friends were going to stay with him. He
Speaker 1: insisted they leave. So his friends eventually do catch that
Speaker 1: original flight out and Lars stays behind, you know, because
Speaker 1: of his ear. He was a little concerned about obviously,
Speaker 1: with changes in the atmosphere and on pressurization on a plane.
Speaker 1: He didn't think it was a good idea. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that original doctor told him that might
Speaker 1: have been a problem, but he knew it was going
Speaker 1: to be a problem.
Speaker 2: So a little bit about that original doctor. I saw
Speaker 2: that from the redditor who said that he spoke to
Speaker 2: the guys to his mother, that his mother said that
Speaker 2: that Lars said that the doctor didn't really treat him.
Speaker 2: The first one did and said you should go to
Speaker 2: a specialist. But then when he went to the specialist,
Speaker 2: a specialist said like wouldn't speak to him in English,
Speaker 2: and Lars felt he had mocked him, and that apparently
Speaker 2: Sondra thought that that was really significant because that was
Speaker 2: not a word that Lars typically used. But he still
Speaker 2: managed to get the antibiotic from doctor. The thing about
Speaker 2: the perforated or ruptured ear drum is I was looking
Speaker 2: on the internet, it turns out, and the National Health
Speaker 2: Service says that if you have a perforated ear drum,
Speaker 2: it would probably actually make flying more comfortable, not more dangerous.
Speaker 2: So I can understand Lars being worried about that, not
Speaker 2: being a trained medical professional, but if he's encountering at
Speaker 2: least three other medical professionals in Bulgaria, you would think
Speaker 2: one of them would be like, actually, no, you're actually
Speaker 2: better off flying like this, or would at the very
Speaker 2: least be like, you don't have to worry about that
Speaker 2: at all. That's not a thing interesting yeah, so too.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a break and we will
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what happened after his friends
Speaker 1: left Lars alone in Bulgaria right after this, all right,
Speaker 1: so Lars's buddies go back home to Germany. Lars is
Speaker 1: left there by himself, which is pretty key as far
Speaker 1: as understanding that they weren't worried about him. He wasn't
Speaker 1: behaving weird. He seemed fine. He seemed like Lars. Otherwise
Speaker 1: one of them probably would have raised some sort of
Speaker 1: alarm bells and been like, hey, maybe we should stay here,
Speaker 1: but they said he seemed to relaxed, he was in a
Speaker 1: good mood, and so they took off. Being summer, Lars
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting a hotel room because everything
Speaker 1: was booked up and he was staying on extra, so
Speaker 1: he ends up having to check into the Hotel Color
Speaker 1: of Varna, which was a really cdy place that this
Speaker 1: cab driver takes him to, apparently a lot of drug dealers,
Speaker 1: a lot of sex workers, but that was kind of
Speaker 1: the only place available, And we don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about what happened that night other than these phone calls
Speaker 1: and texts that he exchanges with his mom.
Speaker 2: So one thing though about the hotel color I looked
Speaker 2: at it. Trip Advisor gives it a four out of
Speaker 2: five and booking dot Com has it at seven point
Speaker 2: eight out of ten. And it is definitely cheap. I
Speaker 2: think rooms are like twenty five American dollars a night,
Speaker 2: which is suspiciously cheap. And that yeah, there is like
Speaker 2: probably some criminal activity there, but that it's not like
Speaker 2: it's not like a trap house hotel or anything like that.
Speaker 2: But it was the fact that it was his only
Speaker 2: option I think kind of tells you quite a bit
Speaker 2: too about it. Sure, So he goes to this hotel
Speaker 2: he checks in. Apparently the person behind the counter made
Speaker 2: a copy, a photo copy of his credit card, and
Speaker 2: according to his mother, that did not sit very well
Speaker 2: with Lar. And at eleven PM, after he's checked into
Speaker 2: the hotel, he calls his mom, I think it's the
Speaker 2: first phone first of many phone calls that evening, and
Speaker 2: he tells her that he wants her to block his
Speaker 2: credit card because he's kind of sketched out by this
Speaker 2: hotelier who has made a photo copy of his card.
Speaker 2: He's worried that they're going to use it for fraud
Speaker 2: and he can just unfreeze it when he gets back.
Speaker 2: That's the first phone call he makes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there ends up being another call where he has
Speaker 1: left the hotel. He said that he was hiding on
Speaker 1: a hill, and I think even said that he was
Speaker 1: at risk of falling, So it must have been sort
Speaker 1: of some sort of a really steep type of situation,
Speaker 1: I guess. But he said that there were four men
Speaker 1: after him that were trying to kill him, or that
Speaker 1: intended to kill him at least, And he said, don't
Speaker 1: call me back because my phone. I don't want my
Speaker 1: phone to ring. I'm not sure I knew he didn't
Speaker 1: have his smartphone with him. He left that at home yea,
Speaker 1: and brought sort of a cheaper phone, So I don't
Speaker 1: know if it didn't have a way to turn the
Speaker 1: ringer off or not, or if he was just not
Speaker 1: thinking clearly, but he said not to call him back.
Speaker 1: He eventually texts his mom what is Sarah? Fom five hundred,
Speaker 1: which was that antibiotic which you might think means like
Speaker 1: he's feeling weird and like, what is this?
Speaker 2: I've taken that to me says that if he was
Speaker 2: behaving weirdly or experiencing some different behavior that he guessed
Speaker 2: that that's what it was. That's the only explanation for that,
Speaker 2: because they found that he had taken three of them,
Speaker 2: so he knew that he had that in his system,
Speaker 2: which I guess if he was acting weird, maybe that's
Speaker 2: what he thought it was. That's what sticks out to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it was either that night or
Speaker 1: the following morning. When he asks, I think it was
Speaker 1: the following morning. You know, she had booked a flight
Speaker 1: home for him. He doesn't get back in touch with her,
Speaker 1: which really worked. He's her. But the next morning he
Speaker 1: does get back in touch. This is two days after
Speaker 1: this bar fight. She's relieved. He says he's going to
Speaker 1: go to the airport and can he get five hundred
Speaker 1: euros wired, you know, money grammed or whatever?
Speaker 2: Western you know what?
Speaker 1: Did they have Western Union over there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Supposedly there's a real detail in there and that
Speaker 2: it was Western Union.
Speaker 1: Well, what's the what makes Western Union important?
Speaker 2: So his mother had never heard of Western Union and
Speaker 2: Lars hadn't either, But apparently he talked to another German
Speaker 2: tourist at the airport who had told him to use it,
Speaker 2: and he was able to describe to his mom how
Speaker 2: to use Western Union in a way that she understood
Speaker 2: how to use Western Union after he explained it, which
Speaker 2: said to his mom that he had his wits about him.
Speaker 2: He wasn't out of his mind, he wasn't wasted on
Speaker 2: drugs or anything like that. He was very much with
Speaker 2: it mentally.
Speaker 1: All right. So he and I saw two different things here.
Speaker 1: Either his mom urged him to go to the airport
Speaker 1: doctor just to make sure he's good to fly, or
Speaker 1: there was some requirement that he do so. But either way,
Speaker 1: he goes to the airport medical center. And this is
Speaker 1: where things get a little confusing, because it's really all
Speaker 1: over the place, whether or not he goes in right
Speaker 1: away or whether he goes in later. But he apparently
Speaker 1: calls his mom tells her, hey, they said I shouldn't
Speaker 1: fly or drive. But he hadn't even gone to see
Speaker 1: the doctor at that point. And then once he does
Speaker 1: see the doctor, the doctor ends up giving a few
Speaker 1: different versions of what happened while he was in there,
Speaker 1: which is either, you know, some people think that looks
Speaker 1: really shady. I think it could have just been like
Speaker 1: at the time, this doctor, you know, you're not making
Speaker 1: some really big mental notes about the random patient that
Speaker 1: comes in.
Speaker 2: Like, this guy's going to be an international mystery in
Speaker 2: an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, it could have been innocent that
Speaker 1: his story changed, or it could be shady.
Speaker 2: It could be so so from what I saw, that
Speaker 2: the doctor changes story three times, and that an airline
Speaker 2: employee came in, and then later it was an airport
Speaker 2: employee came in, which I think kind of across the internet,
Speaker 2: became a construction worker because that the airport had recently
Speaker 2: undergone or was undergoing renovations. And then I guess the
Speaker 2: third story was that the doctor said that no one
Speaker 2: had come in, and that Lars had excused himself to
Speaker 2: go to the toilet and did not come back. The
Speaker 2: doctor was expecting to come back. He just never came back.
Speaker 2: What the doctor didn't know if that was in fact
Speaker 2: what happened was that Lars wasn't coming back because he
Speaker 2: was sprinting through the airport and running out of the
Speaker 2: airport and into the surrounding countryside.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the version where someone does come in.
Speaker 1: What that means is is that literally a human being,
Speaker 1: another person walks into the examination room and apparently really
Speaker 1: freaked out. If that version is correct, really freaked out Lars,
Speaker 1: who was already obviously feeling a little bit paranoid sure,
Speaker 1: and was like, what is this person doing in here?
Speaker 1: In the one version of the story, the doctor tries
Speaker 1: to explain, Hey, it's just a construction guy, or no,
Speaker 1: this is an airline employee that's going to actually walk
Speaker 1: you to the plane. It's a little frustrating to not
Speaker 1: know the exact truth, but no matter what happens, we
Speaker 1: do know that he sprinted from the airport because that
Speaker 1: part is actually on YouTube and on CCTV, and that's
Speaker 1: why he's the most famous disappeared person on YouTube, because
Speaker 1: it's very compelling to watch this young kid drop all
Speaker 1: and you don't see him drop his stuff, but clearly
Speaker 1: he walks in with a backpack and a duffel bag
Speaker 1: and he sprints with nothing in his hands at like
Speaker 1: full twenty one year old athletic gallop out of there,
Speaker 1: as if someone is chasing him.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, but there's a couple of weird things about it.
Speaker 2: If you watch the video, and again you can go
Speaker 2: anywhere on the internet and see this. I think it's
Speaker 2: a good thirty seconds of it cut together, that he
Speaker 2: is running in the airport, and then when he gets
Speaker 2: outside he kind of like walks and then jogs a
Speaker 2: little bit and runs some more. But then I saw
Speaker 2: somebody on I think I was read it too on
Speaker 2: a different post. Their Unresolved Mysteries group is just really good.
Speaker 2: But somebody pointed out that if you watch him, he's
Speaker 2: not really like looking behind him. He's not looking to
Speaker 2: see somebody coming after him, And it kind of puts
Speaker 2: a different spin on things because you do think, well,
Speaker 2: surely he's running for his life, but if you're running
Speaker 2: for your life, it does seem like you would be
Speaker 2: a lot more concerned about who was coming after you
Speaker 2: and would probably look behind you a little more. He
Speaker 2: doesn't quite do that. Actually, it's a very strange run,
Speaker 2: but it's also not like the run of a person
Speaker 2: who's out of their mind. That was what stood out
Speaker 2: to me, is that he doesn't seem to at all
Speaker 2: be out of his mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and another couple of details here that was tough
Speaker 1: to verify. Supposedly, in the doctor's office he said, I
Speaker 1: don't want to die here. I have to get out
Speaker 1: of here. Don't know if that's true or not, but
Speaker 1: supposedly that's what he said, and then the mom Sondra
Speaker 1: evidently saw. She went over there to do her own investigating,
Speaker 1: obviously right after it happened, and supposedly saw footage directly
Speaker 1: from the airport that had a lot of different stuff
Speaker 1: that was not included in the footage that went to
Speaker 1: the police, And she said in the footage that she
Speaker 1: saw was that when he leaves the airport, he stands
Speaker 1: there like checks his pocket as if he's checking to
Speaker 1: make sure he has his passport and his wallet and stuff,
Speaker 1: and kind of looks around and orients himself for a minute,
Speaker 1: like should I go this way? Should I go that way?
Speaker 1: If you look at other places on the internet and
Speaker 1: you just look at that footage, it looks like he
Speaker 1: just bolts from the airport and then continues to either
Speaker 1: kind of walk or jog and never stops, never checks
Speaker 1: his pockets, never orients himself at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he actually walks within twenty feet of a
Speaker 2: couple of cops who are standing talking to on another
Speaker 2: in the parking lot. He walks past them, he goes
Speaker 2: behind a sampile, and then eventually goes over I think
Speaker 2: is it actually on camera him going over the fence
Speaker 2: or is it just presumed that he went over the fence.
Speaker 1: No, it's on camera, but it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's like they had to circle and highlight him
Speaker 1: because he's so far in the distance. But he goes
Speaker 1: over a barbed wire fence into a full bloom sunflower field, yeah,
Speaker 1: which are very very tall and literally disappears, never to
Speaker 1: be seen again now.
Speaker 2: And on the other side of that sunflower field, very
Speaker 2: importantly is the A two highway, so who knows what happened.
Speaker 2: And then beyond that there's a lot of woods. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't call it like the most densely forested place on earth,
Speaker 2: but there's a pretty decent sized woods around there. There's
Speaker 2: also a lot of farm fields too that's exposed and
Speaker 2: out in the open. But there's a highway on the
Speaker 2: other side of it, and that's, to me, is extremely important.
Speaker 1: All right, should we take another break? Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break and bring it home
Speaker 1: with what happened from there and then some of the
Speaker 1: theories about what happened to Lars Matonk.
Speaker 2: So Chuck. Just to recap Lars Motonk has fled is
Speaker 2: a really good way to put it. The airport, leaving
Speaker 2: behind in the doctor's office all of his stuff, including
Speaker 2: his wallet, phone in passport.
Speaker 1: Now is that verified.
Speaker 2: I saw that basically everywhere, including.
Speaker 1: Except for his speculating that she saw him checking as.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't. I thought that was very confusing. But
Speaker 2: I saw it in the sun which I realized is
Speaker 2: not the most credible source, but sadly it is one
Speaker 2: of the most credible sources when it comes to researching
Speaker 2: this case. I saw it on a Yale article. It's
Speaker 2: it's basically everywhere that his wallet, passport, and phone were
Speaker 2: left behind. But I mean, that's a really good point,
Speaker 2: like we're totally we're lost in the sunflower field. As
Speaker 2: far as that stuff concerns, we we don't know. We
Speaker 2: got to get our hands on the police report, and
Speaker 2: even that I read when when Lars's mom hired a
Speaker 2: Bulgarian lawyer as an investigator, they got weird conflicting information
Speaker 2: about you know, what was found with him or not,
Speaker 2: or what was what was left behind him or not,
Speaker 2: So even his mom probably couldn't say for certain what
Speaker 2: was there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the picture that it was a frustrating
Speaker 1: experience working with the Bulgarian police it seems like Germany
Speaker 1: got involved with Inner Pole, but they had some frustrations
Speaker 1: as well. There's there's some speculation that they intentionally kind
Speaker 1: of kept the story on the download because they didn't
Speaker 1: want it to affect tourism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: Other people say that. Well maybe not that, but it
Speaker 1: just wasn't widely known it was some German kid. It
Speaker 1: wasn't all over the newspapers, and so people, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily even know what was going on if
Speaker 1: they saw this flyer, or they maybe not. Maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't even run it on the evening news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like if it was three weeks, four
Speaker 2: weeks after the disappearance, that like news started to really spread,
Speaker 2: or maybe news never really spread. If you were a
Speaker 2: driver and you gave a kid a ride on the
Speaker 2: eighth two highway outside of the airport, you might not
Speaker 2: have ever put two and two together. Or if you
Speaker 2: saw some kid running through a field into the woods,
Speaker 2: you might not have ever heard of Lars Metonk either.
Speaker 2: So it's possible there's people out there with information who
Speaker 2: just don't know to cough it up, although that's probably
Speaker 2: exceedingly unlikely these days because of the exposure that this
Speaker 2: story's gotten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one interesting tidbit is that they did find that
Speaker 1: those five hundred euros were untouched in his account, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned. I think some people speculate
Speaker 1: the fact that it was five hundred euros on the
Speaker 1: nose and that it was Western Union and he had
Speaker 1: never used it meant that he was being told by
Speaker 1: somebody to get five hundred euros wired via this way.
Speaker 1: But again that's just internet speculation.
Speaker 2: Well, I also saw that it was his mom's decision.
Speaker 2: He just asked her to wire him some money, some
Speaker 2: money she had decided that that was according to that
Speaker 2: documentarian who knows, we really need to get Sondra matonk
Speaker 2: On here, dude.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things that happened through this through
Speaker 1: his mother investigating this is various leads came in over
Speaker 1: the years, like hey, there's this guy that speaks German,
Speaker 1: he could be Lars. She would go check it out.
Speaker 1: There's this other guy. Over the years, she has ended
Speaker 1: up finding fifteen German expatriates in Bulgaria. Some were atticts,
Speaker 1: some were mentally ill, some were actually reunited with her family,
Speaker 1: some didn't want to be reunited. But she found all
Speaker 1: these people, so like every time that happened, it gave
Speaker 1: her hope that even though the chances, you know, with
Speaker 1: a case like this is if you don't find this
Speaker 1: person within the first a few days or the first week,
Speaker 1: it's like very slim to no chance, all of these
Speaker 1: things gave her hope that she could if she just
Speaker 1: kept at it, that she might eventually find her son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really surprised to see that there was
Speaker 2: a statin here that said that something like only three
Speaker 2: percent of missing persons cases aren't resolved within the first
Speaker 2: year in Germany, not even in Germany, but among German citizens.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it would be a lot higher than that,
Speaker 2: but that's actually not bad as far as I can tell. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: one of those people, by the way, who was found
Speaker 2: that was thought to be there's like a whole thing
Speaker 2: where people are following this case, and anytime something ends
Speaker 2: up on the internet, it ends up being passed along
Speaker 2: to Sondra Matonk, who will basically post on her Instagram like, hey,
Speaker 2: this was sent from this town. Can somebody go see
Speaker 2: if they can find this homeless guy and get me
Speaker 2: more pictures of them? So we can figure out if
Speaker 2: it's Lars. Like she does this kind of frequently. There
Speaker 2: was one where a guy turned up in Brazil who
Speaker 2: looks a lot like Lars, but disheveled with the beard
Speaker 2: and his haircut kind of crazy. Yeah, And that turned
Speaker 2: out to be a different man who was missing from
Speaker 2: British Columbia named Anton Pilpa, who was reunited with his
Speaker 2: family after five years. And they think that heke hitch
Speaker 2: hiked and walked from British Columbia down to Brazil and
Speaker 2: then kind of lived around Rio. I think Rio on
Speaker 2: his own for a while during a mental break man.
Speaker 1: So some of the theories over the years that have
Speaker 1: been formed, the one that seems the most obvious to
Speaker 1: me is that along with the ear injury, there was
Speaker 1: some sort of a head injury, maybe a concussion left
Speaker 1: untreated that led to erratic behavior and paranoia maybe, and
Speaker 1: that you know, once he had left and had no
Speaker 1: money and no phone and no passport, he sort of
Speaker 1: was just sort of perhaps lost his memory and lost
Speaker 1: in Bulgaria and still lost in Bulgaria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's entirely possible, especially if it was a head
Speaker 2: injury that was getting worse and worse by the hour.
Speaker 2: That could definitely explain the erratic behavior of leaving his
Speaker 2: stuff and running through the airport and jumping the fence
Speaker 2: into a sun flower field, because if you think about it,
Speaker 2: everything up to that point you can explain by him
Speaker 2: being intimidated in a hotel he didn't feel comfortable in
Speaker 2: by some guys who aim to rob him, And even
Speaker 2: if those guys didn't aim to rob him, just him
Speaker 2: thinking that they were going to rob him explains everything
Speaker 2: else up to that point. The thing that makes it
Speaker 2: inexplicable as far as I'm concerned, is him leaving the
Speaker 2: airport the way they did and potentially leaving everything behind.
Speaker 2: That throws everything out the window and actually makes the
Speaker 2: idea of a traumatic brain injury a lot more possible
Speaker 2: in my mind. The problem is that if that's what
Speaker 2: happened to him, it's really possible that he's up there,
Speaker 2: you know, out in the woods somewhere still and just
Speaker 2: hasn't been found and is dead probably by now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or I suppose he could have just you know,
Speaker 1: wandered into a town and assimilated.
Speaker 2: Well. His mom apparently does believe that he's still out there,
Speaker 2: which is why She tries to shake down every lead
Speaker 2: she can, but thinks that he does have memory loss
Speaker 2: and that that's why he's still out there just and
Speaker 2: has never contacted her.
Speaker 1: Another theory is that, you know, maybe everything he said
Speaker 1: is true, Maybe there were men following him. Maybe it
Speaker 1: had something to do with that fight, and these guys
Speaker 1: that may or may not have been hired to beat
Speaker 1: him up. Apparently the human trafficking in Bulgaria is a problem,
Speaker 1: and maybe you know, a young, handsome, fit man like
Speaker 1: Lars could have been a target for human trafficking and
Speaker 1: that he really like had every right to be anxious
Speaker 1: and nervous, because otherwise he seemed like he was okay.
Speaker 1: It's all very confusing and frustrating. I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: Soandra Matonk has been going through for these years.
Speaker 2: So dude, just can't even I mean, when you had
Speaker 2: when you don't have closure like that, your imagination's left
Speaker 2: to just fill in whatever blanks. And you know, in
Speaker 2: a situation like that, people's imaginations tend to go to
Speaker 2: the darkest places. I can't imagine the stuff that she's
Speaker 2: come up with or that people have suggested to her too,
Speaker 2: you know, being caught up in it and forgetting like
Speaker 2: this is the mom, Like this is real to her,
Speaker 2: this is her life. This isn't just something on the internet.
Speaker 1: So what about the trucker.
Speaker 2: Oh so that's one of the leads that there was
Speaker 2: a trucker in uh, what where was it? Brandenburg? The trucker.
Speaker 2: So there was a trucker that in twenty nineteen picked
Speaker 2: up a hitchhiker in Dresden and drove them all the
Speaker 2: way to Brandenburg, I guess. And he said later on
Speaker 2: he didn't know about the Lars Matonk case at the time,
Speaker 2: but he said later on he found out about it
Speaker 2: and said, oh man, that's got to be the kid
Speaker 2: that I picked up. And so his mom shook down
Speaker 2: the story, and I don't think that she ever got
Speaker 2: in touch with the truck driver else. The truck driver
Speaker 2: was just like, here's what I think, but I can't
Speaker 2: say either way, and I don't know where he went.
Speaker 2: So there's like a be on the lookout among you know,
Speaker 2: Lars Matonk watchers in Brandenburg from that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was another stuff like that that kept her
Speaker 1: going totally.
Speaker 2: I thought there was another one about a man in
Speaker 2: Dusseldorf that the whole thing lasted for about two hours,
Speaker 2: that's how fast things get done. She posted pictures that
Speaker 2: somebody had sent her of a man, a homeless man
Speaker 2: in Dusseldorf, and asked for more pictures than they Within
Speaker 2: two hours, the COPT and Dusseldorf would picked the guy
Speaker 2: up and verified that it was not Lars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the head injury and loss
Speaker 1: of memory, like, he would want to get back to Germany.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, he had a good life, enjoyed his job,
Speaker 1: was a pretty happy guy and loved Germany. So like
Speaker 1: the idea of him choosing to stay there of his
Speaker 1: own like sound mind, just doesn't seem likely at all.
Speaker 2: No, and unfortunately that really strongly suggests foul play as
Speaker 2: a possibility. To the fact that he has not turned up,
Speaker 2: he has every reason to, like you say, turn back
Speaker 2: up again, get back to his life. Yes, I saw
Speaker 2: that this on the State Department's website for Bulgarian human trafficking. Like,
Speaker 2: Bulgaria does have a human trafficking problem, but it seems
Speaker 2: to be typically targeting Bulgarians, especially Romani people who end
Speaker 2: up getting forced to beg on the streets are forced
Speaker 2: into hard labor if you're a man, that it doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily target tourists, and I think the Bulgarian officials would
Speaker 2: probably not put up with that because it would harm
Speaker 2: tourism so dramatically. So it's fairly unlikely that like a
Speaker 2: blonde German guy named you know, Lars would be would
Speaker 2: end up begging on the streets of France at the
Speaker 2: behest of the bulgar and mafia. And I also saw
Speaker 2: another theory that he was a drug mule and he
Speaker 2: flipped out and was scared he was gonna get caught
Speaker 2: and ran out of the airport. What really kind of
Speaker 2: undermines that theory is that no drugs were found in
Speaker 2: his stuff, So it's possible he took drugs. A lot
Speaker 2: of people are like, well, clearly he was on drugs,
Speaker 2: Like why else would you do that. That's a possibility
Speaker 2: as well. But again, if you really look at some
Speaker 2: of his behavior, it, yes, the fact that he ran
Speaker 2: out of the airport and jumped over a fence, that's
Speaker 2: erratic behavior, but if you look at the way he
Speaker 2: was behaving during that erratic behavior, he's not acting erratic,
Speaker 2: if that makes any sense. It's just it's one of
Speaker 2: the most bizarre mysteries I've ever heard. So kudos to
Speaker 2: you and Dave Meischner for coming up with this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I knew nothing about it until Dave saent it.
Speaker 2: So way to go, Dave. Yeah, we need to spend
Speaker 2: more time on YouTube. I guess we totally missed this one.
Speaker 2: You can go back to VidCon right you got anything else?
Speaker 1: Nope?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to know more about
Speaker 2: Lars matonk go out and solve the mystery, will you
Speaker 2: at least for his dear mother's sake? And since we
Speaker 2: said his dear mother's sake, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this this is another kid writing in.
Speaker 1: This is actually from dad. My son Hans colored a
Speaker 1: picture of you podcasting today. None prompted nice. Which did
Speaker 1: you see this picture?
Speaker 2: No? I got to bring it up.
Speaker 1: It was very cute, which I thought was awesome. I
Speaker 1: said we should send it to Josh and Chuck, and
Speaker 1: his eyes lit up. He wrote out what he wanted
Speaker 1: to type in an email to you, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was better to just send you his note. I've
Speaker 1: been listening to the show for the last ten years
Speaker 1: or so, and introduce my son a few months ago.
Speaker 1: We read books before bed, including yours, and then listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast as he falls asleep. I'm thankful that
Speaker 1: I'm able to share this with Hans. He's a smart
Speaker 1: kid with incredible memory, so we'll often bring up facts
Speaker 1: he's learned from you guys, which I had already forgotten.
Speaker 1: Nice and the picture what is adorable?
Speaker 2: What's the name of the guy who sent it?
Speaker 1: I'm looking for Sam Okay And it's a picture with
Speaker 1: magic marker and you are sitting upright at a table.
Speaker 1: And he actually nailed it because you're on the left.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, you know back in the before times when
Speaker 1: we were actually in our studio. Yeah, he has it right.
Speaker 1: You're on the left. I'm on the right. I am
Speaker 1: it looks like I'm passing out though I'm kind of
Speaker 1: slumped over. But he's got two little microphones and then
Speaker 1: two little pieces of paper with a handwritten thing that
Speaker 1: says notes, pointing at the paper and says, I listen
Speaker 1: to your show almost every night. And then there's a
Speaker 1: handwritten letter which is great, which I'll read as best
Speaker 1: I can. I love your show, Chuck and Josh. Today,
Speaker 1: I listened to your SYSK about Earwax. I told my
Speaker 1: mom and had some of your tips. Hey, have you
Speaker 1: guys made a football episode like touchdown? But if not,
Speaker 1: can you make one? I listen to almost all the
Speaker 1: episodes except ones that my parents don't let me watch.
Speaker 1: I also have your book. I have read some of
Speaker 1: the chapters in it and they are great. I like
Speaker 1: that you guys have different types of episodes, like short
Speaker 1: stuff and just regular episodes. I'm your biggest fan. I'm
Speaker 1: the second grade. Yours, sincerely, and that is Hans's last
Speaker 1: name redacted because he's a kid.
Speaker 2: Hans. That was amazing. I'm going to find the picture.
Speaker 2: I haven't been able to find it yet, but that
Speaker 2: was a beautiful letter. And you have a super cool name.
Speaker 2: By the way.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love it, and thank you Dad, Sam and
Speaker 1: whoever else is in the family helping to support the show.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yep. Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: like Hans, maybe try drawing a picture. What are you
Speaker 2: waiting for? We love pictures. You can send them off
Speaker 2: to us here at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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