Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know. I don't really think you could call it
Speaker 2: part of our ongoing true crime suite, but certainly unsolved
Speaker 2: mystery suite.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, semi solved mystery, I guess at this
Speaker 1: point because we're talking about what's known as the Death
Speaker 1: Valley Germans. Pretty good band name, but it's in fact
Speaker 1: a very sad story from July nineteen ninety six when
Speaker 1: a blended family of German tourists came to the United
Speaker 1: States for a three week tour of California and Nevada
Speaker 1: and we're never seen again alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just vanished into thin air, essentially in Death
Speaker 2: Valley National Park and they've I mean, it's weird like essentially,
Speaker 2: there was one guy who will meet later who got
Speaker 2: it as close to solved as possible just from sheer determination.
Speaker 2: But the family that you were talking about, they were
Speaker 2: made up of Egbert Rimkus, who was thirty four. He
Speaker 2: was an architect. He was the dad. George. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how to say George without an e. You took German?
Speaker 2: Are you familiar? No?
Speaker 3: I guess it's George Okay.
Speaker 2: He was eleven. He was Egbert's biological son. Connie Meyer,
Speaker 2: Cornelia Connie Meyer, she was twenty seven. She was Egbert's girlfriend,
Speaker 2: and Max was Connie's biological son from a previous relationship.
Speaker 2: He was four and Egbert had gone through a fairly
Speaker 2: difficult divorce recently. And so this trip was essentially meant
Speaker 2: to be like a fun bonding experience for the four
Speaker 2: of them, Yeah, to kind of form a family unit
Speaker 2: in this new new reality, these new circumstances they were in.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they got to LA on July eight eighth. They
Speaker 1: had a return flight to Dresden, which is where they
Speaker 1: were from, for July twenty seventh, and the on the
Speaker 1: docket was about a week or so in the LA area,
Speaker 1: head on over to Las Vegas for a few days,
Speaker 1: go to Death Valley National Park, check that out, head
Speaker 1: over to Yosemite from there, and then go back to
Speaker 1: LA and fly home. It's a it's a pretty standard
Speaker 1: little itinerary for that that kind of you know, three
Speaker 1: week adventure.
Speaker 2: I would say yes. And for the adventure, they rented
Speaker 2: a car, a ninety six Plymouth Voyager minivan, and they
Speaker 2: rented it from Dollar rent a Car. Being German, they
Speaker 2: would have rented it from Dollar because that's the American
Speaker 2: subsidiary of deutsch Mark rent a Car.
Speaker 3: Yeah huh.
Speaker 2: And it was due back on the twenty sixth of July,
Speaker 2: which is a day before their flight back to Germany. Right,
Speaker 2: that's right. The problem is is Dollar rent a Car
Speaker 2: never got their minivan back and the family didn't make
Speaker 2: their flight to Germany. And not everybody noticed this. I mean,
Speaker 2: certainly no one in America paid much attention. But remember
Speaker 2: Egbert had an ex wife who was the mom of George,
Speaker 2: and George's mom Heike, she was. She wanted to know
Speaker 2: where her son was, so she alerted the authorities, and
Speaker 2: very quickly Interpol put out an international alert for four
Speaker 2: missing German tourists last seen in southern California. And here's
Speaker 2: their itinerary. And it went absolutely nowhere. This is the
Speaker 2: end of July, beginning of August nineteen ninety six, and
Speaker 2: nothing happened for months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think about I guess until October twenty first,
Speaker 1: when a ranger was flying around in a helicopter looking
Speaker 1: for mess labs, and he said, hey, this is a
Speaker 1: very remote part of Death Valley, even for Death Valley,
Speaker 1: and there's a Plymouth Voyager minivan with three flat tires
Speaker 1: that had clearly been you know, mired in the sand.
Speaker 1: So immediately like, what is this thing? Once they figured
Speaker 1: out who the family was and this was who was missing,
Speaker 1: they were nowhere to be found. There were no signs
Speaker 1: of life, there were no signs of death. There was
Speaker 1: nothing at all. And so the mystery of the Death
Speaker 1: Valley Germans was born right there in one of the
Speaker 1: most inhospitable places on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the whole thing wouldn't be close solved or
Speaker 2: close to being solved for another fifteen years. And for
Speaker 2: those of us who aren't familiar with Death Valley, it's
Speaker 2: a national park, like I said, that straddles California and Nevada,
Speaker 2: and it is. It lives up to its name. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, but
Speaker 2: it has the second highest, and it's very close. The
Speaker 2: highest temperature ever recorded in Death Valley in the summer
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirteen was one hundred and thirty four degrees
Speaker 2: farent height. Yeah, fifty six point seven degrees celsius hot.
Speaker 2: I think the record was in Elaziza, Libya, in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two. It was only two and a half degrees
Speaker 2: hotter than that. So clearly Death Valley is very hot.
Speaker 2: And even in a regular summer it's still crazy hot.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen ninety six in the summer, remember they're
Speaker 2: in there hanging out in late July, which is the
Speaker 2: height of the summer of Death Valley. The daily high
Speaker 2: temperature the average was one hundred and twenty four degrees
Speaker 2: height and ninety one was the low.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's scorching hot, which is just you know,
Speaker 1: it's very dangerous conditions, especially if you're not used in
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, not prepared for that kind of thing. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Death Valley is something that was I guess two days
Speaker 1: ago years old when I found out is a very
Speaker 1: popular tour site for Germans. There was a writer in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century name Karl My spelled m a y
Speaker 1: writer had never been to Death Valley, but wrote a
Speaker 1: bunch of hugely popular travel adventure books set in the
Speaker 1: American Southwest, including Death Valley. Some were made into spaghetti westerns,
Speaker 1: including one called The Valley of Death in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: But this dude, whom I've.
Speaker 1: Never heard of, sold two hundred million books, so, like
Speaker 1: you know, one of the top selling authors of all time.
Speaker 1: And so Germans as a result, became fascinated with making
Speaker 1: that trek out to Death Valley. And that's what this
Speaker 1: family did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I had never heard of this guy, had you No?
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is popular with German tourists, but that's
Speaker 2: not to say that all German tourists who go to
Speaker 2: Death Valley die or get lost or even don't have
Speaker 2: a good time. Like of course, yeah, it's a very
Speaker 2: popular place. But people do die in Death Valley National
Speaker 2: Park every year, every summer in particular, and between twenty
Speaker 2: seven and twenty twenty four, sixty eight people died in
Speaker 2: Death Valley. There's a lot of people who died simply
Speaker 2: from being a exposed to the local weather. They died
Speaker 2: of hyper thermia, most of them, I think twenty or
Speaker 2: not most, but twenty percent died of hyperthermia, which if
Speaker 2: you've ever been in a hot sauna that got too
Speaker 2: hot for your comfort, that you imagine dying from that,
Speaker 2: that's dying from hyperthermia. I think the rest who died
Speaker 2: from exposure died from dehydration, because that can come on
Speaker 2: really quick too.
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So a day after this mini ban is discovered by
Speaker 1: a helicopter and death Valley, the ranger came back with
Speaker 1: the local sheriff on the ground to check it out.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they flew out there, who knows, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, at some point their feet were on the ground.
Speaker 3: They opened the van up. They, like I said, there
Speaker 3: were three flat tires.
Speaker 1: It was stuck up to its axles in the sand,
Speaker 1: and they determined that it had driven for at least
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred feet on the flat tires.
Speaker 3: The whole thing was covered in dust.
Speaker 1: You know, clearly hadn't been seen by anyone else or disturbed.
Speaker 1: That was the things you would expect to fine from
Speaker 1: disappeared people on an adventurisfication like this, like their luggage
Speaker 1: and their clothes like nothing really weird. Empty water bottles,
Speaker 1: empty juice containers, a couple of unopened bottles of bud
Speaker 1: Ice beer, which you remember that yeah, dates the thing
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties. I was never into the ice beers.
Speaker 2: No, I think, if I remember correctly, it just it
Speaker 2: got you more crunk than the average beer.
Speaker 3: I feel like that was how they sold it. Who knows.
Speaker 1: I mean that was before things like high gravity beers
Speaker 1: really came to the forefront. So maybe it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, these things have an extra percentage of abb.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the slogan was bud ice, get you plastered.
Speaker 3: I remember the dry beers too.
Speaker 1: I thought it was fancy in college at one point
Speaker 1: because I was drinking michelob dry.
Speaker 2: Oh. At this point, speaking of fancy, I was drinking Zema.
Speaker 3: Oh. I never went down the Zemer road.
Speaker 2: Oh they were They went down easy.
Speaker 3: What was the flavor? What was it like a sprite?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was. It was close to that, Like it
Speaker 2: wouldn't take a sip of zem and be like, that's right.
Speaker 2: But that's probably the closest thing you could just mention
Speaker 2: off the top of your head. Some people put jolly
Speaker 2: ranchers in it too, to flavor it even further. It
Speaker 2: also had a bit of like a dry like in
Speaker 2: the sense that champagne can be dry. It had a
Speaker 2: little bit of that nothing that you'd be like, wow,
Speaker 2: it's a really dry drink. But yeah, and I think
Speaker 2: ultimately it was malt liquor, which really could get you
Speaker 2: plastered too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used to drink the Mickey's Big Mouths in college
Speaker 1: and the occasional little giant Schlitz tall Boy can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those were the days. I keep it pretty simple
Speaker 3: these days.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but you're right there. But Ice definitely dates
Speaker 2: it to the mid nineties for sure, and they're like,
Speaker 2: you said, this is kind of important. That's why I'm
Speaker 2: going back to it. There were a couple of bottles
Speaker 2: of unopened but ice beer still in the minivan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then one of the just sort of small
Speaker 1: clue as far as to show where they'd been, there
Speaker 1: was a business card from the Seahorse Resort in San Clemente,
Speaker 1: which is where they stayed while I guess seeing the
Speaker 1: LA area, which is not super close to LA, so
Speaker 1: I guess maybe they wanted to be between LA and
Speaker 1: San Diego or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think they just saw pictures of the view and
Speaker 2: were like there, maybe because the view is very nice.
Speaker 2: So there was a guide book there too, in German,
Speaker 2: a guidebook that they purchased or that was purchased at
Speaker 2: the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley and like
Speaker 2: I said, it was in German. And so they went
Speaker 2: to the visitors center. Investigators did later, and they found
Speaker 2: that on July twenty second, there were two German language
Speaker 2: guide books sold at the visitor center at Furnace Creek
Speaker 2: and none on July twenty third. So with that they
Speaker 2: started to be able to begin to retrace their steps.
Speaker 2: That was the first clue that they were able to
Speaker 2: kind of extrapolate from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so their second clue came when they found undevelop
Speaker 1: roles of film and cameras, So sort of like the
Speaker 1: end of the hangover, they were able to get those
Speaker 1: developed and pieced together, you know, at least roughly by
Speaker 1: way of the pictures they took, at least what they
Speaker 1: had done on their trip, maybe even as we'll see
Speaker 1: clues to where they like the last picture taken obviously
Speaker 1: would be the most instructive. So from these pictures they
Speaker 1: realized they stayed in San Clementy for a little while
Speaker 1: seeing the La area, they drove up the California coast
Speaker 1: and then over to Las Vegas, Nevada, and there they
Speaker 1: stayed at the Treasure Island Hotel, which also dates this
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties and there, they found that the father, Egbert,
Speaker 1: had called his bank in Germany on July twelfth try
Speaker 1: to have another fifteen hundred bucks wired to Bank of
Speaker 1: American San Clemente, but they sent it to the wrong
Speaker 1: bank and at Treasure Island. He you know, he was
Speaker 1: clearly in need of some dough as he even faxed
Speaker 1: his ex wife and said, hey, which also dates this,
Speaker 1: can you send more money?
Speaker 3: And she never responded.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What I didn't get and I didn't see anyone
Speaker 2: explain it is why he was just like, oh, well
Speaker 2: they send it to the La branch of Bank of
Speaker 2: America rather than San Clemente. I guess there's nothing I
Speaker 2: can do to go get it. He just never went
Speaker 2: and picked up the fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Well maybe he didn't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would still spend some time trying
Speaker 2: to figure out where my fifteen hundred dollars. That's about
Speaker 2: three thousand dollars in today's money, So it seems like
Speaker 2: he just shrugged it off. From what from his actions,
Speaker 2: I just think that's really strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, also could have been one of those
Speaker 1: things where where they're like, well, sir, we don't know
Speaker 1: which banket's in, stop bothering us, and like we can find.
Speaker 3: Out in a week. Yeah, it could be, and you know,
Speaker 3: they had a schedule, so who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the long and short of it, though, is
Speaker 2: they were low on funds now right. And Luckily, if
Speaker 2: you're going to national parks like Death Valley and Yosemite
Speaker 2: and the only thing you're doing after that is making
Speaker 2: it back to the airport to turn in your car
Speaker 2: and take your flight home, you can get by on
Speaker 2: some pretty low funds. You can still buy some but
Speaker 2: ice it wasn't particularly expensive, so they seem to kind
Speaker 2: of be making their way low on funds, and that
Speaker 2: actually helped track them a little bit further later on.
Speaker 2: But there was one other clue too, and it was
Speaker 2: an American flag and it had Butte Valley Stone Cabin
Speaker 2: on its label. That's where it belonged to in Death Valley.
Speaker 2: It's locally called the Geologist Cabin, and I think it
Speaker 2: does what it says on the label, which is it
Speaker 2: houses geologists who are conducting experiments out there. So there's
Speaker 2: food there, there's water there, but they keep it locked.
Speaker 2: If you're a geologist, it's kind of like a gas
Speaker 2: station bathroom. You have to go get the key first
Speaker 2: before you start using the geologist's cabin. So they seem
Speaker 2: to have just taken the flag as maybe a souvenir
Speaker 2: or something like that. Like I know, if I were
Speaker 2: in the Black Forest and I came across the German flag,
Speaker 2: I would take it and then take it back to
Speaker 2: America as a souvenir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's what this was being used for
Speaker 1: back then, because I think now you can actually stay there.
Speaker 3: Oh really, Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1: A you know, along the Appleachian Trail and just sort
Speaker 1: of all over in national parks. They'll be like a
Speaker 1: remote cabin that you know, you come, you can stay there.
Speaker 1: There might be some food and water rations if you
Speaker 1: need it, and you're the idea is that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to leave something, yeah, and leave it better than you
Speaker 1: found it, because I've seen pictures of people that you know,
Speaker 1: in the twenty tens that have stayed there, and like
Speaker 1: it's it's a destination for people who are into Death
Speaker 1: Valley because it's super cool looking.
Speaker 3: It's out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's like a stone cabin and it's on a lot
Speaker 1: of people's list of like I want to go stay
Speaker 1: at the geologists cabin. So I guess that just wasn't
Speaker 1: the deal back then, right, because it was locked up
Speaker 1: what I don't get, Well, we'll get.
Speaker 3: To what I don't get later. Okay, should we take.
Speaker 2: A break, Yeah, I think that's a good spot.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back
Speaker 1: with more on the Death Valley Germans right after this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So where we left off, they had Pilford
Speaker 2: the American flag from the geologist's cabin, and right, like,
Speaker 2: all of this stuff, this is just the stuff they
Speaker 2: found in the van. This is as far as the
Speaker 2: search has gone. Yeah, And so the rangers of the
Speaker 2: park start conducting their own investigation, and they go to
Speaker 2: like Furnace Creek Ranch, which is a resort kind of upscale.
Speaker 2: There's a campground, but you have to pay for all
Speaker 2: those and there was no record of the family staying
Speaker 2: at either of those places on July twenty second or
Speaker 2: twenty third, or anytime. Really. One of the other things
Speaker 2: they did was check logbooks. Apparently they pick up log
Speaker 2: books even at sites that don't have anyone working there.
Speaker 2: They'll still have a log book, and they struck gold
Speaker 2: at one of them, the Warm Springs Mine log Book,
Speaker 2: which is an abandoned mine above Death Valley in the mountains.
Speaker 2: I guess on a ridge and you can get to it.
Speaker 2: It's a road. There's a road that goes to it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing that you would normally call a road, but
Speaker 2: in Death Valley National Park it might as well be
Speaker 2: a luxurious eight eight lane highway. It's gravel, it's rough,
Speaker 2: but a Plymouth voyager can get on this road to
Speaker 2: Warm Springs Mine. And in the logbook they got a
Speaker 2: huge clue that would help track them down later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they signed it.
Speaker 1: It was in German, apparently it was barely legible, and
Speaker 1: it said we are going over the pass. Signed Connie, Egbert,
Speaker 1: George and Max So On October twenty third, this is
Speaker 1: two days after the minivan is found. They finally conduct
Speaker 1: a big four day search looking for this family. About
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty plus people, a couple of helicopters,
Speaker 1: eight horses. A lot of these were volunteers, but dozens
Speaker 1: of them were trained search and rescue people. Right, no slouches,
Speaker 1: No slouches. Well, there was one slouch, but he didn't
Speaker 1: last long because it was Death.
Speaker 4: Valleyene exactly, and the only evidence from this four day
Speaker 4: search was an empty bottle of butt ice and a
Speaker 4: butt print basically in the sand next to it, where
Speaker 4: someone had clearly sat down and enjoyed that butt ice.
Speaker 1: It was about one point seven miles away from the van.
Speaker 1: And yeah, clearly somebody took a little break in the
Speaker 1: shade and had that sweet, sweet extra potent ice, beear.
Speaker 2: Right, and they could even figure when they probably figured
Speaker 2: it was Egbert because the size of the butt print
Speaker 2: was fairly large. Well that's how I saw it described.
Speaker 2: I think that is. I think they're just saying larger
Speaker 2: than say a woman's or a child's, which is the
Speaker 2: only other people with them in this party. Right. But
Speaker 2: it was on the east side of the bush, so
Speaker 2: that if he was taking refuge from it in the shade,
Speaker 2: that means that the sun would have been in the
Speaker 2: western part of the sky, so he would have been
Speaker 2: sitting there in late afternoon, which seems ludicrous to even
Speaker 2: point out, but it would come into play later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So again in that visitor's log it says we're going
Speaker 1: over the pass. The only pass near there is called
Speaker 1: Mingle Pass M E and G E L. And if
Speaker 1: you look on a map back in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: before you had you know, smartphones and things like that,
Speaker 1: or people on the internet saying, hey, don't go this way, right,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's pretty possible to drive from Warm Springs,
Speaker 1: go through that Mingle Pass into an adjacent valley, and
Speaker 1: then hit a dirt road toward Yosemite, which was their
Speaker 1: next destination. They didn't know that, you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: have knowledge that it wouldn't it wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: just like a little sort of rocky path, but something
Speaker 1: you really really need a four by four vehicle four
Speaker 1: like full stop. It's not like, well maybe we can
Speaker 1: make it in the Plymouth Voyager, Like you can't make
Speaker 1: it down this road with anything other than a four
Speaker 1: by four.
Speaker 3: And even that's dicey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that. Not only do you need a
Speaker 2: four by four, you need an experienced driver who has
Speaker 2: who can get through this stuff too. Like you can't
Speaker 2: just put some yahoo in a four by four and
Speaker 2: expect them to make it. It's that dicey. Maybe a
Speaker 2: winch yeah, probably, yeah, Yeah, you just like go from
Speaker 2: Bowler to bowler winching yourself over the pass, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So to get to the pass, you go by the
Speaker 2: geologist station. And remember they had the flag from the
Speaker 2: geologist station. So now they're really starting to retrace their footsteps.
Speaker 2: The problem is is the van wasn't anywhere near the
Speaker 2: road to Mingle Pass. As a matter of fact, it
Speaker 2: wasn't really near anything that was a road, an actual
Speaker 2: road in Death Valley. It was essentially like they just
Speaker 2: drove through the middle of the desert, which is how
Speaker 2: they found the van. So after this four day, very
Speaker 2: extensive search by at least two hundred and fifty people,
Speaker 2: all they found was the beer bottle at the bush
Speaker 2: and the butt print that was it. Those were the
Speaker 2: only physical clues that they found. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff going on in Death Valley at
Speaker 2: any given time, in the whole area of southern California.
Speaker 2: So these rescue groups got called off to other stuff,
Speaker 2: and the park rangers went back about their business, and
Speaker 2: the case just went totally cold for years and years
Speaker 2: and years, And it probably would have stayed that way
Speaker 2: if not for a guy named Tom Hood, who will
Speaker 2: meet in a second. But in the interim that vacuum
Speaker 2: between the end of the initial search and tom Ahood
Speaker 2: picking this whole thing up. People just kind of came
Speaker 2: up with their own theories to explain it because it
Speaker 2: was just so they just vanished off of the face
Speaker 2: of the earth.
Speaker 1: It seemed like, yeah, so you know, one of the
Speaker 1: I guess it was probably the most popular theory, and
Speaker 1: it makes sense in some ways, is that this was
Speaker 1: an intentional disappearing, Like, hey, let's this family set it
Speaker 1: up to make it look like they've been disappeared. Because
Speaker 1: Egbert was he was going through a pretty rough custody
Speaker 1: battle with his ex wife. It was a pretty contentious divorce,
Speaker 1: and apparently there were rumors that he had talked to
Speaker 1: his coworkers about like kind of dropping out and moving
Speaker 1: to Costa Rica with his with his son. And so
Speaker 1: people are like, yeah, this that they purposely disappeared so
Speaker 1: he could just get away from his ex wife and
Speaker 1: have soul custody of his son.
Speaker 2: Right. One of the big problems with that is like,
Speaker 2: if you're on a trip in la you could disappear
Speaker 2: way more easily than in Death Valley. That's kind of
Speaker 2: a dumb place to stage your disappearance.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I mean, I think staging a disappearance
Speaker 1: there is different than disappearing you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I guess I do. What about psychos and crooks?
Speaker 1: Sure, you know they were they were looking for me
Speaker 1: Labs out there by helicopter. So the idea that there
Speaker 1: was a drug gang or just some ne'er do wells
Speaker 1: out there, or just some random psychopath was rumors that circulated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't hurt that the Barker Ranch where the
Speaker 2: Manson family hung around, is not too far away. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess some people are like, well, there you go.
Speaker 2: I guess there's some one hundred year old Manson family
Speaker 2: member that they ran across who killed them. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: then there was a This was the probably the most
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory minded of the conspiracy theories or the theories of
Speaker 2: what happened to them. Not too far away in the
Speaker 2: middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere is
Speaker 2: the China Lake Naval Weapon Center, which is a military
Speaker 2: testing range. I've seen top secret. It seems to be
Speaker 2: quite top secret. And of course anytime you have a
Speaker 2: top secret military testing facility in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 2: people are like they're doing crazy stuff there Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the idea was the Eggbert either being a curious person,
Speaker 2: was drawn to the site. This is the real reason
Speaker 2: he wanted to go to Death Valley so he could
Speaker 2: sneak into China Lake Naval Weapon Center and see what
Speaker 2: they were working on. Or perhaps he was a spy
Speaker 2: or something like that, and that the family had gotten
Speaker 2: caught trying to get into the weapon center and had
Speaker 2: either been sent to like a ghost prison or killed
Speaker 2: and buried in the desert. Who knows what the government
Speaker 2: will do when they're this was the technology bandied about
Speaker 2: on the internet when their hybrid propulsion systems are at.
Speaker 3: Risk, Yeah, some random German shows up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But also, I mean, could you get more vague
Speaker 2: than hybrid propulsion? Like what's a propelling? What is it
Speaker 2: a hybrid of Yeah, but it's just so like futuristic sounding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I was driving down the highway the other day and
Speaker 1: I saw a pickup truck next to me that had
Speaker 1: a I don't know what it was. It was a
Speaker 1: military green like something or other like it was in
Speaker 1: the It was in the bed of a pickup truck.
Speaker 3: On like a on a pallette.
Speaker 1: But you know, it had a screen and buttons and
Speaker 1: it was square and it was clearly military. And then
Speaker 1: I looked at I can't remember the name of the
Speaker 1: company that was transporting it, but I looked up the
Speaker 1: company and it said, like, you know, we manufacture things
Speaker 1: for the for the war fighter.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: I was like, what the hell is that next to
Speaker 3: me on the highway.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was a military issue chicken coop.
Speaker 3: It might have been something.
Speaker 1: It was probably something that silly because these guys were
Speaker 1: just driving it in a pickup truck. There were no
Speaker 1: they didn't look armed.
Speaker 3: I mean, they may have been armed, but it's not
Speaker 3: like it was surrounded by humbies or something like that.
Speaker 3: But it was definitely something weird to see.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm curious. Hopefully one of our listeners can
Speaker 2: can tell us what that probably was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like a trash compactor or something.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is where it would have been left,
Speaker 2: Like he was looking for high propulsion. They ran across
Speaker 2: the meth manufacturers. He intentionally staged the disappearance. That's just
Speaker 2: that was it. Like everybody was like, there were probably
Speaker 2: never going to figure out what happened to him. But
Speaker 2: there was this one guy who I mentioned earlier who
Speaker 2: found out about this. His name's Tom Mahood. He's a
Speaker 2: retired civil engineer. He lives in Orange, California, and he
Speaker 2: he got bored in his retirement and started looking for
Speaker 2: things to do and did a whole bunch of different stuff.
Speaker 2: But one of the things he did was desert exploration,
Speaker 2: which is a very specific kind of hiking exploration, Like
Speaker 2: you can find yourself in real trouble really quickly in
Speaker 2: the desert, So it takes it's a certain set of skills, right,
Speaker 2: And so Tom Mahood had this, and he got interested
Speaker 2: in the story of the Death Valley Germans, and he
Speaker 2: put those two things together and he became kind of
Speaker 2: obsessed with solving the whole thing.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a pretty good place for a second break. Hey, yes,
Speaker 1: where he met Tom Behood and he's going, guys, cut
Speaker 1: to break build attention.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, I think Tomahood would approve too.
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back with more on Tomahood
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, So Tomahood is on the scene.
Speaker 1: Like Liam Neeson, he has a particular set of skills,
Speaker 1: and he had heard about this case in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. For the first time, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, thirteen years after their disappearance, he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm taking it upon myself to figure out
Speaker 1: what happened to this family. He went out to the site.
Speaker 1: He went out to where the van was found. He
Speaker 1: brought a camera. He retraced the steps all the way
Speaker 1: to the beer bottle bush. That butt print was long gone.
Speaker 1: I like to think that Tom maybe sat in that
Speaker 1: spot and had a butt ice if he could get
Speaker 1: his hands on any. In two thousand and nine, he
Speaker 1: looked around headed back home. When he got home, he
Speaker 1: was looking at the maps, he was looking at the pictures,
Speaker 1: and he said, wait a minute, I have a theory
Speaker 1: about how they ended up there and where they might
Speaker 1: have gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and remember that four day search was really thorough.
Speaker 2: Like if you read Tomhood's blog otherhand dot org, he
Speaker 2: has an extensive, multi part description of this whole thing,
Speaker 2: the case, his search, all that stuff called Hunt for
Speaker 2: the Death Valley Germans. It's totally worth reading. But on
Speaker 2: this he praises the search like he's like, yes, this
Speaker 2: was a really good search, but they didn't search everywhere.
Speaker 2: One of the places they didn't search was south the
Speaker 2: reason they didn't search south is because there's nothing there.
Speaker 2: He would have to be a complete idiot to try
Speaker 2: to go south. The only thing there is China Lake
Speaker 2: Naval Weapon Center, and that is really remote. It's in
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere. Then he started to try to
Speaker 2: think about why somebody would go south, and he put
Speaker 2: himself in the mindset of some German tourists visiting America
Speaker 2: in a national park, and that's how he ended up
Speaker 2: cracking the whole thing.
Speaker 3: That's right. So he.
Speaker 1: Was like, they're low on money, so that's a bit
Speaker 1: of a clue or an indicator of what they might do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't have a lot of time.
Speaker 1: It was July twenty second and they needed to be
Speaker 1: back to la in four days, and they still wanted
Speaker 1: to go to Yosemite that was on their itinerary. So
Speaker 1: there was a time crunch, there was a money crunch.
Speaker 1: And then one of the last pictures on the camera,
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned obviously the last ones would be
Speaker 1: the most instructive as to pinpointing where they were. What
Speaker 1: they were doing was sunset and Death Valley, and the
Speaker 1: rangers said, hey, this is we know the sunset. That's
Speaker 1: Hannahpau Canyon on the west side of Death Valley, and
Speaker 1: we know it was taken on July twenty second, because
Speaker 1: it was you know, pictures were dated, and that was
Speaker 1: the night they arrived at the park. We knew that
Speaker 1: they couldn't afford to camp out at Furnas Creek or
Speaker 1: get a room at that hotel. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: like most national parks, I guess all of them, there
Speaker 1: are places where you can back country camp for free.
Speaker 3: Just you know, there are areas and.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you have to like apply and
Speaker 1: fill out a little thing so they know where you are.
Speaker 1: But you can camp in the back country at Hannapac Canyon.
Speaker 1: And this is just not a very touristy area as
Speaker 1: far as Death Valley goes. It's the east side is
Speaker 1: more tourist friendly. And this is again on the west side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hours and hours away from the welcome center. At
Speaker 2: least have you been to Death Valley? I have not.
Speaker 3: I did a TV commercial for a couple of days
Speaker 3: in Death Valley.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it's huge, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was just in one little tiny part.
Speaker 2: Of it, obviously, but it's massive.
Speaker 3: Please, it looks big on a map.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this clue to Hannahpau Canyon kind of showed
Speaker 2: I guess being in the mindset of Egbert kind of
Speaker 2: helped Tom Mahood figure out what their next move would be.
Speaker 2: And so if you look at a map and you're
Speaker 2: in Hannahpau Canyon and you're trying to get to Yosemite,
Speaker 2: it would make sense to go this route past the
Speaker 2: Warm Springs mind toward Mangle Pass right. And so he
Speaker 2: knows now that he's kind of in Egbert's head because
Speaker 2: it's all this stuff is kind of making sense to
Speaker 2: him now why they did what they did. Ultimately, again,
Speaker 2: they're trying to look for the fastest, cheapest way to
Speaker 2: get to Yosemite from Death Valley. So they went by
Speaker 2: the geologists cabin again not open for business at the time,
Speaker 2: and Mahood essentially says that he probably thought it was
Speaker 2: a visitor center or something like that, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: So they continued on and as they were driving to
Speaker 2: Mango Pass, they came upon roads that were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is not a good road. This is not even
Speaker 2: a gravel road. This is kind of rough. But the
Speaker 2: minivan can take it if I drive slowly if I
Speaker 2: drive carefully, And Egbert was doing a fairly good job,
Speaker 2: it seems. But when they got to Mengo Pass, which
Speaker 2: is all they had to do was cross Mango Pass,
Speaker 2: make it a little further and they could take a
Speaker 2: road to Yosemite. But when they got there, they were
Speaker 2: stop dead in their tracks. There was just no way
Speaker 2: to pass it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not eating that sweet sweet Plymouth Voyager. If this
Speaker 1: episode isn't sponsored by butt Ice and Plymouth Voyager, then
Speaker 1: we're doing something wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we need a time machine.
Speaker 1: I guess it could live alongside the twenty twelve Camra probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the nineteen ninety six Plymouth Lager.
Speaker 3: It's really are your future. And then just the sound
Speaker 3: of a butt Ice cat being twisted off.
Speaker 2: And somebody glugging it and then hitting the ground, and.
Speaker 3: So they realized that they can't get through there. There's
Speaker 3: the only way to go is back.
Speaker 1: It would have been around you know, between twelve thirty
Speaker 1: and one thirty PM by this point, at least one
Speaker 1: hundred and five degrees. So they backtracked to that geologist cabin.
Speaker 1: It's still locked. And this is what I meant earlier,
Speaker 1: when what I don't understand what at this point, I
Speaker 1: don't understand why they didn't break into this cabin. This
Speaker 1: is dire circumstances and get some food and water.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, Tomahood explains us really well. He was saying, no,
Speaker 2: these are German tourists, they're safe in America. They're in
Speaker 2: a national park. To them, it was not a dire
Speaker 2: situation yet that they were still on track. They were
Speaker 2: just having a little trouble and the map that they
Speaker 2: had was misleading them all over the place. So he,
Speaker 2: being in Egbert's head, said, Egbert made the decision rather
Speaker 2: than go drive all the way back to the visitors
Speaker 2: center to get out of the park in a way
Speaker 2: that you know how to do, but that's going to
Speaker 2: cost you many, many hours, and it's going to take
Speaker 2: a really long time to get to Yosemite. Why would
Speaker 2: you not follow these roads on the map that are
Speaker 2: essentially a shortcut to use. It's going to take hours
Speaker 2: off of your trip. If the map shows a road there,
Speaker 2: why would you not take it? And the problem is
Speaker 2: their map showed them roads that either were really misleading
Speaker 2: and weren't really roads, or weren't roads at all. That
Speaker 2: was the map that Egbert was dealing with, and that
Speaker 2: was what ultimately got them killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one thing I couldn't find was what the
Speaker 1: gas situation was like in that car.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that either.
Speaker 1: I'd look too, because that would have really factored in obviously,
Speaker 1: because if you've ever taken out West road trips or
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world where there's just few and far
Speaker 1: between gas stations that I mean, I almost got trapped
Speaker 1: a couple of times low on.
Speaker 3: Gas, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nerve wrecking.
Speaker 1: So we don't know the gas situation. He's in his
Speaker 1: head speculating the stuff. Seems pretty logical to me. The
Speaker 1: shortcut that they took started off pretty easy. They're almost
Speaker 1: lured into it because they felt like, all right, this
Speaker 1: plymouth voyager, I know this car, it can take it.
Speaker 1: But eventually they descended into an volcanyon, and this is
Speaker 1: where the road becomes a wash.
Speaker 3: It's a dry creek bed.
Speaker 1: Dried creek beds are you know, there's a lot of sediment,
Speaker 1: a lot of loose gravel, a lot of sand, and
Speaker 1: it's really easy to get stuck in one of those.
Speaker 1: I've been stuck in one of those, and the only
Speaker 1: way to kind of to avoid getting stuck is just
Speaker 1: to keep that thing going forward as quickly as you can.
Speaker 1: Not dangerous, obviously, but just kind of keep those wheels
Speaker 1: going forward. Which you don't want to do is stop.
Speaker 1: And it looks like that's what Egbert was doing, was
Speaker 1: trying to go pretty quickly through that gravel. And that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what how he got those tires, you know, popped right.
Speaker 2: How they ended up in the middle of the sand
Speaker 2: up to their axle is there is a fork right
Speaker 2: behind them, and the fork veered to the They took
Speaker 2: the veer I think to the left and realized, oh no,
Speaker 2: we want to go to the right. This left isn't
Speaker 2: actually the road, and he tried to cut over through
Speaker 2: the I guess median between them, and that was just
Speaker 2: nothing but sam that they got stuck in. So now
Speaker 2: they're stuck. And Tom Hood makes the case that they
Speaker 2: still didn't view this as a survival situation. Yet this
Speaker 2: is a deeply inconvenient issue that surely they could get
Speaker 2: help with, right. I mean, again, they're in a national park,
Speaker 2: but they're four miles from the geologist's cabin. That's something
Speaker 2: they could do. But again, this is totally in the
Speaker 2: wrong direction, and they're hoping to find somebody a little
Speaker 2: closer to help them pull their van out of out
Speaker 2: of trouble and get some new tires. So this is
Speaker 2: where they think that Egbert walked off with a bottle
Speaker 2: of butt ice and sat in the shade and tried
Speaker 2: to figure out what to do next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean clear, he'sn't worried about survival if he's
Speaker 1: drinking a beer, because that will dehydrate you even further.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if Egbert knew that, but he's German.
Speaker 1: Plenty of beer over there, you would think he would
Speaker 1: know that. And again, in his defense too, now that
Speaker 1: I'm coming around to this idea, he may not have
Speaker 1: even known, like who knows what you can see in
Speaker 1: the window of that geologist cabin if they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, big water bottles or something within plane view
Speaker 1: or not, So he may not have thought like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should go back there and get some rations
Speaker 1: at least, because he may not have seen any again,
Speaker 1: just speculating here, but directly south of that site again
Speaker 1: is that China Lake Military base. And what Tomhood reckoned was, Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe he knew about this base and maybe he figured,
Speaker 1: at least it will be people there. Maybe there's a
Speaker 1: perimeter fence with cameras, maybe there's some dudes patrolling the perimeter.
Speaker 1: But at the very least, even if it's a top
Speaker 1: secret place, we could probably go get some help or
Speaker 1: something and they could drive us out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, show up at the fence of a
Speaker 2: secret military base. They're going to come to us. Essentially
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense. And on the map that
Speaker 2: Egbert was using, the border of the China Lake Naval
Speaker 2: Weapon Center is marked off. So to him it looked
Speaker 2: like that fence, that perimeter fence was just a few
Speaker 2: miles walk from where they were now where the van
Speaker 2: was stuck right right. The reason why they didn't search
Speaker 2: south in the initial four day search was because China
Speaker 2: Lake doesn't have a perimeter fence. It's so isolated in
Speaker 2: the middle of this very deadly desert that they're like,
Speaker 2: if you try to hike to us, you're going to die.
Speaker 2: You're so dead. We don't even need to put up
Speaker 2: a fence. And so this is Tomahood figuring this out. Like,
Speaker 2: if you are in Europe and you go to a
Speaker 2: military installation, there's going to be a fence, it's going
Speaker 2: to be patrolled, and that would be a really smart
Speaker 2: idea to take the shortcut to the military installation to
Speaker 2: get help. Unfortunately, it was just doomed not to work
Speaker 2: out because there was no fence whatsoever. And at some
Speaker 2: point Egbert figured that out, and then it started to
Speaker 2: sink in that they were in really big trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Tomahood wants to find at least some human remains.
Speaker 1: At this point he's I don't want to get in
Speaker 1: toma Hood's head, but and say like he was obsessed,
Speaker 1: but he was very much into the idea of finding
Speaker 1: out what happened to this family.
Speaker 3: Let's just say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He got his friend Les Walker and said, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get together another team. Let's go search south.
Speaker 3: This time.
Speaker 1: About an hour after they started this search, he found
Speaker 1: an empty wine bottle under a bush. He said, here's
Speaker 1: another clue. Then he found a crumpled up piece of paper.
Speaker 1: He thought it might have been toilet paper at first,
Speaker 1: it turned out it was pages from a daily planner
Speaker 1: in German. So he said, I'm really the trail is
Speaker 1: hot at this point, like literally in figure And not
Speaker 1: too long after that, his Buddy Less radios and says Tom,
Speaker 1: we have some bones here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I guess less Walker had come to the
Speaker 2: base of a cliff that was about thirty feet tall,
Speaker 2: and it would make sense that this is where you
Speaker 2: would find the bones of somebody stranded in the desert
Speaker 2: because it was the only place that was offering shade. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the bones were strewn about, they were sun bleached.
Speaker 2: But the thing that gave it away that these were
Speaker 2: definitely the family, the remains of the family, Cornelia's wallet
Speaker 2: was found with them, like all the credit cards had
Speaker 2: her name on it, and so Less and Tom left
Speaker 2: the bones in situ, but they took the wallet because
Speaker 2: they were afraid that they were going to be taken
Speaker 2: for a couple of local yahoos who were trying to
Speaker 2: who came up with a wild story. But now they
Speaker 2: had physical proof that they had discovered the Death Valley
Speaker 2: Germans and that got things moving really quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was nine miles from that abandoned mini van,
Speaker 1: and so to make it nine miles and that kind
Speaker 1: of heat really speaks a lot to their tenacity trying
Speaker 1: to get out of there and trying to save themselves.
Speaker 3: Very very sad with young kids too. Yeah, I mean Max.
Speaker 1: Was four years old, right, Yeah, that's just yeah, devastating
Speaker 1: to think about. There were, like you mentioned, four miles
Speaker 1: from the border of that naval base, and they were
Speaker 1: headed in the right direction, like they were kind of
Speaker 1: doing the right thing to what they thought was a
Speaker 1: reasonable idea of rescue, you know, looking back, they you know,
Speaker 1: they got those bones DNA tested. I think they were
Speaker 1: positively matched with only Egbert, is that right, Yeah, But
Speaker 1: that's not to say that it wasn't Connie. It's obviously Connie.
Speaker 1: They there were no confirmed remains of the children. That
Speaker 1: part is very troublesome to me.
Speaker 3: Still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the closest they found was a small shoe that
Speaker 2: it was so it was so beaten up that it
Speaker 2: could have been Kani's shoe. It could have been a
Speaker 2: woman's small shoe, but it also could have been a
Speaker 2: kid's shoe. So that's the only physical evidence they found
Speaker 2: they could possibly be linked to the kids. The bones
Speaker 2: were distributed all over in this kind of one site
Speaker 2: at the base of the cliff, because it was there
Speaker 2: was a wash I think on either side of the cliff.
Speaker 2: So over the course of all these years, fifteen years,
Speaker 2: the rains and the ensuing torrents of water would have
Speaker 2: essentially spread the bones out. I don't know that that
Speaker 2: would have done anything just to the kid's bones. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe there were so light that they got
Speaker 2: carried away and spread and dispersed even further. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: But it is sad that they never found the kid's
Speaker 2: remains too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just can't imagine anything more terrifying than
Speaker 1: being with your family like that and slowly dying of
Speaker 1: sunstroke and dehydration and Malnutrition's just over the course of
Speaker 1: knows how many days.
Speaker 3: You know, it's brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The thing that gets me is that, like thinking
Speaker 2: of what it must have been like for Egbert to
Speaker 2: climb some ridge and be able to see for dozens
Speaker 2: of miles and see that there was no perimeter fence anywhere,
Speaker 2: and for it to just hit you then and then
Speaker 2: you have to walk back and I guess tell your
Speaker 2: girlfriend like, yeah, we're in trouble.
Speaker 1: We salute to you Tom Mahood for picking this case
Speaker 1: up and bringing about some sort of resolution. Obviously feels
Speaker 1: awful for his ex wife back in Germany, and you
Speaker 1: know that her son was taken from her and on
Speaker 1: this fun sort of bonding trip and never came home.
Speaker 3: It was just just a very sad story.
Speaker 2: It is, Yeah, And I mean that's as close to
Speaker 2: saulved as it gets, and it seems pretty solid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2: Well, since we don't have anything more to say about
Speaker 2: the death Valley Germans except rested in peace all four
Speaker 2: of you, I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: This is about the Far Side.
Speaker 1: We did an episode on Gary Larson's great cartoon The
Speaker 1: Far Side and got a lot of great feedback.
Speaker 3: It's clearly a beloved.
Speaker 1: Cartoon that we heard from a lot of people that
Speaker 1: just really enjoyed our tribute. Hey, guys, The Parside was
Speaker 1: also a huge part of my comedy experience in my
Speaker 1: middle school to high school years. Been happy to share
Speaker 1: it with my son, who's eleven, who laughs out loud
Speaker 1: or sometimes says, I don't get this one. Your podcast
Speaker 1: made me think about how polarizing the humor of The
Speaker 1: par Side can be, and sometimes you just don't get
Speaker 1: it or don't really like it. My mom always thought
Speaker 1: it was such a dumb comic, but would see me
Speaker 1: laughing on and on reading the Far Side.
Speaker 3: Galleries one day.
Speaker 1: She had the paper first and really liked the Far
Speaker 1: Side from that day and laughed out loud and said, oh, Pete,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love this one. And it was Grandma Worm
Speaker 1: telling the little worms how Grandpa got the axe and
Speaker 1: made them, you know, chopped up.
Speaker 3: Into little worms. And I said, it's okay, but she
Speaker 3: was insistent, don't you get it. I get it. He
Speaker 3: cut himself into more worms.
Speaker 1: My mom was so mad about my reaction that she
Speaker 1: couldn't talk to me for a couple of hours. But
Speaker 1: I think that's what's so brilliant about Gary Larson. Any
Speaker 1: single cartoon could be the funny thing ever to a
Speaker 1: particular person and not so much to another, even if
Speaker 1: they love it. Thanks so much for the show, guys,
Speaker 1: and the countless hours that you've given to entertain me
Speaker 1: and my family.
Speaker 3: And that is from Pete. And hello to Pete and
Speaker 3: your family and your eleven year old son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hello, Pete, thank you for that. Yeah. We've got
Speaker 2: a lot of people send in their favorite Far Sides.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was fun.
Speaker 2: Yep, thanks to everybody who wrote in about the Far Side.
Speaker 2: And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, strongly
Speaker 2: recommend it's a good one, and if you want to
Speaker 2: be like Pete and send us a good email like
Speaker 2: he did, you can send it off to stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
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