Speaker 1: Thinking sideways. I don't understand you've never stories of things
Speaker 1: you don't know the answer too. Hi there, welcome again
Speaker 1: into another episode of thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, joined by
Speaker 1: and Steve and tonight we're gonna tackle another mystery. And
Speaker 1: this is actually, uh, this is kind of a cool
Speaker 1: little mystery. And that's one that I had never even
Speaker 1: heard about until about five days ago. So I mean
Speaker 1: most of the ones that are out there, we've all
Speaker 1: heard about him, right, yeah, most Yeah, Yeah, I'd never this,
Speaker 1: This was new to me. Yeah yeah. And I just
Speaker 1: don't care about airplanes, so there's more than airplanes involved
Speaker 1: with this hole. Okay, So today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the moll Air mystery. That's mall as in m U
Speaker 1: l L the Isle of Mole in Scotland, actually in
Speaker 1: the Hebrid's I guess that's what they call those all
Speaker 1: them islands out there. Okay, So our mystery concerned. It's
Speaker 1: a guy named Peter Gibbs. Peter Gibbs was a professional
Speaker 1: musician who played the violin. He played with the London
Speaker 1: Symphony Orchestra and later on he led the Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Speaker 1: So this guy was a serious musician. He also flew
Speaker 1: fighter planes. In World War Two. He flew spitfires and
Speaker 1: was considered an air ace he was. He flew for
Speaker 1: the r A of the Royal Air Force and after
Speaker 1: the war he continued to fly private planes for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life along with being a musician. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he liked flying, So long story short. On Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: nine and nine pm, he was staying with his girlfriend
Speaker 1: at a place called the Glen forsa hotel on the
Speaker 1: island of Mall and at nine fifteen on Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: he took off in this rented Cessna F one airplane
Speaker 1: because the hotel just handily happen to have an air
Speaker 1: strip right in front of it, which is really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not something you typically would dine. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: and said that they put it in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: Apparently they wanted to have, you know, easier ways for
Speaker 1: people to get onto the island, and they also wanted
Speaker 1: to have a way to airlift people out if they
Speaker 1: were sick and they needed to go to mainland. That's
Speaker 1: so that's why they put it in. So anyway, he
Speaker 1: took off at and headed off over the sound of Mole,
Speaker 1: which is a big body of water to the north
Speaker 1: of the island, and of course he vanished. Yeah, he vanished. Now,
Speaker 1: before you guys fling your iPods to the ground and yelling,
Speaker 1: not another frigging missing person's story, I have to say
Speaker 1: this particular mystery has got a pretty strange little twist
Speaker 1: in it. So bear with us for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Would you guys agree that this mystery has got a
Speaker 1: kind of twist, a serious twist. Yeah, okay, First our
Speaker 1: cast of characters. We've already met Peter Gibbs. His girlfriend's
Speaker 1: name was Felicity Granger. Tim Howitt is the co owner
Speaker 1: of the Glenforce Hotel. David Howitt is a brother also
Speaker 1: on the hotel is He also went by the name
Speaker 1: of Scott McCadam, but more on that later. And then
Speaker 1: Pauline Howett. I'm not sure she's mentioned in the news story,
Speaker 1: but nobody says exactly who she's married to her, if
Speaker 1: she's a sister or what. Well, he won't worry about that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter, Oh, I seem I think Pauline
Speaker 1: might be one of the people who was who dealt
Speaker 1: with the air field in some capacity, because I remember
Speaker 1: reading the news article that I think you're referencing, And
Speaker 1: I believe that she stayed in the house that was
Speaker 1: next to it, and so she witnessed some of this certainly,
Speaker 1: but she the relationship is unknown, right name? So yeah,
Speaker 1: wife's sister, I don't know, I don't care. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1: and just just a quick fun aside. You guys remember Metaphornio. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the island that she died on, Iona is right next
Speaker 1: to Mall. Yeah, Moules the island. If you want to
Speaker 1: get to Iona by road, then you have to take
Speaker 1: the ferry to Mall, drive across Mall and to take
Speaker 1: another ferry to get to I ownA so yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you've got a thing for these islands. I
Speaker 1: know they're kind of cool. I'd like to go out
Speaker 1: there and do a little research since we started making
Speaker 1: some actual money on this. Yeah, okay, okay, back to
Speaker 1: our story here though. Um Peter Gibbs and Felicity Granger
Speaker 1: had flown to Moll for a holiday over Christmas time,
Speaker 1: and they were staying at the Glen Forest, a hotel
Speaker 1: of course, which has an air strip next to us.
Speaker 1: I just mentioned. So that night's Christmas Eve, they had
Speaker 1: dinner together, Gibbs and Felicity Granger, having split a bottle
Speaker 1: of wine. He uh. He then announced that to Tim Howitt,
Speaker 1: the owner, that he was going to go do a
Speaker 1: little flying, and then how It asked him accial that
Speaker 1: that was a wise idea, but Gibbs said, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it whether you like it or not. And
Speaker 1: so but I mean, for one thing, it was dark, dark, cold,
Speaker 1: and you've had a half a bottle of wine and
Speaker 1: there was a storm moving in. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: storm coming into So Felicity went along with him, but
Speaker 1: she does it wasn't gonna actually flash he just needed
Speaker 1: just needed to get out there with a couple of
Speaker 1: flashlights and go down to one end of the runway
Speaker 1: and lay the flashlights out so you know, you can
Speaker 1: see where he was going. Because it's a primitive air strip,
Speaker 1: it's just grass and it doesn't have like landing lights
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So typically if they want to
Speaker 1: do a landing or anything like that at night, what
Speaker 1: they'll usually do is bringing some cars and park cars
Speaker 1: around the airstrip. People can see it that way. This
Speaker 1: is headlights on. Yeah I know. Yeah. Also, I just
Speaker 1: like what kind of guy is like, oh, it's Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: I'm here with my sweetie. We're like in this hotel.
Speaker 1: We just had a romantic dinner. I'm gonna fly in by.
Speaker 1: But he did it, and uh, maybe he was just bored,
Speaker 1: you know, he just wanted to He just wanted to
Speaker 1: go out and do something fun. He was. He was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a daredevil. I was I was
Speaker 1: reading something that was written by one of his co
Speaker 1: musicians that he was into the symphony orchestra with. And uh,
Speaker 1: one one am using little store is that they were
Speaker 1: hated they're going to go to a performance. They were
Speaker 1: both performing in the symphony and they were in they
Speaker 1: were the traffic was just totally backed up and not
Speaker 1: moving and but it turns out the oncoming lanes were
Speaker 1: pretty clear. And so this guy said says to Gifts,
Speaker 1: he says, what are we gonna do? We're gonna be late,
Speaker 1: and Gift says, no, we're not move over, I'm driving
Speaker 1: and so and so he puts the card care it
Speaker 1: just goes into the oncoming lanes, just just buzzes on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure not so. Yeah, he kind of was a thrill seeker. Well,
Speaker 1: he also had had a bit of a temper too,
Speaker 1: Like he seemed a bit of a hothead, because I
Speaker 1: remember reading the story about him in the symphony and
Speaker 1: evidently they had some conductor who was a total jerk,
Speaker 1: and he finally stood up to the guy, and because
Speaker 1: of that, he ended up getting fired. But he was
Speaker 1: the only one who just said, that's it. I'm saying something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: take it anymore. And he was in the right. But apparently,
Speaker 1: but apparently that's just the cultures that you never you
Speaker 1: never talked that way to the conductor, even though the
Speaker 1: conductor deserved it. And it was yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: actually kind of funny. I mean, that's so so so
Speaker 1: upper crust. The rules are so are so subtle. Because
Speaker 1: the conductors in fraction was at the end of her performance,
Speaker 1: he didn't wait for the applause. He just turned and
Speaker 1: walked off the stage. And that's that's considered a major
Speaker 1: insult to the audience, to the musicians, and so and
Speaker 1: you know, and and so that's what the whole dust
Speaker 1: up was about. Anyway, But we're way off base here.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get that David Howitt heard heard the plane
Speaker 1: being started, and he went out and got his binoculars,
Speaker 1: and he was watching the Cessna, and he was a
Speaker 1: little bit, a little bit worried about this being nighttime
Speaker 1: and all, and yeah, and and he he handed the
Speaker 1: binoculars over to Pauline Howett. She was watching them set
Speaker 1: up the flashlights, and she said that she was sure
Speaker 1: that both flashlights were moving at the same time. Now
Speaker 1: she Felicity went to do the flash he was in
Speaker 1: the airplane because she could hear the plane revving the engine.
Speaker 1: The plane engine was revving, so somebody was in there
Speaker 1: controlling the plane. So if Gibbs was in the plane,
Speaker 1: how is she how is she Because the airstrip is
Speaker 1: about wide maybe, so how is she managing to move
Speaker 1: both of these flash lights at the same time? So
Speaker 1: they were placed on the opposite ends. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: one person with like what what are they using? Airports? Now?
Speaker 1: Were there making the air motion? Yeah, the lights to
Speaker 1: to direct the traffic. It wasn't moving like that. It
Speaker 1: was a It was placed at the end, but placed
Speaker 1: on the corners so that he knew where the end
Speaker 1: of the runway was, so that he knew he had
Speaker 1: to be airborne by that plane and he could end
Speaker 1: and he could aim between the two lights, but obviously
Speaker 1: they'd be apart, so probably it was, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a little odd. She was under the impression
Speaker 1: that perhaps there was more than one person, more than
Speaker 1: two people down there. And Tim Howitt saw the same thing.
Speaker 1: He was in the Apparently the hotel has an observe
Speaker 1: a lounge. Of course it does. Of course it's like
Speaker 1: a little airport, so you know, of course it does.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he also said that both let both lights
Speaker 1: were moving at the same time, but when asked, a
Speaker 1: Felicity Granger later said, no, it was just her. There's
Speaker 1: no other better than nobody else out there, is it.
Speaker 1: Then it wouldn't have been on a hill or anything.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have been rolling. No, No, it's flat, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So so that's a little bit of a puzzler. But
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit later here, if
Speaker 1: we talked about it at all. But so he slammed
Speaker 1: in the gear and took off and flew out over
Speaker 1: the sound of ball, and David Howett was a little
Speaker 1: bit worried. So he there's a place just down the road,
Speaker 1: and you can see this on the aerial photo if
Speaker 1: you want to do Google Earth or whatever. It's just
Speaker 1: to the east, but I don't know, five six feet
Speaker 1: down the road or quartermall down the road, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But Pennygown Cemetery is right on the sound and it's
Speaker 1: got a good panoramic view. So he drove down there
Speaker 1: with the radio so he could just sort of see
Speaker 1: if the plane came back and then listen for distress
Speaker 1: calls and things like that, because he was, like I said, worried.
Speaker 1: And of course, not long after he arrived there a
Speaker 1: nice big sleet storm rolled in which lasted for seventy
Speaker 1: two hours. So, yeah, bad luck. Nothing's worse than a
Speaker 1: sleet store. It's not rain, it's icy. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder what that's gonna do to your plane, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's it's gonna ice up your windshield, it's gonna
Speaker 1: icee up your your flaps and your wings, and it's
Speaker 1: like that bad news. Yeah, that's terrible news when you're
Speaker 1: in the air, really bad news. They waited, but Gibbs
Speaker 1: did not come back, and so next day, on Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: called the authorities in and there was a big land
Speaker 1: and sea search. These r A F and Navy helicopters
Speaker 1: and a police mountain rescue unit, lots and lots of volunteers,
Speaker 1: people who knew the area pretty well, and they went
Speaker 1: over the island and searched it looking for looking for
Speaker 1: a wreckage, and didn't find any plane wreck. That's where
Speaker 1: the story ended for the time being. But then four
Speaker 1: months later, one nineteen seventy six, a local shepherd found
Speaker 1: his body up on the hillside above Pennygown Cemetery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: up on the hillside about fo up. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is why we have our rule about five years, right,
Speaker 1: because like people email us and say, oh, there's story
Speaker 1: this person disappeared, and it's like, well, it's only been
Speaker 1: two months, but yeah, his body will turn up, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's the worst, you know, when the park
Speaker 1: turns up the day afterwards and we put the show
Speaker 1: in the air. Yeah yeah, but anyway, So anyway, folks,
Speaker 1: I told you, I promise you there'd be a weird twist,
Speaker 1: and this is a So they found his body, but
Speaker 1: no plane wreck. They found his body. The only pre
Speaker 1: death injury on his body. And I say pre death
Speaker 1: because there have been some scavengers and birds kind of
Speaker 1: pecking at him and stuff like that. So he had
Speaker 1: some injuries, but the only pre death injury they could
Speaker 1: find was a three inch laceration on his left shin. Now,
Speaker 1: if he had fallen out of the plane or or
Speaker 1: jumped out of the plane or whatever had broken bones,
Speaker 1: he would have had broken bones, massive contusions, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he didn't have any of that, no injuries to
Speaker 1: speak of. So the pathologists included the exposure was the
Speaker 1: cause of death. Yeah, And they also they also examined
Speaker 1: his clothes and his boots and his hair and everything
Speaker 1: for any traces of salt water or marine life, you know,
Speaker 1: only little any little bugs that got and there was none.
Speaker 1: There was none of that stuff. It's it's a real puzzler.
Speaker 1: If he I guess the question would be, like, is
Speaker 1: that something that would wash away if there was a
Speaker 1: lot of areen or sleep I would think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the hair and the clothes even possibly it would wash away,
Speaker 1: But not the boots he was wearing flying boots, like
Speaker 1: the insides. Yeah, they would definitely they would be getting
Speaker 1: stuck in the wicking through the material, right, But that
Speaker 1: it would be saltwater versus whatever water was washing over
Speaker 1: it over the course of the four four once that
Speaker 1: he was thing, Okay, yeah, I mean so I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty unlikely. But in October of the same year
Speaker 1: ninety six, local farmer found a tire from the Sessina
Speaker 1: washed up about two miles northwest of the hotel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently apparently they had the serial number either painted
Speaker 1: on or written on or something like that. I would
Speaker 1: imagine it be cast into the tire. And you think
Speaker 1: about your tires that you buy for your car. There's
Speaker 1: all those numbers are right along the inside of the rim.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's got to be some kind of serial
Speaker 1: number that's got a big Yeah. I don't know, but yeah.
Speaker 1: So the only way that that they were able to
Speaker 1: match it to these to the Sesna. So that's the
Speaker 1: only thing that they found from the wreckage of the
Speaker 1: Cessna for years. In September, so that's like eleven years
Speaker 1: ten years later, Yeah, eleven years after a diver found
Speaker 1: the wreckage of a small plane in the Sound of
Speaker 1: Ball and two locations are cited in the stories that
Speaker 1: I read. Once says that it was found out the
Speaker 1: cost off the coast of Open, the city the town
Speaker 1: of Open, about a mile offshore, and which puts it,
Speaker 1: I don't know, ten miles away, maybe to the southeast
Speaker 1: from the hotel. But another one says that it's about
Speaker 1: a mile east northeast from the hotel out the sound.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a pretty huge variation. Uh So the
Speaker 1: diver reported that the wings have been torn off the
Speaker 1: plane about the doors were still latched and shut? Were they? Wait,
Speaker 1: let me clarify that, because I've read some things and
Speaker 1: I just want to clarify they were latched, shut dot locked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were latched. I don't I don't even know something
Speaker 1: about locked. And so that's why I was curious, because
Speaker 1: I did some digging about the plane, and I never
Speaker 1: saw anything that said that the doors locked like that.
Speaker 1: I would assume you could lock them from the outside
Speaker 1: at least. I don't know why you would need them
Speaker 1: to be locked from the inside, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: flying there as long as they're latched, but you would
Speaker 1: kind of want to be able to lock it up
Speaker 1: when you like walk away from it when it's on
Speaker 1: the ground. Right. Oh. Yeah. The thing about it is
Speaker 1: if he if he crashed and then swam out of
Speaker 1: the plane, it wouldn't be latched. No, you wouldn't turn
Speaker 1: around even if out of yeah, yeah, you're going. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: if he says, say he jumped out at speed, if
Speaker 1: you managed to force it would have slapped it shut again,
Speaker 1: but then he would have had broken mounds. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're sorry, we're theorizing. But anyway, I've seen no documentation.
Speaker 1: I've tried to find something. You would think that he would.
Speaker 1: He would write down the call numbers or whatever they
Speaker 1: are on the side of the diver, if you think
Speaker 1: he would have done that, But I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: see that he did. He's basically said he found a plane,
Speaker 1: and everybody thinks that this gives this plane, but nobody
Speaker 1: knows exactly for sure why he didn't market with the booty.
Speaker 1: I don't know, although he doesn't remember either where it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you could go back and search
Speaker 1: and find it somehow. It's just probably ways to find
Speaker 1: and they probably should try to figure this out. It
Speaker 1: would be they're never really going to solve the mystery
Speaker 1: until they find that airplane. Even then they probably won't,
Speaker 1: but you know, there might be a clue in there.
Speaker 1: So anyway, years go by, then again, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are assuming, but nobody knows for sure that that's
Speaker 1: just plane. But an early two thousand floor two thousand
Speaker 1: four or three Royal Navy minesweepers were up doing stuff
Speaker 1: off the coast of Open again and they found the
Speaker 1: wreckage of a plane about a mile off of Open.
Speaker 1: So that sort of supports the divers location as being
Speaker 1: a mile off of Open unless it's a different wreck
Speaker 1: and there's no reason it couldn't be a different ren.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it could be any plane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that set out of speculation in the papers that they
Speaker 1: thought this might be Gibbs as plane that the rf
Speaker 1: IT found. They said that they found a submersible of
Speaker 1: cameras down there and stuff like that to get pictures
Speaker 1: of it. And they analyzed it, investigated, and they figured
Speaker 1: out that the recage they found was a Catalan a
Speaker 1: flying boat. Familiar with those things, those amphibious planes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of they're kind of big, and they've
Speaker 1: got the bottom of the hull is shaped almost like
Speaker 1: a boat, and then they've got overhead wings. Okay, so
Speaker 1: except for without the pontoons, right, yeah, I doesn't have
Speaker 1: the because like a normal seaplane would have like the
Speaker 1: pontoons instead of like wheels, and they just like take
Speaker 1: off and land that way. These are more like boat planes.
Speaker 1: They still have small pontoons, right, but it's not the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like you know when you see to be
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, yeah, it's probably it's probably nice to
Speaker 1: have some pontoon, you sort of floaty thing out there,
Speaker 1: just in case a wave catches you on the side. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they'd be on the wings, not on like legs
Speaker 1: below the plane where running gears supposed to be running gear.
Speaker 1: Thank you planes, not your No. So this rect was
Speaker 1: a disappointment, Yeah, unfortunately. Um so the location is still
Speaker 1: a mystery, and who knows, maybe the plane didn't even crash.
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible, yeah maybe he just but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to theorize about this yet. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that later. Uh. There have been two two books are
Speaker 1: written about this, The Great Mall Air Mystery by Scott McCadam,
Speaker 1: whose name actually is David Howitt, the co owner of
Speaker 1: the hotel. So he was ghostwriting, yeah he was, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he was afraid that if the book came
Speaker 1: out and turn out to be really lame, and all
Speaker 1: everybody would make fun of him, so he was a name.
Speaker 1: And the other book is fictionalized account to the whole
Speaker 1: thing called These Demented Lands by Alan Warner, who lives
Speaker 1: in Oben. I remember seeing the cover of that, at
Speaker 1: least the cover of the one that I saw. I
Speaker 1: had a really cool cover. All Right, you're ready to
Speaker 1: swing in to the theories, Okay, alright, good enough. So
Speaker 1: I've got several theories here. One is that the plane
Speaker 1: crash into the sound of Mall and he managed to
Speaker 1: escape and swim to shore. And once he was on shore,
Speaker 1: he could have from where he was at he could
Speaker 1: have walked to the road, made a right turn and
Speaker 1: walked down the road a little waste to the hotel.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that far? This is This is based on if
Speaker 1: he crashed a mile out to see from the airfield,
Speaker 1: not if he crashed near open correct. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it's it's conceivable even that. I don't know how
Speaker 1: well assessment one fifty flies without a pilot in it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how far it would have gone. It's
Speaker 1: conceivable he didn't crash a mile out. Maybe he bailed
Speaker 1: closer to shore and the plane went out and then
Speaker 1: crashed further out. I could see that. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: plane crashed, he manages to escape somehow, and apparently the
Speaker 1: windshield was broken, so he maybe swam out through that then,
Speaker 1: because since the doors were locked, I can't imagine he'd
Speaker 1: swim out from a sinking plane and turn around and
Speaker 1: shut the door. No, but I couldn't the water pressure
Speaker 1: have shut the door. I mean it's possible, you know.
Speaker 1: And the other thing to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: the plane wasn't even like maybe discovered until like ten
Speaker 1: years later. Right, maybe it was and fish shot, So
Speaker 1: it's always a little bit. It's always possible, you know,
Speaker 1: that the currents are when it tumbles to the bottom
Speaker 1: and the wings are snapping off, because the wings were
Speaker 1: snapped off in the the one that was found that
Speaker 1: I said, the wings were broke off, So I could
Speaker 1: see conceivably, if the plane goes down and it tumbles
Speaker 1: across the surface of the water and the door is
Speaker 1: not latched, it's probably going to get slam shut. And
Speaker 1: even if it came down gently, I could see as
Speaker 1: it sinks and it hits the bottom, if it happens
Speaker 1: to land, right, I mean, this is circumstantial, and god
Speaker 1: knows if we're even on the right track here, but
Speaker 1: we don't even know that this actually gives us plane right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is possible that an open door can be shut.
Speaker 1: So he swims the shore. Once he's on shore, he
Speaker 1: apparently maybe had hypothermy. In fact, it probably did swim
Speaker 1: through that icy cold water. So he gets to the
Speaker 1: or and gets confused because all he needs to do
Speaker 1: is walk up to the road, make a right turn,
Speaker 1: like I said, go down to the hotel, and he's
Speaker 1: home free. Instead he wanders up the hillside and then
Speaker 1: just probably got overcome with hypothermia and died of exposure.
Speaker 1: That's one possibility. The reason is not to like this,
Speaker 1: is it again to know salt water that we mentioned
Speaker 1: potentially could have been washed off, but probably not, probably not.
Speaker 1: The other reason I don't like it is he was
Speaker 1: that he was wearing his clothes and his boots. Because
Speaker 1: if you guys ever tried swimming with clothes on and water,
Speaker 1: especially shoes. Oh yeah, So I mean that's the first
Speaker 1: thing to do, is you cut your clothes off, take
Speaker 1: your clothes off, whatever you do, you got to they
Speaker 1: put they waste so much and they put so much
Speaker 1: drag on you. So that's the other reason I don't
Speaker 1: like this. There that this idea that he crashed and
Speaker 1: got out of the plane and swim shore. The next
Speaker 1: theory is that he bailed out of the plane over
Speaker 1: water and swim to shore. Felicity Granger did that before
Speaker 1: he left on a slide. He said that the things
Speaker 1: went south, he would just throttle the plane way back
Speaker 1: and just open the door and bail out. That's what
Speaker 1: he told her, and maybe that's what he did. But
Speaker 1: of course the reasons not to like this theory is
Speaker 1: the same as above. Stall salt water and yeah, and
Speaker 1: also I checked the stall speed for Assessa forty eight
Speaker 1: miles an hour, and I'm not sure how easy it
Speaker 1: would be to open the door forty eight hour. So
Speaker 1: this is the point where I geeked out a little bit,
Speaker 1: because he was in a Cessna F one fifty h
Speaker 1: I think was the model. I think that was the
Speaker 1: newest model. And I started reading through the changes that
Speaker 1: they had done to the planes in ten years, looking
Speaker 1: specifically at like the doors and all of that, and
Speaker 1: the doors had they had upgraded him to a simple
Speaker 1: latch handle, much like you would see in a car
Speaker 1: that's the seventies model, you know, the inside doors, they're
Speaker 1: just a simple her rather than anything that's a little
Speaker 1: more difficult to get your hand on. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that they did, because Cessnas are so small, is
Speaker 1: they added three inches of shoulder room to the door
Speaker 1: for the pilot and the co pilot whoever's in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat. So I got the impression and I could
Speaker 1: never really see an easy profile, but I think we've
Speaker 1: all seen pictures of Cessna's and when you look at
Speaker 1: them dead on, they're not flat on the sides. They
Speaker 1: kind of flare out at the top a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. They're kind of a V shape.
Speaker 1: So I could see and I'm not nuts about this theory,
Speaker 1: but I went down this road anyway. If he's getting
Speaker 1: close to a stall speed, you know, this fifty mile
Speaker 1: an hour threshold, it is possible in my mind, not easy,
Speaker 1: but possible too because he's got that leverage room now
Speaker 1: because the door is kind of cammered over to be
Speaker 1: able to push it. And that's one of those things
Speaker 1: to me that once the once he gets it far
Speaker 1: enough and the wind starts pulling in through that gap.
Speaker 1: It's gonna help him. That air pressure that's rushing into
Speaker 1: the cabin, to me, would help pull that door aid
Speaker 1: you and pushing so you're not pushing against all of
Speaker 1: the wind because the oncoming wind is now rushing in
Speaker 1: and rushing out that gap you've created. It's it's not perfect.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a perfect theory, but I see
Speaker 1: how it's potentially plausible. Yeah, I think it would be hard.
Speaker 1: It'd be hard, but if you're determined enough and desperate enough,
Speaker 1: you can probably do. The Other thing that makes me
Speaker 1: wonder about that is when you start pushing, and so
Speaker 1: you're going out the left hand side, you're sitting on
Speaker 1: the left hand side. When you start pushing that door out,
Speaker 1: what's the plane gonna do? It's gonna start making a
Speaker 1: left turn right? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I go. Of course,
Speaker 1: at this point you're abandoning ships, so maybe you don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't. There's an experienced pilot and actually find that, Well,
Speaker 1: how bad is this gonna be? Is it just gonna
Speaker 1: slowly start turning? Laughter? Is it just suddenly gonna start
Speaker 1: like whipping around laft going to a stall and then
Speaker 1: just starts, you know, spinning madly down to the earth.
Speaker 1: And we do we know if he if the plane
Speaker 1: was equipped with the parachute as far as I know,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have a parachute in And I don't
Speaker 1: think those planes are pretty small. I know. That's that's
Speaker 1: why I was asking is I didn't think that would
Speaker 1: be something that you would standard have in assessina. But
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's x RF. He may you know,
Speaker 1: he may have insisted on something and I never saw
Speaker 1: anything about that. But he rented it. I think they
Speaker 1: would have mentioned that's right, he didn't. It wasn't his
Speaker 1: personal plain. Yeah, another fun fact about him. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know his flying license wasn't valid. I know it expired.
Speaker 1: Was flying with a suspended license. Yeah, the cops were
Speaker 1: going to pull him over, Yeah, go to his grave
Speaker 1: side and run him a ticket. I don't see that happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. So bailing out, bailing out of
Speaker 1: the plane over the water, No, I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really cut the mustard from me. Now, So
Speaker 1: next theory is that he bailed out of the plane
Speaker 1: over land. I kind of like this theory. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: bails out the plane just goes on and crashes in
Speaker 1: the water somewhere, because obviously they never found the wreckage
Speaker 1: on the land. So let's say he bails out and
Speaker 1: as he hits the ground, he's knocked unconscious and before
Speaker 1: we can regain caustiousness, he's overcome by by hypothermia and exposure.
Speaker 1: But he didn't have serious injury, I guess my serious injuries.
Speaker 1: My thought is that perhaps, you know, he could have
Speaker 1: bailed out, like if he was having a hard time
Speaker 1: getting altitude for whatever reason or when he took off,
Speaker 1: Like nobody really says like what happened immediately after he
Speaker 1: took off, but maybe he like was miss gaging because
Speaker 1: it was dark and all that. You know, maybe he
Speaker 1: was miss gauging and he was he found himself very
Speaker 1: close to the ground and you know, about to crash
Speaker 1: or whatever for whatever reason. So he bailed all doubt,
Speaker 1: but he was a little confused. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have a serious injury to like
Speaker 1: become confused and disoriented after something like that. So if
Speaker 1: he bailed out close to the ocean, turned around and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just walk back to the hotel, you know, his
Speaker 1: gash on his leg because he hit it when he
Speaker 1: jumped out, So he starts trying to walk back to
Speaker 1: the hotel, and then his overcome by exposure because it's
Speaker 1: leading horribly. He dies on the mountaintop where he thought
Speaker 1: he was supposed to be for whatever reason, and then
Speaker 1: the plane continues on and crashes into the sea. That's
Speaker 1: my theory, and I can dovetail right off of that,
Speaker 1: because that doesn't exactly explain what happened to the assessment itself.
Speaker 1: But if you go and you look at the map
Speaker 1: of this area, there's a pretty decent sized road there,
Speaker 1: so it is possible that he could have landed on
Speaker 1: the road. So nobody saw him come back to the airport,
Speaker 1: but he could have landed on the road. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: still saying that he's you know, he's he's injured himself somehow,
Speaker 1: he's disoriented and he just steps out of the plane.
Speaker 1: He didn't turn it off, and it's a big storm.
Speaker 1: It will keep the truck forward. And that road is
Speaker 1: pretty close to the edge of the coastline. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's that close. Well, I mean it's close enough.
Speaker 1: And you know, an airplane if you leave it at
Speaker 1: a decent, a decent RPM, it'll keep walking forward and
Speaker 1: eventually drive itself right into the water. Seems like somebody
Speaker 1: would have noticed it wouldn't go very far. But if it's,
Speaker 1: But if it's, if the doors are closed and it's
Speaker 1: covered in ice and it hits the water, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna sink super fast. We've got a crazy windstorm going on.
Speaker 1: It's possible that it got drug out to see I mean,
Speaker 1: and and this is that we're operating under the presumption
Speaker 1: that this wreck that was supposedly found is real. I
Speaker 1: mean again, this is we're pulling this out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying it's I think it what Devon
Speaker 1: came up with. This entirely possible that he failed close
Speaker 1: to land and then you know, I think it probably stayed.
Speaker 1: I don't think he probably landed. I think it probably
Speaker 1: probably bailed for whatever reason. Maybe it was getting icy
Speaker 1: and he realized, like crap, I can't actually keep flying.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take it as close as I can
Speaker 1: to the ground and then bail. Yeah, and it just
Speaker 1: you know, he would he would have been a lot
Speaker 1: better off bailing over water. And I'll tell you, why
Speaker 1: did you go? I did you go on Google street
Speaker 1: View and look at the island or stare at you know?
Speaker 1: Well I did. I drove up down this road a
Speaker 1: little bit, the hotel and everything, and I looked at
Speaker 1: the countryside and there are a lot of rock outcroppings
Speaker 1: there everywhere in this island. So bailing over land really
Speaker 1: bad idea. I mean, if you have a nice smooth meadow, maybe,
Speaker 1: but if you're gonna smash your you're gonna smash yourself
Speaker 1: to pieces on it. Well, he couldn't ran it right. Well,
Speaker 1: he's been he's been hanging out there and he knows
Speaker 1: what the countryside looks. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: rocks sticking out of the ground. Yeah, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that jumping out over the land
Speaker 1: would have been the like the worst I since New Coke.
Speaker 1: There's another popular theory out there. You guys have probably
Speaker 1: seen seen this one. Peter Gibbs was an m I
Speaker 1: five agents. Yeah, I'm sorry. Maybe he was. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't see any evidence of that, but
Speaker 1: he was doing cloak and dagger stuff in Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Northern Ireland is actually not that far away from mole.
Speaker 1: So if he jumped in the plane and at the
Speaker 1: at the air speed of assessment one fifty, he could
Speaker 1: be in northern Ireland and I don't know what forty
Speaker 1: five minutes. It would also explain why he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna do right now, leave my
Speaker 1: girlfriend and go on an airplane trip in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. Yeah, after some wine. And it's gross
Speaker 1: out because that's great cover. Well, I mean it's a
Speaker 1: it's a cover. You do what you're assigned to do
Speaker 1: and trying to maintain your cover. Yeah, so anyway, that's
Speaker 1: that's so he got over there. But when the sires
Speaker 1: the sere goes, his cover was blown. The IRA murdered him,
Speaker 1: and he brought his body back and dumped it on
Speaker 1: the hillside to send a message, and the plane was
Speaker 1: never found and the plane was never found. Maybe, and
Speaker 1: this is not plausible, I mean, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: if the IRA had murdered him, I doubt that they
Speaker 1: would have taken the trouble to bring his body back
Speaker 1: to mall. But what if he flew Okay, wait, dovetailing
Speaker 1: on theories here. He flew and he picked somebody up
Speaker 1: and they went to have their clandestine meeting in the graveyard,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was the owner who like was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm worried about him, so I'm gonna go to this
Speaker 1: one random place, the graveyard, because that makes sense. And
Speaker 1: they met, they had some something, right, they met, and
Speaker 1: the somebody else took the airplane and flewed away, and
Speaker 1: they knocked him over the head, knocked Gibbs right, his
Speaker 1: kids we've been talking about, got knocked him over the
Speaker 1: head and sent him wandering, and he wandered up the
Speaker 1: hill and passed out. And you don't again, you don't
Speaker 1: have to have that serious and injury to like pass out.
Speaker 1: That lends credence to the why we're both flashlights moving
Speaker 1: at the same time, because there was that third person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a third person. Maybe there was another person
Speaker 1: in the plane, and you know, they pushed Gibbs out
Speaker 1: at a low altitude and went on or you know whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I was going to get to, is
Speaker 1: my next theory, which is that he never got into
Speaker 1: plane to begin with. Let's say he was involved with
Speaker 1: m I five and anything. Let's say M I five
Speaker 1: needs to um as quiet and discreet away as possible
Speaker 1: get to somewhere, we'll send Northern Ireland and x Field
Speaker 1: trade one of their guys bring him back home. So
Speaker 1: this is a two seater plane. And so what they
Speaker 1: did is they just had Gibbs positioned himself at this
Speaker 1: place which is commediately located not too far from Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: with a plane. And that way the guy who's going
Speaker 1: to fly the plane to Northern Ireland, collect the cargo
Speaker 1: bring it back, is he just he could just drive
Speaker 1: out there. He's not seen getting out a plane or
Speaker 1: anything like that. He just you know, takes off and
Speaker 1: heads the ball and quietly meets up with GiB Gets.
Speaker 1: The airplane takes off and unfortunately doesn't come back. So
Speaker 1: this puts gives and kind of a pickle because he's outside.
Speaker 1: You can't go back inside the hotel because he's supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the plane. Sure, and your idea of
Speaker 1: somebody knocking him over the head as plausible. That's occurred
Speaker 1: to me that perhaps that happened there was yet other
Speaker 1: people hanging around. But another possibility is that he had
Speaker 1: some time to kill so he decided to go for
Speaker 1: a little hike and in the middle of the night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not much else to do this, so he decided to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, hike up the hillside. And maybe he went
Speaker 1: up the hillside to see if he can catch sight
Speaker 1: of the plane coming back. I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: you know, it's still the thing that like a little
Speaker 1: outlining to me continues to be the fact that the
Speaker 1: inn owner or the hotel owner was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was worried about him, so I went to the graveyard,
Speaker 1: Like was it a particularly open meadow area where somebody
Speaker 1: might make an emergency landing? Like was there something special
Speaker 1: about the graveyard that made him say this is a
Speaker 1: reasonable place to go? Or is it that you know,
Speaker 1: Gibbs was there or he knew something about something. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Gibbs was found close to that area, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that if you look at it on
Speaker 1: street view again, I drove past the graveyard, and it
Speaker 1: does have a nice clear, unobstructive view of the sound,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's not real high, but it's a bit,
Speaker 1: but it's a little bit higher than most of the
Speaker 1: ground around it, Yeah, a little bit. And and so
Speaker 1: you know, he maybe his thinking was it he'd have
Speaker 1: a better view from out there. I mean if he
Speaker 1: wanted to covertly meet with Gibbs. I mean, if he
Speaker 1: could just talk to him, chat with him at the hotel.
Speaker 1: He didn't really need to do that. Yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: knock him off at the hotel though, done. No, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back to my theory that he he was not actually
Speaker 1: in the plane. He goes for a hike and you know,
Speaker 1: remember you got a three inch laceration on his left
Speaker 1: shin he fell tripped perhaps, you know, and it could
Speaker 1: be just an amazing coincidence. The guy on the plane
Speaker 1: had a terrible run of luck and wind up crashing
Speaker 1: because of the sleeve storm. And then Gibbs was out
Speaker 1: there just wandering around wondering how he Who's going to
Speaker 1: explain this when he gets back to the hotel and uh,
Speaker 1: and then he trips over one of those rock outcroppings
Speaker 1: I was just talking about, hits his head and immediately,
Speaker 1: you know, there's unconscious for a while and dies of exposure.
Speaker 1: It could so it could be just something like that,
Speaker 1: or the guy doesn't crash, you know, like maybe the
Speaker 1: guy doesn't crash, but he's unsuccessed. You know, there are
Speaker 1: lots of things that could have happened to the pilot
Speaker 1: if there was another the third person pilot, Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: he didn't crash, Maybe he just abscounded with the plane. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess that theory would mean that his girlfriend would
Speaker 1: have had to be in on it too. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the that's the problem I'm having a hard time with
Speaker 1: is that she would also have to be an agent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now another possibility, if you want to look at it
Speaker 1: this way, Yes, if she's in on the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And another possibility is that this was a super super
Speaker 1: secret operation. List but let's presume, right, okay, because there
Speaker 1: was this run of bad luck because the plane took
Speaker 1: off and didn't come back, that means that Gibbs is
Speaker 1: supposed to be dead. And no, she doesn't kill him.
Speaker 1: But what happens is gives gives him her phone phone,
Speaker 1: M I M I fiber or in my six or
Speaker 1: whatever whoever their handlers and they just say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we're in a bit of a pickle here. If I
Speaker 1: confess that I was not in that plane we were blowing,
Speaker 1: we're going to blow the secret operation. So you guys
Speaker 1: need to find me a new identity and come up
Speaker 1: with the corpse that we can plant somewhere. That's true,
Speaker 1: although and again, but that doesn't really make sense either,
Speaker 1: don't you think about it, Because if the plane disappeared
Speaker 1: and crashed at sea, they don't really need a corpse,
Speaker 1: so it probably was his corpse. You know. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's man, we're really getting off track here.
Speaker 1: That's that's presuming that the plane did crash and that
Speaker 1: whoever took off didn't change their mind or double cross
Speaker 1: and get murdered by somebody at the other end of
Speaker 1: the flight. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you know that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's presuming all of that. So it could be
Speaker 1: that they realize, uh, Billy has just turned to the
Speaker 1: other team and it's just totally hosed us here. What
Speaker 1: do we do? The one thing that's the and I
Speaker 1: like the idea of dumping a body, of planting replacement body.
Speaker 1: What gives that a little bit of teeth for me
Speaker 1: is that when they searched for him and everybody was
Speaker 1: out and about, they were searching right near work right there.
Speaker 1: It's now it's possible that they were not looking for
Speaker 1: a body. They were looking for areage. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: see a body. I mean, it doesn't seem like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like this place is so gigantic that like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't also notice that there's a dead body.
Speaker 1: But the thing about it that's sense it is wreckage.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a fairly large item. You don't need
Speaker 1: to like, you know, line up, line up in a
Speaker 1: file five ft apart stuff. So yeah, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. You could probably stand an entire
Speaker 1: hillside from the road, and so, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how close he got to where his body was.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm liking somebody did come back in a
Speaker 1: later day and put the body there. I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you'd go to the trouble maybe
Speaker 1: like maybe why not? Yeah, who knows. Gosh, this is
Speaker 1: a big home mystery. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: first times I think that Joe's don a mystery that
Speaker 1: he has not claimed to solve. I think that, Well,
Speaker 1: it's because it was had that crazy twist he didn't
Speaker 1: want anybody to throw the iPod down. Yeah, exactly that.
Speaker 1: You gotta admit that was a pretty good twist. It's
Speaker 1: real good, really good. Yeah. Yeah, and it's still a
Speaker 1: puzzler to those people out there, I'm still puzzling the
Speaker 1: heck out of me. Yea, I am considering that that.
Speaker 1: I don't think he crashed the plane and climbed out
Speaker 1: and swam. I don't think he'd be able to over water.
Speaker 1: I don't think he'd be able to over land. I
Speaker 1: don't think he was an m I five agents. I
Speaker 1: think that my theory that somebody else took off with
Speaker 1: his plane is probably more plausible than any of those theories.
Speaker 1: Really failing thing is just no, it's it's really really screwy.
Speaker 1: He just didn't have enough injuries. I mean, like you
Speaker 1: get injuries from like the most mundane things. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know you can I don't know, twist and ankle
Speaker 1: because you've walked weird on a path. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you jump out of an airplane, you're gonna have injuries. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like let's assume you get it down to like, say,
Speaker 1: fifty ft off the ground. Even that like kill you.
Speaker 1: But also remember if he's thrawled back to to stall speed,
Speaker 1: he's going about fifty horizontally. Also, he's going to be
Speaker 1: bouncing enough, but just bouncing down the road for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and even even on the water, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be skipping like a stone over the water. It's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt well, And we need to we can't avoid the
Speaker 1: fact that, yes, there are stories of people who have
Speaker 1: bailed out of planes and survived basically unscathed. But normally
Speaker 1: they bailed out and they landed on an incline that
Speaker 1: had some kind of soft surface snow or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and they slid for a while, so they burned that
Speaker 1: kinetic energy. They didn't just land flat. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for like soft tissue, Like if
Speaker 1: you live through something like that, you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: basically unscathed with like so much muscle damage therapy for
Speaker 1: like you know, five years or whatever. And that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff shows up on autopsies just as much as
Speaker 1: you know, broken bones and things like that. So they
Speaker 1: would have said, like, yeah, like he didn't have any
Speaker 1: broken bones, but his back was real messed up, like
Speaker 1: you noticed after four months. Will that be as obvious
Speaker 1: when the critters are using him for he assume so,
Speaker 1: I assume, so, I think so. But I think that
Speaker 1: if he had if he'd bailed to said with your theory,
Speaker 1: he bails, figuring that he'll get a softer landing if
Speaker 1: he's going out to sea, and so when he hits
Speaker 1: the ground, the ground is sloping down away from him
Speaker 1: and the problem, and and that I thought that occurred
Speaker 1: to me that would be would be one way to
Speaker 1: solve or to yeah, one way to sort of like
Speaker 1: mitigate the whole issue. But um, the problem is you
Speaker 1: still going to roll for a while. And he is
Speaker 1: absolutely guaranteed in that countryside to hit at least one
Speaker 1: rock out cropping. It only takes one. Yeah, it yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much guaranteed. So yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: wasn't in the plane, and uh, because it could be
Speaker 1: that he was just hanging out somebody killed him, or
Speaker 1: or he just had an accident and just coincidentally died.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't know any way. You guys
Speaker 1: having more theories, No, I think we've gone through just
Speaker 1: about every possible theory, yeah, and the impossible. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't another way ever going to know the answer
Speaker 1: to this one. But it's an interesting little story, you
Speaker 1: gotta admit. So that's it for this week, folks. Um
Speaker 1: find us you can actually find our episode odes and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other fun material on our website, which
Speaker 1: is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We're on Gmail if
Speaker 1: you want to send us an email, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people do find us and email us at Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook, so find us, friend us, like us,
Speaker 1: and we have a group out there too. If you're
Speaker 1: if you're listening to us on Stitcher, well you're probably
Speaker 1: not hearing this because it is still truck hating our episodes.
Speaker 1: I think I think we've gotten to the bottom what
Speaker 1: was going on? Okay, good apologies, folks, but it's not
Speaker 1: our faultest stitchers fault. But you can stream us on Stitcher.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Twitter, where our handle
Speaker 1: is thinking Sideways, not thinking but thinking sideways. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on iTunes. Probably found us on iTunes,
Speaker 1: if you probably did find us on iTunes. If you're
Speaker 1: on iTunes and you're downloading our stuff off of iTunes,
Speaker 1: that's great, but it would be great if you could
Speaker 1: stop and leave us a comment and rating. We really
Speaker 1: like those. No keep downloading, but also also keeping out
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, sorry, I didn't you know what I mean? Okay,
Speaker 1: And that's it any last serious from you, guys. No good.
Speaker 1: I'm out. Well, okay, I am out too, So alright, folks,
Speaker 1: So for Thinking Sideways podcast. We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you next week. Yeah. Bye,