Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
Speaker 1: is all they call me Ben, and you are you
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: As always, we're joined with our super producer Alex w
Speaker 1: on the ones and twos? Are you Gonna Wave? Is
Speaker 1: it all? Has he always been there? Is it like
Speaker 1: the Shining? Is it like that scene? That scene the Shining?
Speaker 1: I guess it's like it's happily ever after from now on.
Speaker 1: It does get to a place where the things that
Speaker 1: are in your life at the moment get to a
Speaker 1: point where they feel like they've just always been like that,
Speaker 1: even if it's only been a week. For one thing.
Speaker 1: That's very normal to people who live in the US.
Speaker 1: It's just the sheer size of this country, the sheer
Speaker 1: enormity of it. Those purple mountains, majesty, It's yeah, it's huge.
Speaker 1: And we have large swaths of land that are largely
Speaker 1: unpopulated by human beings, and a lot of these lands
Speaker 1: are allocated by the government as a place where you
Speaker 1: can go right, And every year millions of people visit
Speaker 1: public parks, go on day hikes, go on more um
Speaker 1: more involved treks, you know, long term camping. There is
Speaker 1: a darker side to some of these explorations, and the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is that not all of the
Speaker 1: people who go into the wild return, many, in fact
Speaker 1: go missing. And for years now, folks, you have been
Speaker 1: writing to Matt Nolan I asking us to take a
Speaker 1: closer look at this phenomenon of people who just go missing,
Speaker 1: and not just in in um wilderness in the US,
Speaker 1: as we'll find, but in places in other places around
Speaker 1: the world. And the question is what happens? How do
Speaker 1: we track this? And in our exploration of this topic,
Speaker 1: we went directly to the source, to the most well
Speaker 1: known expert on disappearances in national parks. Ladies and gentlemen. Today,
Speaker 1: in this episode we are joined by David Politis, the
Speaker 1: prolific author of numerous works, the mastermind behind the Missing
Speaker 1: four one one series, and the creator of the new
Speaker 1: Missing four one one documentary. Welcome to the show, David, Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks a million, guys. I appreciate being here. So I
Speaker 1: guess the first things first, if we want to file
Speaker 1: it under that category. For everybody listening out there, could
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit more about the missing
Speaker 1: four one one phenomenon, which began as a book series.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Correct? Uh? I'm a former police officers
Speaker 1: spent twenty years in California and municipal department there, and
Speaker 1: after I left, I started to do do some research in
Speaker 1: a national park and some two National park rangers knew
Speaker 1: me from other books I had written. They were following
Speaker 1: me around. Later on, I left the park went back
Speaker 1: to my room independently. They each came back and went
Speaker 1: to the room, knocked on the door and said that
Speaker 1: they had something to tell me, and they knew who
Speaker 1: I was. They knew I had investigative work I've done
Speaker 1: in the past, and they said, we have a story
Speaker 1: for you. And what they had said was is that
Speaker 1: they had worked at other parks, and they had worked
Speaker 1: other missing persons cases in those national parks. They eventually
Speaker 1: got together. They talked about compared notes at the park
Speaker 1: that they were at, and they thought there were some
Speaker 1: peculiarities there that needed to be looked into, namely, during
Speaker 1: a search during that first seven to ten days that
Speaker 1: someone goes missing, there's a lot of publicity, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of press, there's a lot of people looking for
Speaker 1: the missing person. At the end of that, in the the
Speaker 1: ten days, there's nothing. Everything stops, there's no follow up,
Speaker 1: there's no investigation. There's essentially nothing more that happens. And
Speaker 1: when they looked into it, they thought that the locations
Speaker 1: that these people went missing were odd. Many of them
Speaker 1: went missing in places that weren't deep in the woods,
Speaker 1: but might have been fairly close to the center of
Speaker 1: the park, or a populated area, or a location where
Speaker 1: a lot of people should have seen what happened. And
Speaker 1: they the more they looked into it, and the more
Speaker 1: they tried to find out information, they were stymied themselves.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get some reports, and they thought the whole
Speaker 1: thing was just strange. So I said I'd look into it.
Speaker 1: I left the park the next day, called a couple
Speaker 1: of law enforcement friends. I said, this is what I heard.
Speaker 1: See if there's any validity to it. You know, later
Speaker 1: on they called me back and said, wow, there's something here.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of disappearances and there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of follow up, and there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: information available. So the National Parks are US has a
Speaker 1: contingent of National Park Police officers and they're all trained
Speaker 1: at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. They get outstanding training.
Speaker 1: It's the big department. And we knew that if we
Speaker 1: filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests against
Speaker 1: the National Park Police, this could be a jump off
Speaker 1: point for our investigation into these missing people. So the
Speaker 1: first thing I did was filed against them for a
Speaker 1: list of missing people, and within six weeks I get
Speaker 1: a notice back from him. An attorney calls me from
Speaker 1: the Park Service and says, why do you want the information?
Speaker 1: And I know from reading the Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 1: they can't use the rationale behind why you make a
Speaker 1: request for determining if they're going to give you the
Speaker 1: information or not. And I told him that and he said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get the information. We just want to know
Speaker 1: why you're using it. And I said, just doing some research.
Speaker 1: And the person then came back and said, well, we
Speaker 1: don't have any lists of missing people. I said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you guys have a huge law enforcement group.
Speaker 1: I could go to any small to medium sized law
Speaker 1: enforcement agency in the United States, walk into their chief's office,
Speaker 1: and within an hour he would have a list of
Speaker 1: all the missing people in his jurisdiction. Now you're telling me,
Speaker 1: in your large jurisdiction, you don't have any lifts missing people.
Speaker 1: He said, no, Well, if you go on to the
Speaker 1: website of the National Park Service and you kind of
Speaker 1: look around there, they have a lot of lists. One
Speaker 1: of the more interesting ones is a list of all
Speaker 1: the movies made on National Park Service property. So they
Speaker 1: know the importance of keeping lists and the importance of
Speaker 1: keeping lists of missing people, and they chose not to
Speaker 1: give it to us. So I was a published author
Speaker 1: at the time, and I used an exemption, and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to use my exemption, and I would like
Speaker 1: to get the information from your agency, and if you
Speaker 1: don't have it like you claim, I want you to
Speaker 1: put the list together for me. So they get back
Speaker 1: to me later and they said, well, we did a
Speaker 1: little search and your books aren't in enough libraries to
Speaker 1: qualify for the exemption. Well, folks, there is no such qualifier.
Speaker 1: It says if you are a published author, this qualifies period.
Speaker 1: And I reminded him of that and they said, well,
Speaker 1: this is just an internal policy we have. Okay. So
Speaker 1: let's just pretend that I want to pay for the information.
Speaker 1: How much are you going to charge me for a
Speaker 1: list of missing people from Yosemite National Park and then
Speaker 1: a list from your entire jurisdiction? He goes, we'll get
Speaker 1: back to you. They get back to me, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: for a list from Yosemite National Park, it's gonna cost
Speaker 1: you thirty four thousand dollars, and if you want to
Speaker 1: list from the entire National Park Service, it's going to
Speaker 1: cost you one point four million dollars. Wow. What what
Speaker 1: kind of justification did they have for that number? None.
Speaker 1: They said that they would use an analyst at six
Speaker 1: an hour, and they figured it would take them that
Speaker 1: long to put it together. Now, since then, I've learned
Speaker 1: a lot. We shouldn't just have these lists just available
Speaker 1: like in a database, Like can they just send you
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet? Like? What is it? What does it take
Speaker 1: such meticulous mining and paying some specialists. It seems like
Speaker 1: that's the whole point of keeping these kinds of records
Speaker 1: right exactly. And I know that there's I'm not the
Speaker 1: sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to some things.
Speaker 1: So I reached out to some investigative journalists I know,
Speaker 1: and I threw this by him and I said, do
Speaker 1: you believe they don't have a list? I could not
Speaker 1: find one journalist that said there's there's no possibility in
Speaker 1: this world that the National Park Service Police doesn't have
Speaker 1: a list of missing people in their jurisdiction. Everyone says
Speaker 1: that they do. They just don't want to give it up.
Speaker 1: But the rationale behind this, and since then, this was
Speaker 1: six seven years ago now is I've had several people
Speaker 1: like yourself step up and say, hey, we will buy
Speaker 1: the National Park Service a laptop and put Excel on it.
Speaker 1: And every month there's called a month. There's a monthly
Speaker 1: report that comes in from every National Park Service property
Speaker 1: from their superintendent of the highlights of what happens in
Speaker 1: that park. Somebody goes missing, somebody gets killed, whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: they could have an intern which costs nothing, screen those
Speaker 1: monthly documents and put every person's name on an Excel
Speaker 1: spreadsheet on that laptop. It would essentially cost them nothing.
Speaker 1: They chose not to publicize this. Now, Interestingly, just within
Speaker 1: the last month, they've started to put one or two
Speaker 1: people on their website from each park that's gone missing.
Speaker 1: We're trying to understand the rationale why they're putting those
Speaker 1: people up as missing but not the vast numbers that
Speaker 1: are missing in the park. Namely, the people that they're
Speaker 1: putting missing are people I've already written about or talked about.
Speaker 1: But they're not putting up all of them, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. And it's frustrating because it's such a
Speaker 1: roadblock to future work. The amount of time and energy
Speaker 1: we have to expand to find a case that's thirty
Speaker 1: or forty years old where somebody's never been found, That
Speaker 1: energy is huge, but they're forcing us to do it
Speaker 1: because they won't help at all. And this, uh, this
Speaker 1: investigation just just for everyone in the audience. When when
Speaker 1: we're talking about investigating a specific case, a specific case
Speaker 1: of a missing person, this doesn't just involve, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: reading newspapers of the time. This also involves heavy research
Speaker 1: into the staff of the part at the time, the
Speaker 1: rangers that would be there, any local law enforcement. This
Speaker 1: can include family interviews. This is a exhaustive process. Not
Speaker 1: to mention any kind of search and rescue efforts that
Speaker 1: you know are deployed, as as depicted in your film.
Speaker 1: Um would I'd like to to go into maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of the cases that are in the film, when
Speaker 1: in particular the case of a young boy who turned
Speaker 1: up missing UM and was surrounded mainly by family and
Speaker 1: I think a family friend and his grandfather, and it's
Speaker 1: as you described, you know, a very quick disappearance where
Speaker 1: the child was following his parents to like a fishing
Speaker 1: creek and then they turned around and he was gone.
Speaker 1: And they stayed at the campground for three days with
Speaker 1: police and you know, local uh citizens um volunteering to
Speaker 1: do a kind of search party, and nothing came of
Speaker 1: this ultimately, and it ultimately the case was dropped. But
Speaker 1: how how does this why was this case such an
Speaker 1: interesting one that you chose to kind of feature it
Speaker 1: as sort of like a bookend in your film? Um?
Speaker 1: How is this kind of like an interesting case study
Speaker 1: of these types of situations? So if you, if you
Speaker 1: by chance read five missing persons cases, you're you're probably
Speaker 1: going to find five sets of circumstances that are totally
Speaker 1: different without a lot of commonality. Now you read five
Speaker 1: thousand missing person's cases, and soon you're going to see
Speaker 1: that specific points start to jump out at you, and
Speaker 1: certain commonalities keep replicating themselves time after time. If you
Speaker 1: look at just one case, like the Coon's case, your
Speaker 1: your intuition may go to, oh, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a human interaction. It was some type of crime committed
Speaker 1: against the child by someone maybe at the campsite or
Speaker 1: someone nearby. I know who did this, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But if you look at hundreds of missing persons cases,
Speaker 1: you see that law enforcement caused peepe calls people at
Speaker 1: the scene suspects many times when they get frustrated that
Speaker 1: they can't solve it. In the Coon's case, the child
Speaker 1: has never been found, and it just so happened that
Speaker 1: we had a crew up there as this was evolving
Speaker 1: and occurring. Now, initially you're gonna you're gonna think, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't so interesting, except there's so many side lights
Speaker 1: to a missing person's case that people don't understand and
Speaker 1: how law enforcement goes about investigating those cases. And as
Speaker 1: for me, I was involved in a case in northern
Speaker 1: California where a girl disappeared. Well, the FBI was involved,
Speaker 1: just like they weren't the Coon's case, and they named
Speaker 1: the father as a suspect in this case. I was.
Speaker 1: I was there on and it wasn't for weeks until
Speaker 1: they finally said, you know what, the the father is
Speaker 1: in a suspect, and then weeks later they end up
Speaker 1: arresting a suspect charging with murder and he's convicted. So
Speaker 1: people that are named suspects aren't necessarily the ones who
Speaker 1: did it, and if they were, they would have filed charges.
Speaker 1: In the coon's case, there's not one piece of heart
Speaker 1: evidence to point to anyone committing any of this crime.
Speaker 1: Yet if you look at that case and you compare
Speaker 1: it to the profile points that we've established in six
Speaker 1: years of seven years of research, you'll notice that it's
Speaker 1: a dead on match. Happens at a remote campsite. The
Speaker 1: parents state, they turn around, the child's gone. They bring
Speaker 1: in canines. The canines can't pick up a scent. They
Speaker 1: bring in cadaver dogs that smell the trucks and the
Speaker 1: vehicles that were at the scene in case they transported
Speaker 1: dead body. They can't pick up a scent. All of
Speaker 1: these things start to lead that Wow, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's one of the profile points that are established in
Speaker 1: the Missing four on one books after reading thousands of cases.
Speaker 1: The handlers bring a dog to the scene the dog
Speaker 1: turns around, sits down, doesn't want to can't find a scent.
Speaker 1: They bring in cadaver dogs, cadaver dogters look around, they
Speaker 1: can't find a scent. The parents say, you know, the
Speaker 1: child was right here, we turned around, it was gone. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds stupid when you first hear that, but the
Speaker 1: reality of it is it's happened hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: times if you read the books, and law enforcement when
Speaker 1: they get frustrated, they'll say, well, the only thing we
Speaker 1: can think of is that the parents or the relatives
Speaker 1: or somebody in the area must have taken the kid.
Speaker 1: But there's no evidence. And like I keep saying, if
Speaker 1: you're going to accuse somebody, why don't you arrest them,
Speaker 1: Because there's nobody that's been found. There's nobody that's been arrested.
Speaker 1: It's a big who done it? And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say that nobody at the theme did do it. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying right now, I'm I'm somebody who lives in
Speaker 1: the world of facts, and there's no hard facts to
Speaker 1: suspect anybody there of doing anything other than law enforcement
Speaker 1: calling them a suspect. And they do say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they failed the polygraph. Well, I've heard that hundreds of
Speaker 1: times in other cases where they called other people's suspects
Speaker 1: and they were later cleared a lot of reasons for
Speaker 1: failing in polygraph and that's a that's one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons why polygraphs aren't allowed in criminal court. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's uh. I'm really glad that you mentioned that part, David,
Speaker 1: because more and more, Um, I think more and more
Speaker 1: people are aware that polygraphs are I don't want to
Speaker 1: say pseudo science, but there's in exact science perhaps, and
Speaker 1: in exact science there is very there's way more compelling
Speaker 1: arguments against polygraph being used because people get nervous, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: There are also various ways to trigger polygraph in the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. This may be an interesting insight, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, the idea that law enforcement might name innocent
Speaker 1: bystanders as suspects, perhaps out of frustration and with some
Speaker 1: of these commonalities that you're describing here, David, that the
Speaker 1: cadaver dogs catch no scent, the child disappeared promptly. Um.
Speaker 1: We've we've found some other commonalities that you have listed
Speaker 1: in the missing four one one series, and we'd like
Speaker 1: to explore those in depth after a word from our
Speaker 1: sponsor and we've returned. Before the break, we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about the additional commonalities that can be found
Speaker 1: or profile points here and in Missing America four one
Speaker 1: one North America and beyond. Uh, David, we have a
Speaker 1: we have a couple of commonalities here that I wanted
Speaker 1: to spend some time asking you about. But one thing
Speaker 1: that really really stuck out, both in our interview today
Speaker 1: and when we had spoken a little bit earlier, was
Speaker 1: that when when children, specifically when when children have disappeared
Speaker 1: in various cases, they are they are found in these
Speaker 1: incredible places or their their bodies are recovered in places
Speaker 1: that are extremely anomalous. Could you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about this factor this phenomenon. Sure? If one of
Speaker 1: the first of all, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: think the audience needs to understand is that the vetting
Speaker 1: factor that we use before we'll even include a case
Speaker 1: in any of the books or in any of the studies.
Speaker 1: One of the first things is is that if there's
Speaker 1: any evidence of human intervention and abduction, any criminal activity,
Speaker 1: we won't use it. If there for adult or child,
Speaker 1: if it's a voluntary disappearance, meaning mental health is at stake,
Speaker 1: we won't use it. If there's any evidence of animal predation,
Speaker 1: you know, animal attack, killing, dragging away, anything like that,
Speaker 1: we won't use the case. So what we're left with
Speaker 1: is a series of who done it, and in of
Speaker 1: the cases or more maybe there's never even a suspect
Speaker 1: named in the case. The coon's case was one of
Speaker 1: those weird cases where we happened to be there while
Speaker 1: it was happening and we filmed it. Now, there's another
Speaker 1: case in the film where a two year old child
Speaker 1: walking along a mountain trail, supposedly being watched by some
Speaker 1: friends of the family, he gets out of their sight,
Speaker 1: he disappears. Four years later. The remains are found fifty
Speaker 1: ft above the trail. Now, myself and a film crew
Speaker 1: went up there and essentially had to do it on
Speaker 1: our hands and knees. We probably should have had ropes.
Speaker 1: It was so steep to get to the location where
Speaker 1: those remains were found. Now, when I give up speech
Speaker 1: in front of a conference, I asked people in the audience,
Speaker 1: I say, so, how many of your parents? And I
Speaker 1: asked him if your child, at two years old was
Speaker 1: left in the woods and you walked away. What do
Speaker 1: you think that child would do? And some of the
Speaker 1: parents say, well, at years old, that child would have
Speaker 1: played in the dirt and probably gone to sleep right there.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they would have walked downhill fifty yards, found
Speaker 1: something interesting, sat down, played, and gone to sleep. Then
Speaker 1: I asked him, well, how many would have walked up hill?
Speaker 1: You know hard anybody ever raises their hand, they think
Speaker 1: on my child, and there's no way would walk uphill
Speaker 1: and exert energy. And then I put a table up
Speaker 1: that's in one of my books that shows many, many
Speaker 1: cases where small children are found at phenomenal heights from
Speaker 1: where they were last seen. And when those children are found,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of any animal attack, any human attack.
Speaker 1: They're just found there deceased. Many times at autopsy they
Speaker 1: can't even determine the case the cause of death, which
Speaker 1: is unusual. There's also a table I show phenomenal distances
Speaker 1: that small children take. And also in the movie, there's
Speaker 1: a case where a two year old disappears in this
Speaker 1: rural area and nineteen hours later they're found twelve miles
Speaker 1: away over two mountain ranges, barely alive, and the person
Speaker 1: when interviewed as a small age. Of course, they don't
Speaker 1: remember anything. Now, the reason these are important is it's
Speaker 1: easy for us as adults to understand that small children
Speaker 1: covering phenomenal distances is highly unusual. Small children going up
Speaker 1: in phenomenal heights is highly unusual and probably not not
Speaker 1: it probably can't occur. So how do they get there? Well,
Speaker 1: these incidents occur in areas where there aren't other people.
Speaker 1: It's not like somebody could have taken the kid and
Speaker 1: done this, or carry them or forcibly abducted them. These
Speaker 1: are in areas that are really remote when these things
Speaker 1: occur and there's no evidence. Remember there's no dogs that
Speaker 1: contractice because that's the most common profile point. Canines can't
Speaker 1: track the victim or professional trackers that are brought in
Speaker 1: find no tracks leaving that scene. So how does the
Speaker 1: victim get from point to point? That's the commonality that
Speaker 1: nobody can understand, and that's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: concerning points that I get from readers is how does
Speaker 1: this happen? And where does this information come from? It
Speaker 1: comes from search and rescue reports, law enforcement reports, missing
Speaker 1: person reports, interviews with families, interviews with law enforcement people,
Speaker 1: or search and rescue people, and that's where most of
Speaker 1: the information gets gleaned from Dave. In one of the
Speaker 1: cases that you had just mentioned where the child was
Speaker 1: carried up to a height that you guys had to
Speaker 1: travel use ropes to travel to. In in the film,
Speaker 1: it mentions that at least the law enforcement that was interviewed,
Speaker 1: they seem to mention that they believed it was an
Speaker 1: animal attack. When you're when you're going through and researching
Speaker 1: these cases, because you guys don't, you don't look at
Speaker 1: cases that are definitely animal attacks. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: law enforcement is trying to make pieces fit um to
Speaker 1: solve a case. Great point, guys, great point. So initially,
Speaker 1: when we looked at this case, exactly correct the press reports,
Speaker 1: the interviews the sheriff gave said oh yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a mountain lion attack. So initially we kind of stepped
Speaker 1: back and look at that, and then we started to
Speaker 1: dig deeper. Well, the victims dad wasn't at the scene
Speaker 1: and always thought that this was unusual. Well, at the
Speaker 1: press conference on this event, search and rescue people that
Speaker 1: had gone up there and recovered the remains had told
Speaker 1: the father that they found the pants of the child
Speaker 1: turned inside out at the scene, Yet at the press conference,
Speaker 1: the sheriff told them, hey, put the pants right side
Speaker 1: out and let's show him. And when the dad asked
Speaker 1: the sheriff why he did that, he walked away from
Speaker 1: the father. So the dad takes all the evidence and
Speaker 1: all the reports and presents it to multiple mountain lion
Speaker 1: experts and said, hey, what's your opinion about what happened
Speaker 1: to my son? And each of them said, well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't an animal predation case, and I don't know why
Speaker 1: the sheriff said it. And on all of the clothing
Speaker 1: that was found, there was no blood on any of
Speaker 1: the clothing. So the sheriff made a statement to call
Speaker 1: the community to make it appear as though they had
Speaker 1: the answers, and in reality, there were no answers. And
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta lean on the experts and maybe
Speaker 1: not one. And the father understood this. That's why he
Speaker 1: went to multiple and independently they all said the same thing.
Speaker 1: So it you know, that case is is a huge
Speaker 1: Who done it? What happened to this child? How did
Speaker 1: they get five fifty ft up the side of this cliff? Essentially,
Speaker 1: why wasn't there blood on the clothing. Why were the
Speaker 1: pants turned inside out? It goes on and on. Was
Speaker 1: that the case where they also found like a single tooth.
Speaker 1: They found a single tooth on top of a log
Speaker 1: in at about nine feet in elevation. Horrendous winters, blazing gales,
Speaker 1: snow up to ten feet in that area. How did
Speaker 1: the too skin on top of the log and was
Speaker 1: sitting there. It's also like there's a crime scene photo
Speaker 1: in the film and it literally is just sitting there.
Speaker 1: There's no blood, It looks completely clean. Like that's just
Speaker 1: very unsettled. It was it was four years later, right,
Speaker 1: or something to that effect, when the body was recovered.
Speaker 1: Just just to be Devil's advocate, I'm assuming there was
Speaker 1: there were other animals who came along and took care
Speaker 1: of the body. Unfortunately. One interesting factor that's explored in
Speaker 1: in the books as well is the concept of geographical
Speaker 1: clusters and an unusual number of disappearances happening over time
Speaker 1: in UH specific regions or areas. Could you could you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about this concept and how
Speaker 1: you and your team discovered it. Sure, When when I
Speaker 1: was in law enforcement, I worked a couple of big
Speaker 1: teams that would work serial rapists, robbers burglars, and one
Speaker 1: of the things we used was a map, a pin map,
Speaker 1: and every time a crime occurred, we'd put a pin
Speaker 1: on the map, and we usually knew that the first
Speaker 1: crime that somebody did was usually the closest to their home,
Speaker 1: and they would start to work outwards. And as I
Speaker 1: started reading through hundreds of reports, a few locations just
Speaker 1: stuck out in my mind. Hey, I read about this before.
Speaker 1: So after a couple of years, I started to have
Speaker 1: piles of reports in my living room of different location
Speaker 1: since and as time went on, certain piles got larger,
Speaker 1: and eventually I got more piles. Now, I don't like
Speaker 1: to say this as a concept, because I don't deal
Speaker 1: in concept and theories. Two things you want to find
Speaker 1: in any of my books is any theories about what's
Speaker 1: happening or any possible suspects as to what did this.
Speaker 1: I lay out a series of facts, and facts are
Speaker 1: the most important thing you're going to read about, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of books you're gonna hear a lot
Speaker 1: of wild theories and conjecture. I don't lay that out.
Speaker 1: I'd let you come to whatever decision you want to
Speaker 1: come to. Even though the facts that you read are
Speaker 1: highly strange. There are factually fifty nine geographical clusters of
Speaker 1: missing people in North America to fit the profile points
Speaker 1: that we laid out, And the biggest cluster of missing
Speaker 1: people in the world is your Semite National Park. Now,
Speaker 1: some people may say, well, yeah, but you know I
Speaker 1: probably has the most visitors. Well yeah, but if you
Speaker 1: look at the circumstances that we've laid after these missing people,
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's downtown Paris or downtown New York.
Speaker 1: That's strange that a lot of these people have never
Speaker 1: been found, even though they disappeared in an area where
Speaker 1: they should have been found. Canines should have been able
Speaker 1: to track. There should have been an evidence track or
Speaker 1: professional trackers to be able to follow these people. Um,
Speaker 1: these warn't voluntary disappearances. There were no mental health issues.
Speaker 1: Where are these people now? One of the predominant points
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about yet, but boulders, boulder fields, and
Speaker 1: granite are somehow involved in this, meaning bodies are found
Speaker 1: in boulder fields. People disappear in boulder fields or around granite.
Speaker 1: And that's another one of those points that came out
Speaker 1: after reading hundreds and hundreds. Well, where's probably the biggest
Speaker 1: boulder field and granite location in the world other than Yosemite.
Speaker 1: And I know that's strange, But when you look at
Speaker 1: the surrounding area and how many people have disappeared in
Speaker 1: and around Yosemite, coupled with other locations in the world
Speaker 1: that also have these boulder fields or granted, it starts
Speaker 1: to look odd. Now, if we go back to the
Speaker 1: Count's case, two feet from where do you or disappeared
Speaker 1: is a giant boulder field, and we show it in
Speaker 1: the film and it's one of those subtle notes that
Speaker 1: if you follow the books, you're gonna say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There is that giant boulderfield that no one
Speaker 1: wants to discuss right above where he disappeared. Now, he
Speaker 1: hasn't been found, and I don't know the relationship that
Speaker 1: could be could exist there, but it's there. You mentioned
Speaker 1: in the film another commonality that we haven't discussed yet
Speaker 1: that many of these um folks who disappeared had some
Speaker 1: sort of physical disability. Um, can you go into that
Speaker 1: a little bit. A lot of times it's not something
Speaker 1: that's evident. You know, the person isn't limping down the trail,
Speaker 1: But a lot of times the victim may have autism
Speaker 1: or dementia, and again it's not something obvious and you
Speaker 1: would say, well, yeah, you know, maybe somebody with autism
Speaker 1: or dementia that that seems a reasonable way to disappear.
Speaker 1: They didn't have all their mental capabilities and they vanished. Again,
Speaker 1: sticking with those profile points, why can't we track those
Speaker 1: people down to where they are located? Where did they go?
Speaker 1: How come they're not found? It doesn't make sense. Now,
Speaker 1: on the opposite set side of that intellectual spectrum, I've
Speaker 1: also written about people with phenomenal intellectual capabilities that have vanished.
Speaker 1: One of those sub types is physicists. There's a series
Speaker 1: of physicists that have disappeared under strange, strange circumstances and
Speaker 1: never been found. When I'm disappeared in the mountains above
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, was taking a hike with some people on
Speaker 1: the trail. He didn't feel too well. He stopped, and
Speaker 1: the person at the back of the line stopped as
Speaker 1: well with him, and he didn't feel good. So these
Speaker 1: two guys sat there and the guide at the back
Speaker 1: of the line said, well, I'm gonna wait a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds you can go ahead. And this physicist was
Speaker 1: visiting from Germany, and he took off down the trail,
Speaker 1: and eventually the guy got back to the lodge and
Speaker 1: the physicist wasn't at the watch huge search of the
Speaker 1: entire area for weeks. The German physicist was never found.
Speaker 1: And this is another of the subgroups. Is Germans or
Speaker 1: people with German heritage seemed to disappear at a higher
Speaker 1: percentage than the norm. But German physicists disappeared in a
Speaker 1: much higher percentage than anyone else in the US. It's
Speaker 1: a very very unusual subgroup. I would say unusual for sure.
Speaker 1: Um oh gosh, I see my mind just reels, and
Speaker 1: I want to start asking you about reasons like why
Speaker 1: why would a bunch of physicists go missing? I so
Speaker 1: badly want to get into some of the allegations and
Speaker 1: concepts have been floated to us over the years about
Speaker 1: these kind of things. Well, I'll tell you that. So
Speaker 1: there's been six missing four one one books aboutes written.
Speaker 1: And I probably I've said this many times in interviews,
Speaker 1: but if you listen to every interview I've ever done,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna glean maybe three to five pc of
Speaker 1: what's in the books. And we have a lot of tables,
Speaker 1: a lot of graphs, a lot of data. We have
Speaker 1: lists that I encourage people to look at in the
Speaker 1: back of the books and try to make some sense
Speaker 1: out of it. And the truth is is that of
Speaker 1: the people who have read the six books, and there's
Speaker 1: been hundreds, if not thousands, tens of thousands, nobody has
Speaker 1: ever read the six books and come back to me
Speaker 1: and said, I have the formula, I understand what happened.
Speaker 1: Here's what it is. Everyone. I could say, probably I've
Speaker 1: had five hundred people or a thousand people right to
Speaker 1: me in the last three years and say, I've watched
Speaker 1: all your videos. I know exactly what it is, and
Speaker 1: you know, off the top of my head, I can
Speaker 1: answer them quickly and said, yeah, but what about this, this, this,
Speaker 1: and this, Oh, I didn't know about that, or what
Speaker 1: about this, this, this, and this, Oh, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know about that. And the truth is is that the
Speaker 1: people that have read the six books will come back
Speaker 1: and say, you know, I initially thought that it might
Speaker 1: have been a but then this, this, and this happened,
Speaker 1: and so it can't be a. And yet all the
Speaker 1: profile points are consistent, so we know that they have
Speaker 1: to be interrelated. The only thing I will say is
Speaker 1: that I'm sitting in my room right now looking at
Speaker 1: the cluster map, is that approximately of all of the
Speaker 1: clusters are within a hundred and fifty miles of a
Speaker 1: huge body of water. Namely, the clusters run from north
Speaker 1: to south through the Cascades and down through the Sierras
Speaker 1: on the west coast, and then from north to south
Speaker 1: along the East coast through the Appalachian Appalachian Trail, and
Speaker 1: then there's clusters all the way around the Great Lake.
Speaker 1: Now there's one strand of clusters that kind of goes
Speaker 1: around the top of Idaho, Montana and then down through
Speaker 1: the Rockies, but it's pretty scattered, and they don't have
Speaker 1: the bulk of the numbers that the east and the
Speaker 1: West coast and the Great Lakes have. The water is
Speaker 1: an important feature, and I don't minimize that at all,
Speaker 1: and I think about that all the time. Why are
Speaker 1: the clusters in close proximity to water, and what's the
Speaker 1: relationship to that, and why is that so? And then
Speaker 1: once you look at the cluster map, you'll notice that
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the US north Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas,
Speaker 1: that swath north to south through the middle or the
Speaker 1: furthest points from the ocean have almost no missing people
Speaker 1: that fit our criteria. It's a very strange sight. So
Speaker 1: when you start to think about all this, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've had twenty people that have sent the thesis length
Speaker 1: documents saying this is what I think it is. But again,
Speaker 1: it's somebody who's ever read the books, and easily after
Speaker 1: the first couple of pages, I can say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not this because of this, this, this, and this,
Speaker 1: and I don't minimize the people writing in but you
Speaker 1: have to understand that unless you read the six books,
Speaker 1: you're never going to glean all of the options and
Speaker 1: all of the elements that come into play that do
Speaker 1: match the criteria. So I mean, you you say that
Speaker 1: it's not your purpose to kind of conjecture of what
Speaker 1: the what actually is happening here. You're just kind of
Speaker 1: like laying out some facts and letting the reader make
Speaker 1: their own assumptions or make their own connections. And in
Speaker 1: order to do that, you know, you you kind of
Speaker 1: need to really dig into the totality of these cases.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you must have some ideas. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, our listeners would be very interested
Speaker 1: to talk about that and to kind of get a
Speaker 1: sense of what are some of the options here in
Speaker 1: what realm are we talking of. So if I had
Speaker 1: a good option, I tell you, and if I heard
Speaker 1: one out there, I tell you. And every time I
Speaker 1: hear somebody say, well, tell me what you think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm interested you tell me what you think. Because just
Speaker 1: because I'm a good accumulator of data doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I know what all those options are and what what
Speaker 1: all those options mean. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that I may be really good at collecting data
Speaker 1: on missing people, siphoning the data, getting it down to
Speaker 1: a subgroup that all has commonalities. But you guys know
Speaker 1: that there's probably fifty things in the world that are strange,
Speaker 1: unusual and are looked at as predatorial. But each one
Speaker 1: of those groups has an expert. I'm not the expert
Speaker 1: on all those fifty areas. I'm focusing in on one thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: will send me information in and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: a light bulb goes off to me and says, this
Speaker 1: is it. Well, I'm for sure I'm going to say something.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to say something stupid and make
Speaker 1: myself and my team look like a bung of idiots
Speaker 1: just to appease somebody who wants to know my opinion
Speaker 1: or unsupported look at something. There's the way that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. That's how people in research lose their credibility.
Speaker 1: And when I'm dealing with families of missing people, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to let them go online and look at
Speaker 1: me saying something stupid and unsupported and then lose my
Speaker 1: credibility in that world that's going to happen. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lay I'm going to continue to lay up the facts.
Speaker 1: If I find a fact that matches what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the first one that's going to step
Speaker 1: up and scream to the world what's happening. But until
Speaker 1: that point happens, I'm still doing research, especially considering the
Speaker 1: way that the National Parks, you know, we're so hesitant
Speaker 1: to give out this kind of information and almost seems
Speaker 1: like it unsettles people in law enforcement capacity or in
Speaker 1: you know, government capacity, like to even consider that there
Speaker 1: might be some kind of connection in these cases. I
Speaker 1: just wonder why, you know, if you've got such little
Speaker 1: help from the National Parks. Folks, do you get a
Speaker 1: sense that law enforcement are also holding something back or
Speaker 1: not giving you all of the information that they have
Speaker 1: access to. That's a good question. Um. I think if
Speaker 1: you watch the movie, you're going to see that there's
Speaker 1: several different law for some people in it. And part
Speaker 1: of my job is to keep credibility in that world,
Speaker 1: because once I lose my credibility, they won't cooperate anymore. Now,
Speaker 1: just because the National Park Services and cooperating doesn't mean
Speaker 1: general law enforcement won't. And there is a group of
Speaker 1: people out there that are willing to look at the
Speaker 1: data and essentially look at facts. And once you delve
Speaker 1: into it and you realize that Dave politis never said
Speaker 1: of what is alleged on YouTube and other various sites.
Speaker 1: He sticks just to the facts and all these other
Speaker 1: allegations about he said this or he thinks that, but
Speaker 1: he's never said it. So law enforcement watches these things,
Speaker 1: and if some of them believe I said some of
Speaker 1: these wild things that people allege, they won't want to
Speaker 1: talk to me and they won't give me credibility. And
Speaker 1: it hurts with the victims families that need help. Now
Speaker 1: there is a group out there that knows exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm about, and they've read the books, and I've given
Speaker 1: a talk in front of the largest search and rescue
Speaker 1: organization in the world about this. And at the end
Speaker 1: of my talk there were there two Alaska st trooper
Speaker 1: sitting at the back of the audience and what I'm
Speaker 1: stood up and said, you know, Dave, you're saying exactly
Speaker 1: what we already know, and we've worked so many of
Speaker 1: these type of cases and we have no idea what's
Speaker 1: going on, but you're saying what everyone doesn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about. And the guy said, thanks you, thanks for
Speaker 1: talking about and he sits down. Now, since that, I've
Speaker 1: had many search and rescue people contact me and said,
Speaker 1: you know, that's exactly the truth. This, this is what
Speaker 1: happened to us on this search. And in fact, in
Speaker 1: the movie we interview some search and rescue people that
Speaker 1: talked about a super strange case. And it's just an
Speaker 1: example that once you understand what we're all about, and
Speaker 1: you understand that, hey, we're about the facts, that there's
Speaker 1: a lot more of this going on than we all
Speaker 1: want to talk about, and the local news probably isn't
Speaker 1: going to talk about it because it's uncomfortable, but it happens.
Speaker 1: So it sounds as if one thing that maybe occurring
Speaker 1: is that individual government employees, like individual rangers or state
Speaker 1: troopers are and are approaching you and your team with
Speaker 1: their own experiences, but there's a larger system at play
Speaker 1: which is much less cooperative. Would you would you say
Speaker 1: that's that's a fair assessment. I think you hit the
Speaker 1: nail on the head um a few times. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this, but a friend of mine and I were
Speaker 1: in a national park and we're at a substation and
Speaker 1: there's a group of older men sitting around this table
Speaker 1: talking and you can tell that there are a couple
Speaker 1: of current park rangers and a couple of apparently retired ones,
Speaker 1: and this one guy was talking at length, and I
Speaker 1: told my friends, said, we're gonnait until this guy leaves
Speaker 1: the room. I want to talk to him. And after
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes he gets up and in the
Speaker 1: parking lot, I approached him and I said, I'm retired
Speaker 1: law enforcement and I heard you in there, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk to He goes, yeah, sure. He explained
Speaker 1: to me that in the Park Service, the detectives for
Speaker 1: the National Park Police are called special agents, and there's
Speaker 1: usually about one special agent for every two or three
Speaker 1: national parks. Yosemite has a couple of special agents assigned
Speaker 1: just to Yosemite, but normally it's one or two per
Speaker 1: every national park. And they're like the detectives, and they
Speaker 1: follow up on cases. And I explained with the National
Speaker 1: Park System had done to me in abstracting us getting
Speaker 1: data and information, and and I asked him, I said,
Speaker 1: can you give me any insight as to why this
Speaker 1: is going on? And the guy looked at me dead
Speaker 1: in the eye and he goes, well, Dave, I'm a
Speaker 1: retired special agent, spent thirty years with the Park Service,
Speaker 1: and now I know exactly what's going on. It's called
Speaker 1: the lack of integrity, and certain people in the National
Speaker 1: Park Service police and in their administration have a complete
Speaker 1: lack of integrity and they won't do the right thing.
Speaker 1: And he says, it's been that way for many years,
Speaker 1: and I'll probably be that way from anymore. And this
Speaker 1: is not an indictment of the National Park rangers that
Speaker 1: the public sees every day. You know, they're they're great people.
Speaker 1: They're doing God's work out there. This is a selected
Speaker 1: group at the higher echelon. They're making these decisions and
Speaker 1: making these policies. And when I talked to this retired
Speaker 1: special agent, we've talked for a long time, and it
Speaker 1: was enlightening because it was his perspective, being that insider,
Speaker 1: that this is really what's going on. And then he
Speaker 1: pointed us to a web a couple of websites that
Speaker 1: were maintained by other park rangers that talked about the
Speaker 1: discrimination that was going on to them, their inability to
Speaker 1: get reports when they filed Freedom of Information Act reports,
Speaker 1: and it was it was sort of a relief, knowing, Wow,
Speaker 1: this isn't just happening to me, this is happening to
Speaker 1: people inside their organization. And if you go to our
Speaker 1: website can AM like Canadian American can am missing dot com,
Speaker 1: there's links to all these things and you can see
Speaker 1: for yourself that this really is happening. And the Park
Speaker 1: Service has done a phenomenal job kind of portraying themselves
Speaker 1: as a holier than that organization that Yogi the bears
Speaker 1: the best friend. But when you look at the underlining
Speaker 1: of it, it's not anything like the publicity says it
Speaker 1: is it's totally different. And with this in mind, we're
Speaker 1: going to going to explore a little bit about various allegations,
Speaker 1: and we're going to explore the future of missing for
Speaker 1: one one after a word from our sponsors, and we
Speaker 1: have returned. So, David, one thing that you said that
Speaker 1: I think really made our ears perk up collectively is
Speaker 1: you mentioned that in the online sphere, I guess, uh
Speaker 1: that there have been people who are spreading what we
Speaker 1: would call it, uh, misinformation or perhaps misrepresenting what this
Speaker 1: endeavor is actually about. Um, could you could you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that misinformation because we want
Speaker 1: to make sure our audience has has it clear. I
Speaker 1: think we've I think we've outlined pretty well, Um, some
Speaker 1: of the process for which cases to explore the commonalities,
Speaker 1: right discovered the fact that this is aggregation of facts. Right,
Speaker 1: So what what are these what are these people saying
Speaker 1: that is misinformation? Remember one thing is that I have
Speaker 1: never and I would never name anything as a suspect
Speaker 1: or come up with any theory about what's happening unless
Speaker 1: I could support it, and I never have. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people that say, oh, he he said this,
Speaker 1: or he meant that if I say something or I
Speaker 1: meant something, I just come out and say it. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people and a lot of
Speaker 1: organizations out there that represent this, the fringe gentleman of
Speaker 1: cryptozoology or whatever, want to align themselves with credible research,
Speaker 1: and so they want to align themselves with what we're
Speaker 1: doing in the hopes that it will give them additional credibility.
Speaker 1: And the truth of the matter is, if you read
Speaker 1: the books, you'll know I've never done any of that.
Speaker 1: And whether it's a lot of people say well must
Speaker 1: maybe it's a group of National Parks and Boys or
Speaker 1: US for Service employees that want to discredit me so
Speaker 1: that the mainstream of society won't read what we've put together.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, it's just some cook he's saying some
Speaker 1: things that can't be supported. I've yet to find anybody
Speaker 1: that has ever read the data in that those books
Speaker 1: that has attacked us, because they read for themselves, and
Speaker 1: they're all listed where we got the sources, where the
Speaker 1: information came from, and you can go there and read
Speaker 1: it for yourself. So I mean, it's thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of hours of research and the gleaning of data that
Speaker 1: has and that has taken us to where we are today.
Speaker 1: Now why the attacks occur, Well, I mean I've had
Speaker 1: other investigative journalists tell me, Dave, it just comes with
Speaker 1: the territory. When you come out with information that makes
Speaker 1: the Department of the Interior look like fools or makes
Speaker 1: a park service look in apt, you're going to get
Speaker 1: attacks and it just comes. It comes with the territory.
Speaker 1: I understand that. Now. I didn't at the beginning, but
Speaker 1: I get it now. One thing that we always like
Speaker 1: to investigator, that we feel as part of our due
Speaker 1: diligence on the show is to look at the allegations like,
Speaker 1: as you said, the misinformation, because it's something it's like
Speaker 1: out to me. You know, I would see criticism of
Speaker 1: something on online regarding missing for one one, and then
Speaker 1: I would go back and check out the books I
Speaker 1: had read. And you know, honestly, I had looked through
Speaker 1: the books trying to see if there were conclusions, and
Speaker 1: I can I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that
Speaker 1: there there aren't. This is a this compilations of you know,
Speaker 1: case research on the skeptical side for the more skeptical
Speaker 1: in our audience. One thing that interested me immensely was
Speaker 1: that I would read these investigations or presentations by you know,
Speaker 1: people who would consider themselves the word we keep using
Speaker 1: a skeptical more on the skeptic side. And one thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was pretty fascinating was that most of
Speaker 1: these people said in in their presentations, you know, they said, uh,
Speaker 1: we looked at this and these are all genuine disappearances
Speaker 1: and the facts are all correct, and sometimes quote unquote
Speaker 1: Internet skeptics do a very poor job of applying critical thinking.
Speaker 1: So I was I was impressed with that, and it
Speaker 1: seems like the only real the only real bone of
Speaker 1: contention I found from their side was that they were
Speaker 1: saying they thought there were mundane explanations for these disappearances,
Speaker 1: but they didn't say what those explanations might be. And
Speaker 1: so then I started looking at, according to the data
Speaker 1: we have, what are the most some of the most
Speaker 1: common disappearance causes for people who are camping and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. As you head, a lot of these things
Speaker 1: don't seem to don't seem to fit into those easy explanations.
Speaker 1: Are are you aware of this stuff? And how would
Speaker 1: you respond to uh, the to those folks who maybe
Speaker 1: in our audience or maybe just somewhere out there in
Speaker 1: the ether, who would say that there are explicable causes
Speaker 1: for this. Well, it's hard to respond to something like
Speaker 1: that on such a general format. If you want to
Speaker 1: talk about specifics, I'll go toe to toe with anybody
Speaker 1: on any case in any book. But that's a that's
Speaker 1: a common trait when someone tries to discredit anything. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this, okay, how do you respond to that? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if we've gone through the vetting process of those points,
Speaker 1: and Search and Rescue believes that none of those issues
Speaker 1: are there, then why do you think something different? And
Speaker 1: I would probably guess that the people saying these things,
Speaker 1: I've never read one book they've you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: something called plausible the liability, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are uncomfortable with where the books may take them
Speaker 1: because it takes you out of that comfort zone and
Speaker 1: puts an aura on the wild environment that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't Disneyland when you walk into a national park,
Speaker 1: and maybe you're not as safe as you tend to
Speaker 1: think you want to be. And if it's not a
Speaker 1: mountain lion and it's not a bear attack, and it's
Speaker 1: not a human attack, and it's not a voluntary disappearance.
Speaker 1: What does that leave what what took the person? And
Speaker 1: how did the person get from this point to this point?
Speaker 1: And there was an animal predation and there's no injuries
Speaker 1: to the body, and blah blah blah blah blah. Why
Speaker 1: can't they figure out the cause of death in this case?
Speaker 1: And you start to think these things, and it starts
Speaker 1: to become a comfortable And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people's mentality is they need to go to the wilderness
Speaker 1: to clean their mind. And if I take that away
Speaker 1: from them, that cleansing and that freedom, and that that
Speaker 1: great feeling they have when they go there, I've taken
Speaker 1: something valuable from people. And I've heard this before. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things I tell everybody is that even
Speaker 1: though I know what I've written, I still go to
Speaker 1: the wilderness all the time, and I go, but I
Speaker 1: go cautiously. I never go anywhere alone most of the time,
Speaker 1: the vast, vast vast majority of time. If I do
Speaker 1: go somewhere someplace alone, I always carry a personal locator beacon.
Speaker 1: And the people in my books that I write about
Speaker 1: would probably still be alive today if they had one. Namely,
Speaker 1: it costs between a hundred and three hundred dollars. You
Speaker 1: get lost, you pull the button. It sends a transmission
Speaker 1: up to a satellite satellite SANSAS transmiss in the National
Speaker 1: Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and they call the local search
Speaker 1: and rescue where you're at because they have your GPS
Speaker 1: corgans now, and they send a search party out to
Speaker 1: find you. In the cases I've written about, I only
Speaker 1: have one case where somebody activated to transponder and wasn't
Speaker 1: found alive. Only one that was just outside of Yosemite,
Speaker 1: and he was found into really weird circumstances. I have
Speaker 1: never had a case where somebody was carrying a firearm
Speaker 1: and activated a transponder and was found de ceased. I've
Speaker 1: never had one of those ever. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: have a law enforcement background, so I carry a gun
Speaker 1: all the time anyhow, But I carry a gun, a transponder,
Speaker 1: a compass, a map. I always tell somebody where I'm going,
Speaker 1: and I always checked the weather before I leave. I
Speaker 1: think if people followed those easy to follow instructions, we
Speaker 1: could eliminate disappearances by probably. I think that's really really,
Speaker 1: you're really smart. Just just learn what you need to
Speaker 1: do when you're gonna go into the wilderness, even if
Speaker 1: you're with another person, just make sure if you get separated,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be okay. It gets a little dicey though,
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with like a two year old, you know,
Speaker 1: or a five year old. How do you teach your
Speaker 1: two year old how to use a transponder? You know?
Speaker 1: Keep the kid with you? Oh yeah, I will, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't always happen. That's that's true. And this
Speaker 1: this is a really important point. Whether you consider yourself
Speaker 1: that an outdoor has been a survivalist, you know, or
Speaker 1: whether you think occasionally, one day in the future you
Speaker 1: might go camping. Um, these points are are crucial because
Speaker 1: I think people forget easily. Um how that it's called
Speaker 1: wilderness for a reason. Wild things can occur, and you
Speaker 1: always practice the buddy system, always have and as as
Speaker 1: David said, like always have somebody who is not out
Speaker 1: in the woods with you, who knows where you're going
Speaker 1: roughly and what time you're expected to be back. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of survivalism, survivor Man makes an appearance in this movie.
Speaker 1: So is Less Stroud. Somebody you have worked with before
Speaker 1: in the past. How did that come about? Less read
Speaker 1: the books and he got ahold of me and he said, Dave,
Speaker 1: those books were phenomenal, and he goes, you're really onto something.
Speaker 1: He goes, it's something I've thought about for a long time,
Speaker 1: and he goes, if I can help you with anything
Speaker 1: to promote this safety strategy and the reality of what
Speaker 1: you've written about, let me know, I'll help you. Well,
Speaker 1: we got to time to film and we sat around
Speaker 1: and had a discussion about how we could utilize his services,
Speaker 1: and we said, well, how about if we utilize you
Speaker 1: to try to replicate uh a path that a two
Speaker 1: year old took through the night to get a certain
Speaker 1: to get to a certain location. He goes, I'm on,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. So we met him and true went
Speaker 1: out with him overnight, and that he proved to me
Speaker 1: that there's no way this two year old could have
Speaker 1: done this. And I don't think that there's anyone in
Speaker 1: the world more credible or more attuned to the environment
Speaker 1: than Less Stroud. So I have never heard anybody who's
Speaker 1: seen the film and watched that segment that said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know that was saked, or you know everyone says, Wow,
Speaker 1: if less couldn't do it, this two year old, sure
Speaker 1: as that couldn't have done it. Oh Man, that is
Speaker 1: a great point. So that particular case that he helped
Speaker 1: out with occurred in the nineteen fifties. One of the
Speaker 1: other clusterings that we saw are clusterings in time, like
Speaker 1: specific years where there were a lot of missing persons.
Speaker 1: Can you go over some of some of those clusters
Speaker 1: and when they occurred? So all the geographical clusters are
Speaker 1: there now. Inside some of those clusters are are time clusters.
Speaker 1: And there's certain periods of time in certain areas where
Speaker 1: a clustering happened where there were multiple people over a
Speaker 1: short period of time that vanished. There's some in Michigan,
Speaker 1: there's some on the West coast, and unless we laid
Speaker 1: it out in a list format, it probably wouldn't be evident.
Speaker 1: And there's also certain disappearance And somebody found this out
Speaker 1: and sent it to us, and I can't take credit
Speaker 1: for it. I think it was a guy in Finland
Speaker 1: sent it to me and he said, Dave, do you
Speaker 1: realize that three of the disappearances you've documented occurred when
Speaker 1: ships and planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. They disappeared
Speaker 1: on the same day. I said, oh, that's weird, and
Speaker 1: I looked and they verified what the guy said and
Speaker 1: I said, it's sure, it's true. So you know, again,
Speaker 1: there could be a lot more to these disappearances than coincidence.
Speaker 1: And when you look at the numbers and you understand
Speaker 1: that it's just not the U. S And Canada, but
Speaker 1: there's nine other countries where this exact same thing is happening.
Speaker 1: And the top countries besides the US and Canada are
Speaker 1: Australia and the United Kingdom are the next two. So
Speaker 1: it's very strange. Definitely strange. Yeah, So, David, I think
Speaker 1: we're nearing the end here, But is there anything that
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about that kind of strikes you as
Speaker 1: something important for listeners to understand about what what what
Speaker 1: drove you to do this project and to continue kind
Speaker 1: of pursuing these cases and what's the future? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what's next? Well, I think that once you meet these
Speaker 1: families and you interact with them, and you realize that
Speaker 1: they've been robust by almost every government agency in existence,
Speaker 1: and that after that seven to ten days cycle, everyone
Speaker 1: wants to forget about the disappearance. These people feel abandoned.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about the National Parks Service.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Department of the Interior, of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Force Service. It's just not one agency. It seems as
Speaker 1: though nobody wants to even address the topic. And if
Speaker 1: someone is a victim of a homicide or somebody dies
Speaker 1: from an auto accident, there's finality to it. These people
Speaker 1: have nothing. They don't know where their loved one died,
Speaker 1: they don't have the remains they can go and visit.
Speaker 1: They They're left with this open ended wound that nobody
Speaker 1: wants to help them close. And you give them a
Speaker 1: little attention, if you kind of give them a path
Speaker 1: to get more details, if you let them know that
Speaker 1: they're not alone. But there's hundreds and hundreds of other
Speaker 1: families just like there's that also are being victimized the
Speaker 1: same way. It helps them. And I've seen this happen
Speaker 1: many times, and being friends with these families is super
Speaker 1: important to me. And they're all great, great people who
Speaker 1: are living a life of almost torture. And once you
Speaker 1: understand that, it hurts. It hurts that our government doesn't
Speaker 1: do more than help them. Now what's next is our
Speaker 1: research is continuing and we're learning more things from victims, victims, families,
Speaker 1: people who have read the books. I always at the
Speaker 1: back of each book is my email. I tell people
Speaker 1: to write. I read every email everything I get, and
Speaker 1: I encourage people to give me their thoughts after they
Speaker 1: read the books. One of the things that we're doing
Speaker 1: is in October of this year in Denver, we're having
Speaker 1: what's called the Mile High Mystery Conference, and there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of people. They're speaking, and one of
Speaker 1: the people that is speaking at the conference is Alan Attadero,
Speaker 1: who lost his son, and Alan someone who has tremendous insight.
Speaker 1: He's a high school teacher. He's very, very smart, and
Speaker 1: he speaks from the victim's perspective, and I think that individuals,
Speaker 1: once they hear him present, we'll say, Wow, there is
Speaker 1: really really something here. If you don't want to believe
Speaker 1: it from me, here it from Allen. I'll be presenting
Speaker 1: there as well some other researchers, but I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be one of the first times that the
Speaker 1: public is going to hear directly from a family member
Speaker 1: the truth and how they've been misdirected, misguided, and essentially
Speaker 1: lived years without any assistance. David, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show today and giving us a
Speaker 1: in depth look at a phenomenon that many people, well
Speaker 1: more and more people are aware of, but many people
Speaker 1: may not have been aware of until they heard this interview.
Speaker 1: In the book series is missing for one one and
Speaker 1: the documentary is out as we record this episode today.
Speaker 1: You can get it right now on Amazon Video to stream,
Speaker 1: or you can buy the thing and have it forever.
Speaker 1: So David, thank you one more time for coming on
Speaker 1: the show and sharing your research with us. UM. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it, guys. I appreciate the opportunity to speak
Speaker 1: for the families and from our research, and glad to
Speaker 1: come back anytime. Awesome, Thank you so much, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. And here we are broadcasting from the future
Speaker 1: to reflect on this interview that you have just heard,
Speaker 1: and you know we've actually all just heard as well
Speaker 1: listening back to it. UM, I don't know what did
Speaker 1: you guys think? I thought the Mr Pliz that's some
Speaker 1: really interesting points about maybe not necessarily answers, but at
Speaker 1: least these patterns that he sees and organizes, which is
Speaker 1: no small task. You know. He mentioned that he was
Speaker 1: sitting in a room while he's talking to us, and
Speaker 1: it has in that room there's a map that has
Speaker 1: all the clusters of disappearances throughout North America. And I
Speaker 1: just imagine David existing that world for so long. Um,
Speaker 1: he sees a whole different picture than I can see
Speaker 1: as an outsider just reading a bit and watching a documentary. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that his response when when
Speaker 1: I had asked him, you know, what would you say
Speaker 1: to people who believe that these are not you know,
Speaker 1: that these are not related, right, And he did say, um,
Speaker 1: exactly what you're reiterating that he felt those were on
Speaker 1: Those were remarks on a general level, and so it
Speaker 1: was interesting that he welcomed anybody listening, including you out
Speaker 1: there folks, to write to him or contact him about
Speaker 1: a specific case. But it's something that we see happen
Speaker 1: often in multiple investigations. It kind of reminded me of
Speaker 1: do you guys remember the smiley face killer theory? And
Speaker 1: so one of the this is, um, there there's some
Speaker 1: retired law enforcement professionals who are convinced that there is
Speaker 1: a serial killer group of killers drowning young college aged
Speaker 1: men across the United States, and the big debate that
Speaker 1: they keep having is whether there really is a discernible
Speaker 1: pattern with commonalities or whether these things are just being
Speaker 1: grouped together. You know, it just feels to me like
Speaker 1: the commonality in these cases largely were the fact that
Speaker 1: these things happened on national park grounds. And as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in our previous episode about you know, national parks
Speaker 1: and disappearances, they're massive and there's a lot of nefarious reasons.
Speaker 1: People can target these areas for their own own purposes,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, organized crime trying to uh kind
Speaker 1: of mask something they've done, hide to body or what
Speaker 1: have you, or whether their predators may be seeking out
Speaker 1: people in remote areas to target for you know, their
Speaker 1: own And I think that's one of the issues here.
Speaker 1: We're grouping together so many different instances that you're right,
Speaker 1: could have so many different causes. But when you look
Speaker 1: at them together like that, it's that idea of maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I can see something different by looking at them
Speaker 1: together rather than on a case to case basis. That's
Speaker 1: what it feels like to me. David has been doing
Speaker 1: over all these years of research and there's a there
Speaker 1: are those specific um commonalities as he sees them that
Speaker 1: they listed right, children, um berries was one right, extraordinary travel,
Speaker 1: you know of the of the like the point of
Speaker 1: disappearance to the point of discovery of remains. So um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a debate that continues on in multiple,
Speaker 1: multiple venues, you know, multiple avenues of expression. And I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know because he you know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: talk about what might be causes. He he mentioned a
Speaker 1: little bit what other people had written to him and said,
Speaker 1: but you know, he is just aggregating the data. I
Speaker 1: respect that desire to maintain that kind of credibility that
Speaker 1: clearly is at the core of what he's doing and
Speaker 1: all this work that he's put in. But it it
Speaker 1: there is a part of that attitude that leaves you
Speaker 1: a little cold, where it's like you're putting this much
Speaker 1: work into what you know, you might call an investigation,
Speaker 1: but there's no result. There's no even speculation, there's no
Speaker 1: even hint of like what this might be. And I
Speaker 1: don't know that That left me wanting, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go out and say it. There's no one, there's no five,
Speaker 1: there's no ten causes for all of these disappearances. Because
Speaker 1: you're talking about so many, each of them is going
Speaker 1: to have a slightly in my opinion, each one is
Speaker 1: going to have a slightly different explanation for why it
Speaker 1: happened and how it happens. So that's your take. It
Speaker 1: just got an idea. It struck me, bolt of lightning
Speaker 1: out of the blue. Right. Uh, we want to know
Speaker 1: what you think, listeners, So what do you think would
Speaker 1: be a probable cause? What do you think would be
Speaker 1: a plausible cause? What do you think would be an
Speaker 1: improbable cause or a or a um not impossible thing?
Speaker 1: Because you know, I know, I think you brought up
Speaker 1: a great point when you talk about organized crime. We
Speaker 1: do know, for instance, um an alternative lifestyles to subcultures.
Speaker 1: So we know, for instance, UM, there are various people
Speaker 1: living off the grid under the surface of American culture.
Speaker 1: We know that numerous communities team and thrive, and numerous
Speaker 1: unseen events occur. Yeah, there's something for everybody. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been living in this, uh, this crazy culture that
Speaker 1: we have where there are so many different types of
Speaker 1: personalities and dare I say perversions and you know, reasons
Speaker 1: to lots of reasons to go disappear into the woods.
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I'm getting at, whether it's for
Speaker 1: some kind of ritual or some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, targeted attack, I just I just kind
Speaker 1: of felt like, by the very nature of combining all
Speaker 1: of these cases, Mr Polites was implying without saying so,
Speaker 1: that there was something unusual or or related, something some
Speaker 1: connection that he keeps hinting at, by the very nature
Speaker 1: of the fact that these are all you know, grouped
Speaker 1: together to see like, look, he's he's presenting them in
Speaker 1: that way. How can you not you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like there is an implied something's going on here, and
Speaker 1: that's in the film. There's an air of like mystery.
Speaker 1: It's like we we found a single tooth, or like,
Speaker 1: you know, like all of this stuff, it's presented in
Speaker 1: a way that to me comes off as like, what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on here? You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's just me. I see what you're saying, and that's
Speaker 1: I think that's why. Um, we're also interested in hearing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to speak for everybody, I'm personally very
Speaker 1: interested in hearing what the listeners have to say about
Speaker 1: for sure. And uh, I just have to mention because
Speaker 1: we're talking about national parks. I know this doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with anything, but I've been reading more
Speaker 1: about it and I'm excited. You know, you guys know
Speaker 1: how I go through the obsessive phases. So Rainbow gatherings, Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: yeah that okay, are we going? I do you want to? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll put a go pro on you and Nolan I
Speaker 1: will be like the We'll be like the guys at
Speaker 1: the desk, like the hacking will hack for you. I
Speaker 1: think what we do is we put together some type
Speaker 1: of artisanal foods and then we just go and we
Speaker 1: started catching. We'll give you an earpiece and we'll feed
Speaker 1: you hippie lingo. All right, Yeah, you know Ramsey coworker
Speaker 1: here is really good at pickling things. I think that's
Speaker 1: our taken in. Okay, we'll need to build a different
Speaker 1: identity for you because Matt Frederick is too well known.
Speaker 1: From the moment we drop you off, like a few
Speaker 1: miles outside of the gathering. What do you think about
Speaker 1: being the pickleman? Yeah, that's pretty good, or the man
Speaker 1: with pickles. I don't know either way. I'll go with it,
Speaker 1: or we could just give you a new identity where
Speaker 1: your last name is Pickleman. Oh, yes, Stephen Pickleman. Peter
Speaker 1: Pickleman's a little too out of those. Yes, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Not in a rainbow gathering. That's true. That's true if
Speaker 1: you if you are wondering what this bizarre they were
Speaker 1: talking about is and you're thinking, um, guys, you keep
Speaker 1: talking about this thing, but you're not telling us what
Speaker 1: is actually happening. Yeah, we understand. A rainbow gathering is
Speaker 1: a it's about what it sounds like. Yeah, it's an alternative. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's an annual I think it's annual alternative gathering in
Speaker 1: national parks in the United States where a bunch of
Speaker 1: people live in a intentional community temporarily where they don't
Speaker 1: have money and they have As you said, I think
Speaker 1: it is the age word. There's like a hippie vibe,
Speaker 1: and it seems like what I've been reading ab out
Speaker 1: has more to do with sort of the dark side
Speaker 1: of this, because if you want to if the FBI
Speaker 1: is looking for you or something, you want to disappear
Speaker 1: in a place and you don't have money, something like
Speaker 1: this could work as long as you're not, you know,
Speaker 1: a violent monster. And then I also started wondering about
Speaker 1: cults and uh, other you know, intersections with other other
Speaker 1: cultures off the grid in the US UM, and what
Speaker 1: kind of background checks are involved when you join up.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think there's many. I don't know, dude.
Speaker 1: I just found this article in the Mirror, the UK
Speaker 1: Mirror Mirror dot co dot UK. Photographer documents life at
Speaker 1: Rainbow Gatherings festival where people get naked to be one
Speaker 1: with nature. And not only are these gorgeous photographs like
Speaker 1: these are wonderfully composed photographs. There's one in particular where
Speaker 1: it's like this lagoon and everyone's naked and it looks
Speaker 1: like the Garden of Eden or something like. It's wild.
Speaker 1: Uh So check it out if you get a chance.
Speaker 1: But it's it's n SFW for sure. It will give
Speaker 1: you a sense of what that Rainbow life is like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the okay, so I've seen like two documentaries about
Speaker 1: it UM just in the course of this new obsession,
Speaker 1: this new phase and uh and honestly, I don't think
Speaker 1: there are requirements to join. Apparently the way a lot
Speaker 1: of people are greeted if we just showed up, they
Speaker 1: would say welcome home. That's what they say. It slo Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I got walls, man, I got pace. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm if I'm about that life.
Speaker 1: Just to jump back into four one one really fast
Speaker 1: before yeside the point of the show. Yeah. One thing
Speaker 1: I do want to mention here is that in the
Speaker 1: course of our research over the years on David Politis
Speaker 1: and Missing four one one and Canadam Missing and all
Speaker 1: of the various projects that he's been involved with, we
Speaker 1: are aware that one of the websites David maintains is
Speaker 1: the North America Bigfoot Search or nab US. And if
Speaker 1: you go on the IMDb page for the new Missing
Speaker 1: four one one documentary that we watched for this interview,
Speaker 1: it is listed under there as the production company. It's
Speaker 1: listed in a B S. And it does seem like
Speaker 1: David has distanced himself from this and he may not
Speaker 1: actually be involved in the day to day operations of
Speaker 1: the site, but it is certainly a thing he has
Speaker 1: been involved in the past. And with that, please send
Speaker 1: us your comments, your ideas, everything we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: Send them to us on Twitter or on Facebook. Where
Speaker 1: we're Conspiracy Stuff or you can find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: where we're Conspiracy Stuff Show. And if you don't like
Speaker 1: using social media, please contact us via that good old
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