By framing complex genomic science as a suspenseful narrative, this video successfully humanizes the cold precision of biotechnology. It serves as a powerful reminder that the final frontier of medical discovery is no longer the clinic, but the digital reconstruction of our own DNA.
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Ep. 584 | The Mystery Inside Their DNA - MrBallenAdded:
On an April morning in 2012, newlyweds Nikki and Danny Miller sat on the floor of their living room playing with their 6-month-old son, Carson.
Carson lay on his back on the rug smiling his toothless smile, his chubby little legs kicking in the air.
Nikki had a stuffed animal that she kept lowering over Carson's face then pulling it back when he reached for it. The boy went into a fit of giggles every time and Danny's heart swelled with love as he watched.
Danny was 42 and Nikki was 40. [music] So, when they got married last year, they weren't even sure they could have kids. To Danny, Carson was a little miracle with a soft blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Danny never took a single second for granted even though his energetic baby really wore him out.
Danny leaned over Carson and made silly faces [music] until the baby turned red from laughter. Then Nikki waved the stuffed animal again and their baby swiped at it. But, Carson's arm was stiff and awkward.
Danny had noticed over the past few weeks that Carson's movements were somewhat awkward.
At first, Danny had assumed it was just his son getting used to his own body. It was sort [music] of cute. But, over the last couple of days, Danny had noticed something else that was unusual about Carson's coordination.
It took a lot of work for his son to roll over onto his stomach.
>> [music] >> Danny and Nikki had been reading a ton of baby books so they knew that by month six, he should be able to roll onto his stomach then onto his back again.
But, even when Danny or Nikki helped, [music] their son still struggled to roll.
Danny knew that as a first-time parent, he could sometimes be alarmist. So, he tried his best not to fixate on his son's delayed motor skills. [music] But, just to be safe, he decided to schedule an appointment with his son's pediatrician.
When they saw that pediatrician, he'd recommended they speak with someone else, a specialist, who might be better equipped to give them answers.
A week later, Danny sat beside Nikki in a doctor's office watching the behavioral specialist examine their son.
The specialist was kind and had a calming demeanor and he listened intently while Danny explained their concerns about Carson.
And he never made Danny feel like he was an over-anxious new parent.
Eventually, the specialist's examination of Carson turned into a little game of peekaboo. And once Carson was giggling, the specialist turned to Nikki and Danny and said that he was not too concerned.
He reassured them that babies develop at different rates and it seemed like Carson was just taking his sweet time.
Danny nodded and squeezed his wife's shoulder as she exhaled with relief.
Danny wished he felt the same way, but he didn't.
Instead, he was left with this nagging feeling that there might be something more to Carson's problems than just him taking his sweet time.
That night, as Nikki put Carson to bed, Danny began poking around on the internet researching developmental delays in children.
He learned about a disruption in muscle movement called spasticity, which seemed to describe the jerky way that Carson moved his arms.
Danny also read about a condition called hypotonia that could account for Carson's lack of muscle tone.
He wondered if that was why Carson still couldn't roll over on his own.
And yet, Danny didn't really know what to do with this information. They'd seen a specialist who presumably would have known all about these conditions in babies and he didn't seem concerned. So, Danny closed his laptop deciding he would just be patient.
Carson was only 6 months old and Danny told himself that Carson would just grow into his body over the next few months.
9 months later in early 2013, Danny sat on the floor with Nikki, their backs against the living room sofa.
Wooden blocks and storybooks were strewn all around them.
Nikki's hands were resting on her very pregnant stomach.
They were both very excited to be having a second child.
Carson, who was now almost 16 months old, was sitting in Danny's lap as Danny flipped through a pack of animal flash cards.
He encouraged Carson to say the names of each animal or to at least make the animal noises.
But while Carson reached out a shaky hand to pet the animal cards, he didn't say any of their names or imitate the sounds they made.
Carson still wasn't talking, which was highly unusual for a kid his age.
And Carson had other developmental delays, too.
He couldn't sit upright on his own or crawl, either.
Eager to find something his child could do well, Danny put the flash cards away and reached for the wooden block set.
Maybe Carson was more of a builder.
Danny sat [music] his son next to the blocks, and right away Carson grabbed a blue square in his tiny fist.
Carson started moving the block to add it to the little pyramid his dad was building, but then Carson's hand shook uncontrollably and he dropped it.
Danny jumped up and scooped Carson into his arms.
He was quite accustomed to Carson's poor motor skills, but he'd never seen his son's hand tremble like that before.
He held Carson, >> [music] >> waiting to see if he could feel any more shaking, but Carson seemed okay.
Danny gave Nikki a wary look and told her maybe it was time to take Carson back to the doctor.
And Nikki nodded and said she was thinking [music] the same thing.
A few days later, Carson's pediatrician ordered an MRI to see if there was a physical problem that would explain Carson's developmental delays.
But when the MRI came back, it was normal.
That's when Danny told the pediatrician about the alarming conditions he had found online.
He talked about spasticity and hypotonia and a few other rabbit holes he'd fallen into. And to Danny's surprise, the pediatrician thought he might actually be on to something and referred them back to that specialist.
Now, Danny and Nikki sat in the behavioral specialist's office for the second time as he looked over Carson's file and ran some of the same little tests that he'd used to examine Carson's motor skills the first [music] time.
But this time, the specialist agreed with Danny and Nikki.
Carson's development was definitely falling behind, and the doctor believed that the little boy might have a condition that would account for some of these developmental delays.
In his opinion, Carson's delays were due to cerebral palsy, >> [music] >> which is a group of conditions that affect movement and posture, sometimes severely. [music] It's caused by damage to or abnormal development of the brain.
Danny nodded [music] and squeezed his wife's hand.
He'd come across cerebral palsy several times when he was Googling Carson's symptoms. So, Danny had known that this diagnosis could be a possibility, but it was still hard to hear it aloud.
Cerebral palsy is not [music] curable, which meant that Carson would never grow out of his developmental delays.
>> [music] >> Carson would have a lifelong disability.
The specialist assured Danny and Nikki that therapy could help Carson [music] manage the cerebral palsy, and suggested that they begin physical and occupational therapy right away.
Together, these therapies would help with his [music] motor skills and cognitive development.
Danny began calling therapists the next day >> [music] >> trying to find the perfect fit for Carson.
However, he had to put the search on hold for a week when Nikki went into labor.
>> [music] >> And in mid-January 2013, Carson's little brother, Chase, was born.
Nearly a year later, toward the end of 2013, Danny pushed Carson in a stroller up a steep hill in San Francisco, where he and Nikki were vacationing.
Danny's legs were burning, but Carson was enjoying the feel of the steep incline so much that Danny forced himself to keep on moving.
Besides, he was following Nikki who trudged ahead carrying little Chase in a sling.
And if she wasn't complaining, neither would he.
At this point, Chase was 10 months old and Carson was almost 3.
And neither boy could walk yet.
Now, this made sense for Chase who was still a bit young to be on his feet, but for Carson, it was definitely concerning. And they had to push him in a stroller whenever they went anywhere, which made carting him up and down the steep hills of San Francisco extremely tiring.
Intellectually, Carson seemed to be just fine. He was curious, always looking around and giggling, trying to grab at things that sparked his curiosity, but even after a year of therapy, he still couldn't sit upright on his own very well, let alone crawl or walk.
His little brother Chase also struggled to sit upright, which worried Danny.
He'd been noticing that Chase was experiencing a lot of the same developmental delays that Carson struggled with.
But Danny tried not to focus on that today.
They'd spent the morning at Golden Gate Park, then they had taken a trolley ride through town.
Danny had loved the way the boys laughed themselves silly on the trolley as it coasted [music] down some of the steeper hills.
And so now, after lunch, Danny and Nikki were taking the boys to another park to play.
They walked through the gates of a playground and set Carson and Chase into a big red sandbox.
Nikki sat behind Carson helping him sit upright while Danny handed Chase a little plastic shovel.
Chase reached out with a jerky arm and grabbed the shovel, but just as his fingers wrapped around it, his hand shook. He lost his grip >> [music] >> and dropped it.
Danny realized that Chase had a tremor in his hand, just like his older brother Carson.
Danny's mind started racing.
He wondered if Chase [music] might have cerebral palsy, too.
Except that didn't make any sense.
Danny had read once that statistically, [music] the odds of siblings each having cerebral palsy were one in a million.
And yet, [music] the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like Chase was developing the same delays as his older brother.
Danny thought hard for a second. If both his [music] boys had the same condition, then again, based on statistics, they probably did not have cerebral palsy.
>> [music] >> Which meant that Carson may have been misdiagnosed.
And if that [music] was the case, well, Danny and Nikki were back at square one.
Only worse.
Now they were searching [music] for a diagnosis for both of their children.
Two years later, in late 2015, Danny and Nikki still felt like they didn't actually know what was wrong with their sons. Over the past two years, they had brought Carson and Chase to specialist after specialist.
And most of them agreed that whatever the boys had, it was not cerebral palsy.
It was likely genetic.
But none of the specialists have been able to pinpoint [music] what exactly was causing the boys' symptoms.
Carson and Chase had been tested for a staggering array of diseases, rare metabolic disorders like phenylketonuria and Tay-Sachs, which damage the body's ability to process nutrients and enzymes. They had been tested for abnormalities in their chromosomes, as well as genetic disorders like fragile X syndrome, and degenerative disorders like Friedreich's ataxia that attacks the nervous system.
>> [music] >> So far, the boys tested negative for all of them.
But that only encouraged Danny to [music] spend more time researching on his own, looking for some kind of answer.
Danny and Nikki had even discussed whether or not it was maybe something they'd done. Like had Nikki taken the right prenatal vitamins? Or had they unknowingly exposed the boys to some kind of environmental toxin or something?
They didn't know, but Danny hated the idea that they were now blaming themselves for their boys mysterious condition.
Danny knew they could not keep living like this.
He had to find answers soon.
A few months later, Danny was at home playing with his boys.
Chase was now 2 years old and Carson was 4.
Both boys had grown into happy kids with matching blue eyes and pale yellow hair.
Carson had grown out of his baby fat and looked like a handsome little boy.
He still couldn't walk, but he could sit up by himself and had recently started crawling.
This morning, Danny put both boys on the carpet in the living room, then he dangled a Christmas ornament in front of Carson, who was sitting upright watching the ornament catch the sunlight and sparkle.
Danny hoped Carson would reach out and grab the ornament. This was something he had been working on in physical therapy.
But today, the boy just reached clumsily toward the little figurine, touching it with his palm, but seemingly unable to close his hand around it.
Eventually, when he continued not being able to grab the ornament, Carson started to get visibly upset until Danny finally set the ornament in his lap and told his son it was a good try.
But Danny was worried. Only a week earlier, Carson could actually grab hold of an object, but now he couldn't. It was like he was going backward.
That afternoon, Danny called the boys pediatrician to try to make an appointment.
And that's when the pediatrician suggested that it was time to do a specialized type of testing called gene sequencing.
It can detect missing or broken base pairs among the billions of pieces of the boys DNA.
The doctor thought they should do this as soon as possible.
Gene sequencing is an involved procedure and it can take two or three months to get the test results back.
Danny sighed at the doctor's recommendation. It felt like he spent his entire life waiting around for test results that always disappointed. After all this time, they still didn't know what was wrong with Carson and Chase, making it impossible to treat the boys or even know their limitations.
Danny worried that his son's quality of life suffered because the doctors could not figure out what condition they actually had.
Still, Danny agreed to do the genetic sequencing and hid his frustration from the doctor.
And when he hung up the phone, Danny grabbed his computer and took up his usual place on the couch, diving back into his own research.
Early in 2016, Danny had just gotten home from work when the phone rang.
It was the specialist who'd conducted Chase and Carson's genetic sequencing.
Danny held his breath.
They'd been waiting for these results for three very stressful months.
During that time, both boys continued to go downhill.
Chase stopped crawling, something he'd actually begun to get fairly good at, and Carson still was not walking.
By this point, he should not only have been walking, but maybe even running. He should also have been in preschool by this point, making friends with kids his own age.
Instead, he was stranded on the living room floor, unable to carry himself from room to room.
But, the specialist call did not give Danny any relief.
Danny was told that the long-awaited sequencing results didn't show any genetic damage that would explain his son's symptoms.
On paper, at least, the boys seemed genetically perfect.
Danny felt hopeless. He asked the doctor, like, what is he and his wife supposed to do now?
The doctor advised Danny that the best thing he could do was just check back in in a year.
They might have better testing by then, and maybe then they could find some answers.
Then they hung up, leaving Danny wanting to scream in frustration.
It was beginning to feel like Carson and Chase were the only two people on the planet with this mysterious condition.
The next day was a Saturday.
Danny wanted to spend an easy morning with his family, but he knew he had a mission.
Right after breakfast, he moved his laptop to the living room and spent the entire day combing through articles and medical journals.
10 hours later, at the bottom of one of his research papers, he saw something.
A mention of a group called the Undiagnosed Diseases Network.
Curious, Danny followed the ad to the network's homepage.
The UDN was run by the National Institutes of Health.
And its goal was to provide answers to patients affected by mysterious medical conditions.
UDN promised to take on the most challenging medical cases, like a last resort for families with nowhere else to go.
To Danny, that sounded exactly like his family's situation.
He called to his wife and [music] then brought his laptop into the kitchen to tell her what he'd found.
She immediately asked, you know, would they take the boys' [music] case?
Danny said there was only one way to find out.
And he opened up an application to the program.
Almost a year later, in January of 2017, Dr. Jonathan Bernstein walked out of his office at the Undiagnosed Diseases Network clinic.
He made his way down the hallway and to an examination room where his newest patients were waiting.
Danny and Nikki Miller had applied to the UDN clinic for help in the spring of 2016.
And they were finally accepted into the program in the fall.
But before they could come into the clinic for their first appointment, Dr. Bernstein had ordered an even more ambitious form of genetic testing called whole genome sequencing.
And not just for the two boys. Dr. Bernstein wanted the testing for the entire family.
Whole genome sequencing decodes a person's entire gene sequence. Almost like breaking down the entire instruction manual to an individual person.
It's the gold standard for genetic testing because it reveals every single gene, not just a portion of them.
Dr. Bernstein hoped that if he could see the entire family's genetic sequence, he'd be able to spot what was going on with the boys.
Now, 3 months later, the testing still was not done, but Dr. Bernstein wanted to meet his new patients in person.
He walked into the exam room and immediately saw that Chase and Carson had regressed significantly since their parents first applied to the program last spring.
Both Carson and Chase were strapped into their wheelchairs to keep them from slumping to the side.
Dr. Bernstein suspected that neither of the boys could sit up on their own.
And yet, both boys seemed to perk up when Dr. Bernstein entered the room.
He said hello, and both boys gave Dr. Bernstein big smiles.
It was clear to Dr. Bernstein that the boys were aware of what was going on around them. They just weren't able to verbalize. Nikki and Danny both stood to greet Dr. Bernstein and shake his hand.
Then Nikki explained that over the past year, Chase and Carson had both lost almost all of their motor skills.
Chase was 3 years old now, and Carson was 5, but neither boy could walk or talk.
Danny chimed in, adding that at this point, they also needed assistance just to eat and drink.
Dr. Bernstein began giving Carson and Chase routine physical examinations.
As he did, he warned the Millers that it would still be a little while before their whole genome sequencing results were back from the lab. But, when they were done, he'd have detailed genetic information for both parents and children that told the story of the entire family.
But, even then he warned, Nikki and Danny would need to be patient. It could take nearly a year for Dr. Bernstein's team to make a diagnosis.
Still, Dr. Bernstein promised that if anyone was going to find an answer, it would be this clinic.
Danny nodded and Nikki told Dr. Bernstein that they were used to waiting.
Finally, in February of 2018, a full two years after Danny first reached out to the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Dr. Bernstein called the Millers to say he had figured out what was wrong with Carson and Chase.
They were suffering from one of the rarest diseases in the entire world.
And the fact that both boys had the same condition was the result of almost unimaginably bad luck.
Carson and Chase did in fact have a genetic defect, >> [music] >> but one so tiny no other genetic testing revealed any problem.
Their condition was caused by a malfunction in a single gene out of the 20,000 genes needed to make a person.
The defect was so hard to detect that Dr. Bernstein's team could [music] only find it by looking at all 3 billion DNA base pairs that are the building blocks for genes.
And remarkably, both Chase and Carson had inherited the same defect. The whole genome sequencing revealed that the boys' parents, Nikki and Danny, carried an incredibly rare genetic mutation.
It's almost inconceivable that two people with this mutation would meet and have kids, and rarer still that they would pass the mutation on to both of their kids.
In both Carson and Chase's DNA, a small section of a gene called the MECR gene was broken. And this caused a catastrophic problem.
Because the MECR gene is what allows our cells to generate the energy they need to function.
If the MECR gene is broken, the cells cannot function properly.
Dr. Bernstein explained that the cells most affected by a broken MECR gene are the cells at the base of the brain, which is the area responsible for for That's why the boys couldn't crawl or walk or move around. It's why they suffered so many developmental delays and had a lack of basic physical abilities.
This condition called mitochondrial enoyl-CoA reductase protein associated neurodegeneration, or MEPA syndrome, is so rare that Carson and Chase were only the eighth and ninth patients in the world to be diagnosed with it.
Danny and Nikki were relieved the doctors had finally given them a diagnosis for their kids.
But, it was accompanied by grim news.
Dr. Bernstein told them that there was no recognized treatment for MEPA and no proven way to help the boys regain their motor skills.
But, that's when Danny Miller took over.
Once he received the diagnosis, Danny went back to his research.
This time looking for a way to manage MEPA syndrome.
And he quickly learned that patients with MEPA syndrome lack something called lipoic acid [music] in their cells.
Lipoic acid is crucial to generating power inside cells and without it, the brain runs out of energy.
At first, Danny thought that overcoming this deficiency would mean expensive treatments and therapies.
But, after looking into it more, he was amazed to find that he could actually buy lipoic acid supplements for only $16 a bottle online.
He ordered the supplements for Carson and Chase and after [music] a few months of taking them, it seemed like the boys motor function had stopped deteriorating.
In fact, when Danny and Nikki took the boys to the neurologist, he told them that Carson and Chase were even showing some signs of improvement. Unfortunately though, there is no way to fully restore [music] their physical abilities, at least at this time.
Carson and Chase still rely on wheelchairs to get around and they both rely on computers to communicate.
However, thanks to their parents dedication, >> [music] >> their condition seems to have stabilized.
And hopefully in future, there will be a better treatment plan or even a cure.
On August 23rd, 1995, 31-year-old Donna Winger stepped out of the air-conditioned baggage claim exit of the St. Louis Airport to look for the van that would take her back to her home in Springfield, Illinois. Next to Donna was a cart carrying all of her luggage.
Slung over her forearm was the carrying handle of a child's car seat and sleeping inside of it was Donna's 3-month-old daughter Bailey. The 88° afternoon was warm even for August, but not nearly as hot as it had just been in Florida where Donna and Bailey had just spent the last few days visiting with Donna's dad, mom, stepdad, and two sisters. Now tanned and rested from her vacation, Donna couldn't wait to get home to tell her husband Mark about the trip. Feeling very tired, Donna suddenly felt totally relieved that her mother and stepfather had hired a private driver to take her and her daughter the rest of the way home. It was about a 2-hour drive from the airport to her single-story house just outside of the city and with a private driver, she and her daughter could just sleep the whole time. A minute later, a 27-year-old lanky, dark-haired man stepped out of a waiting van parked in the limo area and waved at Donna holding up a handwritten sign that had her name on it. As Donna started to gather her bags, the driver smiled at her and hurried over to give her hand. A few moments later, he had opened the hatch of the van and stowed the luggage in the trunk while Donna carefully strapped Bailey and her car seat into the back seat of the van and then she too climbed inside and buckled up as well. The man hopped into the driver's seat and checked his rear and side view mirrors, then pulled out into the stream of traffic headed for the airport exit. Even though all Donna wanted to do was just sleep, she figured she should wait to see if the driver was the type of person who wanted to make small talk, in which case she could indulge him for a few minutes and then go to sleep and then she wouldn't be as rude. And sure enough, within seconds of starting the car, the driver wanted to chat. He introduced himself as Roger Harrington and said that he lived in the area. The man seemed nice enough and for a few minutes they chatted about the weather in Springfield and how it was hotter than usual for August. Then Roger complimented Donna on her tan, to which she kind of laughed off and said she'd [music] just spent the last few days sitting by a pool and probably was more sunburned than tanned. Eventually, Donna's responses got shorter and shorter as she was trying to give the man a hint that she just kind of wanted to be left alone, but he wasn't taking the hint. He just kept on asking her question after question and eventually the questions became very inappropriate.
He started asking her about her sex slave and whether she liked orgies and whether she wanted to come to one of his sex parties. All the while, he'd be looking into the rearview mirror to try to make eye contact with her. Donna felt totally creeped out and began tucking herself into the corner of her seat to try to get out of the view of his mirror. Finally, Donna just told Roger that she did not want to talk to him anymore, that her daughter was asleep and she didn't want their voices to wake her up, but Roger, again, did not take the hint. Instead, his questions and remarks got more and more sexually inappropriate and explicit and his driving became faster and more erratic.
And then he started talking about the voices he heard in his head, like the one belonging to an entity he called Dom that apparently told him to do bad things and lately Dom had been telling Roger to hurt people. By the time Roger pulled onto Donna's street, Donna was panicking and just praying that he didn't try to hurt her or her child. And so when he pulled up in front of her house, Donna hopped out of the car, grabbed her daughter and practically ran her into the house and then she went back outside and without even looking up at Roger, she just grabbed all of her things and then rushed back inside the house. With her front door shut and locked, Donna looked through the peephole of the door and watched with relief as Roger climbed into his van and drove off. At this point, Donna's husband, Mark, who was an average-sized guy with glasses and dark hair that had begun to thin, he had come into the room. He had been downstairs in their basement using their treadmill. And he was about to ask how the Florida trip went, but [music] he could tell right away that his wife was very upset about something. And so he asked her, you know, what's going on? It would take her a minute to compose herself, but Donna began explaining her car ride and how awful it had been and how she really had been in fear for her life. Mark listened attentively while he held their daughter, Bailey. And even though he was calm and reassuring on the outside, inside [music] he was furious. How dare this man put his wife and daughter in danger? So, at some point toward the end of her explanation of what happened, Mark told Donna to just write down an account of exactly what happened on the drive so that they could use it later on if they decided to file a complaint.
Donna agreed that that was a good idea, and so she stepped away and jotted some notes down on some paper, and then she stuck those notes to the refrigerator door with a magnet. Then, after that, even though both of them were still upset about the whole driver thing, they shifted their focus to their daughter, who was now rolling around on the ground smiling and cooing. And before long, the couple was down there with her laughing and goofing around.
By the next morning, things in the Winger household seemed to be back to normal. Mark, a nuclear engineer for the state, was getting ready to go to work.
Donna was still on maternity leave, so she and Bailey sat in the kitchen with Mark while he ate his breakfast. Married for 6 years, the only source of tension in the Winger household had been Donna's heartbreak years ago when she found out that she could not have children of her own. But the couple got over it, and Mark and Donna filled their lives with family and friends. [music] They were as openly affectionate with each other as they had been when they first got married in 1986. They were very active in their synagogue and were part of its tightly knit Jewish community. The pair complimented each other beautifully.
Mark was soft-spoken but had a great sense of humor and Donna was outgoing with a smile that could light up the room. Everybody loved them and in June of that year, just 3 months before Donna's trip to Florida, the couple got some amazing news. A teenage mother in the hospital where Donna worked as an operating room medical technician had just had a baby and wanted to place the infant for adoption. Donna and Mark immediately filed the paperwork and a few days later on a bright warm day right outside of their house with family and neighbors looking on, Bailey was delivered into Donna's arms by a man from the adoption agency. Life was perfect. As Mark kissed Donna and Bailey goodbye that morning, Donna's awful encounter with Roger, the driver, had already faded from their memories. But that evening, she and her husband would be forced to talk about him again.
That night when Mark, Donna, and Bailey sat down for dinner, their phone rang.
Mark got up to answer it, but when he picked up the receiver, all he heard was silence. And then a few seconds later, he heard a click as the caller hung up.
Mark shrugged, hung up the phone himself, and then sat back down with his family. And then just a few minutes later, the phone rang again. Annoyed, Mark got up, answered it, and again, he heard silence followed by a click. When Mark sat back down the second time, he felt totally unsettled. He couldn't help but think that the person who was calling them had to be Roger. The man had access to their home phone number because it was on their reservation paperwork that they knew he had. And Roger clearly had some serious issues and had shown a very unhealthy interest in Donna. And so as he was thinking about this as a potential possibility, Donna said to Mark, "I bet that was Roger."
Even though the phone did not ring again that night, the Wingers remained on edge and triple-checked their locks that night before they went to bed. And then the next morning, when Mark got up, he immediately called Roger's employer, Boothyel Area Rapid Transportation Company, or BART for short, and he filed a formal complaint about how inappropriate Roger had been during the car ride with his wife and his daughter.
Mark also told the company that he believed Roger was behind the two anonymous hang-up calls he received the night before. The company said they would look into it, and sure enough, later that day, they called Mark back to apologize for Roger's behavior during the car ride, and they told Mark that as a result, they had given Roger a 6-month suspension. Mark thanked them and felt like justice had been done. He figured if Roger had been behind those hang-up calls, too, that perhaps now he would stop because he would know that Mark and Donna were prepared to take action against him. But, the calls didn't stop.
For the next several days, the phone in the Winger household rang constantly, and each time there was just silence and then a click. Finally, on the morning of August 29th, so 6 days after Donna and Bailey had returned from Florida, Mark had had enough. He pulled out the paperwork Donna had been given by Roger when she first got in the car with him, and on it was Roger's phone number. Mark dialed the number, and when Roger said hello, Mark very angrily said, "If you don't stop harassing my family with these phone calls, we are going to call the police." And then, before Roger could answer, Mark just hung up on him.
Confronting Roger directly had been cathartic for Mark. However, deep down, he knew his threat was unlikely to change Roger's behavior. Roger was obviously mentally unwell, and on top of that, he was likely very angry at the Wingers because their complaint had just gotten him suspended. And so, these calls, which the police could do almost nothing about, were most likely Roger's way of getting some payback. But, Mark figured, you know, all he can do now is just wait and see what happens next.
[music] Later that day, just before 4:00 p.m., Mark was in the basement working out on the family's treadmill when he suddenly heard a thumping sound coming from upstairs.
>> [music] >> He turned off the treadmill and listened, and he heard it again, more thumping. And so, he climbed off the treadmill and quickly walked over to the stairs and went up to the main floor.
And when he got up there, he didn't see anything unusual on the floor, so he just walked straight to the master bedroom where Donna and Bailey had last been. But, when he looked in the bedroom, Mark was immediately concerned.
Bailey was in the middle of the bed, and Donna was not in the [music] room. Donna would never just leave Bailey alone in a place where she could potentially get hurt, like by falling off of the bed.
And so, Mark knew something was up, and those thumping sounds could not be good.
But, before he could make sense of what was going on, Mark heard more thumping coming from somewhere on the other side of the house. Mark had a terrible feeling, so he rushed over to Bailey, and he put big pillows all around her to keep her from rolling off of the bed.
And then, he rushed to his bedside table, and he pulled out of one of the drawers a pistol that he kept there for protection. Then, Mark slowly crept out of the bedroom with the gun at the ready. He shut the bedroom door behind him, and then he turned right and started walking down the hallway toward the dining room, which is where he believed the thumping sounds were coming from. And so, as he walked, heart rate began to spike. He had no idea what was making these sounds or what he was going to see when he reached the end of this hallway. And so, finally, he gets to the end of the hallway, but he's still in the hallway, so he can't see what's in the dining room. And so, he has his gun at the ready, and he takes a deep breath, and then in one fluid motion, he steps into the dining room and turns right and gets a full view of the room to see what's going on in there. And what he sees is beyond horrible.
His wife, Donna, is on her knees in the middle of the dining room and standing behind her is a man Mark has never seen before and the man is holding a hammer.
He's raising it above his head and then he brings it down and he smashes it into the back of Donna's skull. There was blood all over the walls. Mark started screaming and then Donna, she turned and looked at her husband and then Mark had to watch as this guy raised the hammer again and hit her as hard as he could across the base of her skull sending her crumpling onto the ground. Mark reflexively raised his gun, pointed it at his wife's attacker and he fired two shots, both hitting the man in the head.
The man dropped the hammer and then he fell backward onto the floor and was motionless. And so shaking violently from adrenaline and shock, Mark ran to his wife who's face down in a growing pool of blood and he put his gun down on the side and then he grabbed his wife and tried to roll her over to try to help her, but as he did, he heard the sound of this attacker starting to move around. And so without enough time to grab his gun, Mark just turned around and grabbed the hammer that was on the ground between him and this man and he wound up and he smashed the attacker as hard as he could right in the center of his chest. And when he did, the attacker groaned and went silent. Then Mark chucked the hammer out of reach of the attacker and he turned his attention back to his wife who was now unresponsive. In an absolute panic, Mark ran for the phone and he called 911.
When the police and paramedics arrived, they rushed inside the house and they found Mark crouched over his wife who was barely conscious and he's sobbing over her and her attacker was only a few feet away. He was lying on his back and amazingly, he was still alive. He was groaning even though his head had been destroyed from those two gunshot wounds.
The police very quickly took three pictures in rapid succession of the positioning of Donna and her attacker's bodies where where were on the ground.
Basically, they needed a snapshot of exactly what the crime scene looked like as soon as they arrived. And then the police pulled Mark aside to talk to him while the medics rushed inside and put Donna and her attacker on stretchers, and then they loaded them into an ambulance that was waiting outside, and they rushed them to the hospital. Right before the ambulance left, one of the police detectives, Charlie Cox, he pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of the attacker. And inside the wallet, Detective Cox found a driver's license, and it belonged to 27-year-old Roger Harrington. Sitting inside the bedroom he shared with his wife, Mark sat on the edge of the bed staring off into space while asking over and over again if his wife was going to be okay.
>> [music] >> At first, the police really weren't saying much since they knew Mark was in shock, but eventually Detective Cox asked Mark [music] if he had recognized his wife's attacker. Mark said no, but then he looked up suddenly, his eyes seeming to focus for the first time, and he said to the detective, "It has to be Roger Harrington." After explaining why he thought that, Detective Cox would tell him that yes, it was Roger. As it dawned on Mark that Roger's attack might well have been triggered by the complaint he filed as well as the phone confrontation he had with him, Mark broke down completely and just began sobbing hysterically. Meanwhile, Roger Harrington would die on his way to the hospital. As for Donna, she would die, too, just 40 minutes after arriving at the emergency room. It turned out that Roger Harrington was already known to area police. He had been a psychiatric patient at a local treatment facility, although he did not have a criminal history, Detective Cox himself had once had to respond to a domestic dispute between Roger and his then wife. And in addition to Mark's report of the harassing phone calls and his complaint to Roger's employer, the detectives had also discovered Donna's handwritten note on the fridge that detailed exactly what this guy had done in the car ride with her just 6 days earlier. It all added up to a tragic pattern of obsession and violence. Losing his job had apparently been the last straw. Roger Harrington had snapped and now Donna Winger was dead. Her baby was again motherless and Mark's life was shattered. Over the next several months, Donna's family would all take turns flying from Florida to Springfield to help Mark take care of Bailey while he tried to put his life back together. Not only was the extended family devastated by their own loss, they were also horrified by what Mark must have gone through, what he had seen and what he had been forced to do. And it was obviously taking a toll on him because he had begun drinking heavily.
Finally, Donna's mother just stepped in and told Mark, "Look, you really need to go out and hire a nanny who can come in and live with you guys and take care of Bailey, kind of help you get back on your feet again." And so with the encouragement and assistance of Donna's mother, Mark would put an ad out for a live-in nanny. And at the start [music] of 1996, he hired 23-year-old Rebecca Simic, a recent college graduate who had always wanted to work with children and who felt sure she could help fix this broken family. About 4 months later, Donna's mother was hurt but not totally surprised when Mark called her to say that Rebecca was pregnant. But Donna's family really liked Rebecca. She was not only amazing with Bailey and with Mark, but she also was just very respectful of the situation she was in. And in many ways, she represented a way forward for Mark and for Bailey. And so Donna's family gave the couple their blessing.
And at the end of the year, Mark and Rebecca eloped to Hawaii for a quiet wedding ceremony. And then over the next 4 years, Mark and Rebecca went on to have three children of their own. They also left the house where Donna was killed and moved to a larger house in the country with room enough for their growing family. Eventually, Mark withdrew both from Donna's family and from the tight-knit Jewish community that had been such a big part and reminder of his life with Donna. He also lost touch with their rabbi and converted to Christianity. But, despite these changes, Mark never forgot about Donna. Even though the investigation into her death was officially closed, Mark periodically would stop in to the Springfield police station to ask them if they had learned anything new about Roger Harrington's motivation for this crime. Mark knew that Roger was unhinged, [music] but the attack just seemed so random. Roger had only met Donna a few days earlier. What could possibly drive him to kill her so quickly? Even though her attacker was dead, Mark felt determined to see to it that someone be held accountable for Donna's death. And so, Mark filed a lawsuit against BART, the transportation company that had employed Roger. Mark claimed that BART was negligent in hiring Roger, and they should have known that he was dangerous. With millions of dollars in potential damages at stake, BART attorneys began their own investigation into the circumstances around Donna's death. But, years would go by, and the lawsuit just kind of dragged on quietly, and no new developments were discovered.
But, all that would change in 1999. In February of that year, the Springfield police got a call from a local woman who made an outlandish claim. She said there was another person besides Roger Harrington that was involved in Donna's murder, and she gave the police their name. Now, police get lots of tips, and many of them are not useful or not true.
But, the detective who received this tip had been directly involved in investigating Donna's murder back in 1995, and he had always kind of had his doubts about the way the crime scene was interpreted at the time. And so, after getting this tip from this woman, the detective decided to review some of the evidence from Donna's case and very quickly he noticed a discrepancy. Those three pictures that were taken by police right when they arrived on scene that showed in the same picture Donna and Roger, well, those pictures had just been slipped into the case file as an afterthought and until that moment no one had really looked at them closely, but now thinking about the possibility of another person being involved in this murder, these three pictures took a on a whole new meaning to this detective.
These photos, along with the tip from this woman and later combined with evidence unearthed by Bart's investigators, would reopen the Donna Winger case. And eventually, after another two years of painstaking interviews and forensic examination, the police learned that there really was another person involved in Donna's murder and there was much more to the story than they had originally thought.
This is the full story of what happened to Donna Winger.
At about 3:45 p.m. on August 29th, 1995, so the day Donna died, Mark was in the basement on the treadmill when he heard a thumping sound coming from upstairs.
After turning the treadmill off, he listened and heard the thumping again and so he quickly walked over to the stairs and began heading up to the main floor. When he got up there, he looked around and he didn't see anyone or anything strange, but instead of going to the master bedroom to check on his wife and daughter like he had told police, Mark walked to the front door.
The thumping he had heard downstairs was just the sound of someone knocking on the door. When he looked through the peephole of the front door, he saw a man in his mid-20s standing there. Mark opened the door and then this young man introduced himself as Roger Harrington.
Mark said, "Hello." and gestured for Roger to come inside of the house. Roger did and walked straight to the nearest table, which was in the dining room, and when he got there, he placed his cigarettes down on top of it as well as his travel cup that contained some coffee, and then Roger turned around to face Mark. And when he did, he saw Mark was now holding a pistol out in front of him. Roger was so shocked, he just froze and stood there, not saying or doing anything, and then Mark ordered Roger to turn around and get on his knees. And once Roger did this, Mark simply raised his gun and fired a single shot into the back of Roger's head. Hearing the gunshot, Donna, who was in the master bedroom with their daughter Bailey, she came running out to see what was going on. And when she got to the dining room, where Roger was on the ground in this pool of blood, she saw him and had no idea what to make of it and just started crying and shaking and looking around wildly, wondering what was happening.
And as she stood there, her husband, Mark, snuck up behind her with a hammer in his hand.
His first blow struck her on the left side of her head. She never saw it coming. And then as she stumbled, she turned and tried to put her arms up over her head to protect herself, but it wasn't enough. Mark bludgeoned her skull over and over and over again while she screamed at him to stop. Eventually, after the seventh blow to her head, Donna crumbled onto the ground next to Roger. Once he was sure his wife was down for good, Mark picked up the phone and placed a hysterical call to 911. In the background, barely audible, you can hear a groan. It was Roger. At that point, Mark abruptly ends the call with the dispatcher, saying his baby is crying and he has to go take care of her, but in reality, after he hung up the phone, Mark walked over to Roger and just fired another shot into his head, this one going straight through his forehead. Then Mark picked up the bloody hammer and struck Roger one time as hard as he could in the chest. Mark knew the police would find his prints all over the hammer, so he needed a story for why that was. He would later tell police that as he tended to his wife, he thought he heard Roger moving toward them, at which point he didn't have time to grab his gun, and so he turned around and he grabbed the hammer that was on the ground, and he hit him that one time. With his wife's blood streaking his face and arms and soaking into his T-shirt, Mark attempted to rearrange the two bodies to make it look like Roger had been attacking Donna from behind when he was shot down. Then, right as he got the bodies basically the way he wanted them, he heard the sirens fast approaching, and so he got himself into position. When the police and medics rushed inside the house, they found Mark sobbing over his wife's nearly lifeless body. Mark had actually done a fairly good job of framing Roger for this murder. However, he had made a critical mistake, and those three photographs the police took of Roger and Donna's bodies right when they arrived on scene proved it. In those pictures, you can see that Roger is lying at an angle that was inconsistent with Mark's description of what happened. Basically, the way Roger's body was found, it would not have been possible for him to have been attacking Donna at the time he was shot, which meant Mark's story was a lie. It would turn out this whole murder had just been a crime of opportunity. The tipster who had called the police and suggested that another person had been involved in Donna's death was a woman named Diane Schults, and Diane told them that she was Donna's best friend, and that Donna's husband, Mark, was her killer. Diane said she knew this because she had actually had an affair with Mark shortly before Donna's death. And apparently, it had been a very intense relationship where they had exchanged wedding bands and vowed to be together, and during this affair, Mark had started telling Diane that life would be so much better for the two of them, that they could finally be together for good if Donna just died. Diane did not think he was serious, and so never thought much of it, but it would turn out Mark was very serious. He just needed to figure out a way to kill his wife without getting caught. And so, when Donna came home from Florida and talked about how inappropriate her driver, Roger, had been and how he had seemed totally crazy and dangerous, Mark realized he had found the perfect fall guy. He started framing Roger by complaining about him to his company and getting him suspended. And then, as for those anonymous hang-up calls, the only person who ever answered the phone for them was Mark. And so, most likely he fabricated those. Diane said Mark believed if he could just find a way to get Roger to come inside of his house when Donna was home, Mark could pull this murder off.
Investigators tracked down phone records that showed that Mark Winger had called Roger Harrington on the morning of Donna's death, August 29th. Roger's family corroborated that Roger had received a call from Mark that day and that Mark had apparently asked Roger to come over to his house so they could resolve the complaint Mark had placed against him. And since Roger desperately needed his job back, he happily agreed to go, not realizing that Mark was luring him to his death. Diane claimed that at the time, despite how specifically Mark was talking about this frame job, she still [music] was not taking him seriously, which is why she didn't go to police about this. But after Donna's murder, Diane knew Mark had done it.
>> [music] >> However, Mark had told her that she could never go to police because she knew too much and if he went down, she would, too. So, she had stayed quiet and eventually broken up with Mark and moved on with her life. But four years after the murder, her conscience got the best of her and so, she contacted police.
Diane would receive immunity for her testimony. On June 5th, 2002, after a 3-week-long public trial in which he declared his innocence, Mark Winger was found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Donna Winger and Roger Harrington. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A Immediately after Mark's conviction, his second wife, Rebecca, divorced him and changed her last name back to Simic. She packed Bailey and her other three children into her brother's car and she relocated to Louisville, Kentucky. As of today, all four of the Simic children have grown into successful adults who have built careers in teaching, art, and business.
In October of 2007, Helena Carroll and her fiance, John Cullen, had saved a little bit of money and they were torn on what to do with it. They knew they should put it aside and put it towards a down payment on a new house, but they also really wanted to go on vacation and lately life had been very stressful for both of them. And so ultimately they decided, let's just blow it all on an amazing vacation. And so later that month, they flew off to Thailand. Over the course of their week, they spent most of their time at their resort, sitting in the pool, and eating nice food, and they were having this really nice time. And on their last day, they decided they needed to do something a little bit more adventurous. And so they decided to explore the Nam Tok Cave inside of the Khao Sok National Park, which is this 160 million-year-old rainforest that was not that close to their resort. In fact, it was not really a huge tourist destination because of how cumbersome it was to get there. But from everything they read about this park and specifically this cave they wanted to go in, it [snorts] was just this breathtaking experience and so they were sold. After signing up for a guided tour, they headed down to the pier where they boarded a boat and drove 90 minutes to the entrance of this park. When they got off, they met their two guides and then walked down to this entrance area where they connected with the other five tourists that were going to be on this tour with them. Those five people were two Swiss parents and their two teenage daughters, along with a 10-year-old German boy who was there on his own.
After everyone had said hello and introduced themselves, they began walking through the park towards this cave. The allure of the Nam Tok Cave, which is the cave they were going to be going to, was there was a river that ran through it where at times, as you walked through this cave, you'd have to hold onto a rope and wade through the water, where the water was up to your waist or even up to your neck at times. But, it felt safe and controlled, and it was kind of exhilarating for foreign tourists to go through the cave. As they were just about to get to the entrance of the Nam Talu Cave, some park rangers happened to walk down the path next to them, and they exchanged some words with the two local guides that were leading this tour, and they told them, "It's a bad idea to go into the Nam Talu Cave because this is the monsoon season. No one's supposed to be in there, and if it starts raining while you're inside the cave, you won't hear it, and it will flood the cave, and then you'll be trapped." But, despite the warning, the group continued on because it hadn't rained that day, and there wasn't any rain in the forecast, and the two local guides that were leading this tour were really confident that they were not in danger. They entered the cave a little after 1:00 p.m., and right away they were walking through little puddles of water that got a little bit deeper, and pretty soon they were holding onto the rope and walking through the deeper sections of the cave, you know, water's up to their waist, and by all accounts, it was very exciting. And the entirety of the tour should only take about an hour, where it's 30 minutes in, you hit the turnaround point, and you come back.
And they had made it about 20 to 25 minutes in, right before the turnaround point, when Helena and John, who were towards the front of the tour group, heard what sounded like a rushing or roaring sound coming from the entrance of the cave. And they turned around, and they saw this wave of water [music] barreling into the cave, and instinctively John and Helena start climbing up the walls, and luckily there was a ledge where they were, and they managed to scramble up onto this ledge.
And Helena would say, as soon as she got up there, she turned around to look where she had just been standing, right as this surge of water blasted past them, carrying with it the two tour guides and the 10-year-old German boy, who immediately got swept around the corner down the dark tunnel. And then, seconds later, the two Swiss parents and their teenage daughters, they got swept away around the corner. The couple was now stranded on this ledge with no time to be upset about what they're witnessing because the water was not only surging past them, it was rising and there was limited amount of space before they would just be completely submerged in water. And so they tried their best to climb up this wall to a slightly higher ledge which was still only a few feet away from these rushing rapids. And so as they're crouched up on this ledge, John eventually says to Helena, you know, we're going to die if we stay here, we're going to drown. And so I need to find a way to maybe get past this initial rush of water and maybe on the far side of the cave I can work [music] my way back up to the entrance and hopefully get us some help.
And initially Helena said, don't do it, don't leave, we're safe here. But eventually he said to her, I have to go.
I love you, [music] I have to go. And she said, okay. And he jumped into the water and almost immediately he was pulled under and disappeared. For the next 20 hours, Helena had to sit on this ledge in total darkness until the water finally began to subside a little bit and rescuers could come in to get her.
What had happened was after Helena and the rest of the tour group had gone inside of the cave, they made it just far enough in that they were out of earshot of what was happening outside of the cave. Right at that moment a huge freak storm rolled in, there was this flash flood that was so intense the lake that was right outside of the entrance to this cave, it rose up and began dumping directly into the cave. It was like a dam basically breaking and all the water just poured in all at once.
When Helena was finally let out of the cave, she didn't know what happened to her fiance or the other tourists that were part of the group. [music] But as soon as she stepped outside, she saw there were eight coffins that had been lined up right outside and she found [music] out that she was the sole survivor. Despite this tragedy, people still go into the Nam Talu Cave even during monsoon season.
In 2014, 35-year-old Darren Spivey was a passionate scuba diver and he wanted to share that passion with his 15-year-old son Dylan. So on Christmas Eve that year, he gave his son an early gift, scuba [music] tanks. The pair was apparently so excited to use them that they planned on doing an early morning dive the very next day on Christmas.
Later, Dylan's grandmother would tell the media that her grandson actually didn't really want to go on this dive trip, but he knew his dad did and he adored his father and didn't want to let him down, so he decided to go anyways.
>> [music] >> The following morning, the father and son got up and they made their way to a local dive site only to discover that the gate to the dive site was locked.
The father still really wanted to do this dive and so he decided he would take them to another dive site in Central Florida, which was inside of a wildlife management area that he knew was open 24/7 to hunters and hikers and divers. So, the pair drove over to the entrance of this park and sure enough it was open and so they went through and began driving down these windy backroads until they finally reached this dirt lot that was right next to a pond. They got out of the car, they put on their wetsuits and their scuba gear and began wattling their way over to this wooden walkway that starts in the parking lot and goes all the way up and out onto the pond like a dock. And as they walked down this wooden walkway, they would have passed a number of signs telling them do not dive in this pond unless you're an expert diver because this is not just some pond. This pond was the entrance to the infamous and deadly Eagle's Nest, which in the cave diving community is known as the Mount Everest of cave diving. At the bottom of this little placid seeming pond is a narrow hole that is a tunnel that goes straight down and that is the single way in or out of this massive underwater cave system. Expert divers will swim over to this hole and grab the guideline that goes down into this cave and they'll follow it and they'll swim straight down until the light above them fades and all they can see below them is just black nothingness. And once they get through the end of this tunnel, it opens up into this massive chasm that's called the ballroom. And as soon as you get into the ballroom, if you stop and shine your light in any direction, you will not see a wall, no matter how powerful your flashlight is. You can't see a wall, it's so big. Divers that have been down there have said it feels like you're in outer space. This guideline goes straight down to the bottom of the ballroom at about 130 ft, at which point you see a sign that has a grim reaper on it that says stop, prevent your own death, do not go any farther. There's nothing in this cave that is worth dying for. Basically, this is your last chance to turn around and get to the surface relatively easily. Because from this sign, the cave splits off in two different directions where the tunnel gets narrower and it kind of spiders around and then certain points it goes all the way down to 300 ft. So, beyond this sign, it is extremely dangerous unless you know what you're doing. And even then, it's still extremely dangerous. There's also a current that runs through Eagle's Nest. So, if you were to lose the guideline, especially in the ballroom, you could be blown away and then have a really hard time finding it again because it's pitch black down there and it's like finding a needle in a haystack. And if you're not holding onto the guideline, it's nearly impossible to find the one way out. So you understand how intimidating and dark and dangerous this place is, here's a video of a diver going through that tunnel into the ballroom.
>> Down there there's a warning sign or a stop sign warning divers that aren't trained for this type of diving, cave trained, or trimix trained to to not go any further to help help save [music] lives.
A lot of divers have died trying to do these types of dives. And the thing is at these depths small mistakes can cost lives. So the sign is there just as a warning to to help prevent any future accidents. But as Darrin and Dylan sat at the end of the walkway getting ready to jump into this pond, they were unfazed by the countless warnings even though neither of them were expert divers. In fact, Dylan wasn't even a certified diver at all. This was one of his first dives. Before the pair jumped into the water, Darrin texted his fiance and said they were at Eagle's Nest and they were about to do this dive and that he would call when they got back to the surface. After that, he put his phone away on the surface and the two of them jumped into the water and started swimming their way over to the entrance to Eagle's Nest. Hours went by and Darrin's fiance did not get a call from Darrin. And so by the time the sun was going down, she decided she had to go check on them. So she hopped in the car and she drove to the parking lot at Eagle's Nest and she saw Darrin's car and no sign of the boys anywhere. Police were called and very quickly professional divers were brought to Eagle's Nest to go down and see if they were still down there. The divers got in the water, they made their way over to the narrow entrance, they went down the tunnel, they entered into the ballroom, and they stopped holding onto the guideline. They pulled out their flashlights and began scanning around the ceiling immediately inside of the ballroom because they had done this before and it was not uncommon to have fatalities inside of caves be near the entrance. And as they're scanning around, they stop when they see Dylan's lifeless body trapped up against the ceiling about 6 ft away from the entrance. He had inflated his water wings, which are emergency flotation devices. His mouthpiece was out of his mouth, and it would turn out he had no more air left in his tanks. After the divers retrieved Dylan's body, they went back into Eagle's Nest, and they went all the way down following the guideline to the bottom of the ballroom, where they found Darrin. He was laying on a little sandy hill. His mouthpiece was out. He also had no air left in his tanks, and he was laying right next to the famous sign that has the Grim Reaper on it that says, "Stop. Prevent your own death. Don't go any farther." Both Darrin and Dylan's gauges showed they'd gone down to 230 ft. For reference, between 0 and 130 ft is considered recreational diving. And so, in those depths, you can breathe regular air. So, the same air you breathe on the surface is the air that goes in your tanks. You don't need really special training. You can kind of do whatever you want in those depths. Below 130 ft, you need to breathe a special gas mix. You need special equipment, and you definitely need specialized training. All three of those things Dylan and Darrin did not have. After an investigation was done into their deaths, it was determined it was an accident, and the going theory was they went through the entrance into the ballroom. They went all the way down, and then they went into one of the two tunnels that spiders off to the side, and they managed to go all the way down to 230 ft. And [music] at that depth, they must have developed a nasty case of nitrogen narcosis, [clears throat] which is like being drunk. And so, in that state, they must have lost track of time and how much air they were using. And so, by the time they got back to the ballroom to begin their ascent, they ran out of air. The son must have run out first and grabbed his father, shown him his air gauge to point out that he has no air left. His dad, in seeing that, must have taken his regulator out and put it in his son's mouth, and they began buddy breathing as they ascended to the exit. Except the father's tanks also ran out of air very shortly after that, and the father passed out and sank to the bottom. the son managed to get a full breath of air and began trying to swim as fast as he could to the surface. He even inflated his water wings to make himself go faster. Except in his panic, he must have let go of the guideline and swam all the way up and then hit the ceiling and then been not able to find the way out and ultimately drowned. Today, despite all the warnings outside and inside of the cave itself telling inexperienced divers to not go any farther, inexperienced divers continue to go into Eagle's Nest and inexperienced divers continue to die inside of Eagle's Nest. To date, 11 people have died inside of that cave.
Midday on June 10th, 1981, an Italian man and his 6-year-old son walked to the edge of their property in Frascati, which is an area in Italy known as the hub of Rome's local wine industry. The father needed to repair a section of their fence and his son, who he said had the soul of Huckleberry Finn, wanted to tag along. But as soon as the work began, Alfredo just wanted to go play in the vineyards and so he ran off. And the father didn't think much of it because his son always played in the vineyards and just figured he would see him back at the house. When the father finished up the work around 7:00 p.m. and walked back into his house, he was surprised that Alfredo wasn't there. And so he asked his wife, you know, "Have you seen our son?" And she said, "No, can you go out and find him cuz dinner's going to be on the table any minute." So the father goes back outside expecting to see Alfredo come running out from behind some hiding place, but he doesn't. He yells out for his son and doesn't get a response and so he begins walking his property and yelling for Alfredo and he's not finding him. And so after 2 hours of looking, he finally just calls the police. The police arrive and initially it's just a couple of officers with flashlights and they spend about 2 hours looking as well. They can't find him. So they call in backup in the form of officers with sniffer dogs and the dogs began searching the property for another 3 hours and they still couldn't find him. A little after midnight, the fire department, known in Italy as the fire brigade, they joined in as well.
Shortly thereafter, a fire brigade officer was on the edge of Alfredo's property when he discovered a small hole in the ground. It would turn out Alfredo's neighbor had dug an illegal well, which was a common practice at the time, and generally if you dug one of these wells and you struck water, you would report the well. But, if you dug down and you didn't find water, you would just cover it up with a girder and you wouldn't tell anyone. In this case, however, the hole the officer was looking at did not have anything covering it. And so, he knelt down and he yelled Alfredo's name into this hole.
And at first, he didn't hear anything.
Then he yelled again and he heard Alfredo yell back for his mother.
Alfredo must not have seen the opening as he was running around playing, then he fell feet first into an 80-m deep shaft. After Alfredo was found, the fire brigade took over rescue efforts, and so additional fire brigade units were called to help. But, as soon as those additional units showed up, the captains of the different units began arguing with each other because it wasn't really clear how they were going to get him out. And unfortunately, the fire brigade immediately made a very bad decision.
They decided to lower a plank into the shaft attached by a rope that he could grab onto and they could pull him out that way. But, when they lowered it at about 24 m, the plank got stuck inside of the tunnel. And when they yanked on the rope to try to free it, the rope came off of the plank, but the plank remained wedged in the tunnel blocking the tunnel. By the following morning, TV crews had swarmed the area and one of them offered up a two-way microphone that could be lowered down into the hole so they could talk directly to Alfredo.
When the microphone was finally lowered down next to his face, he was crying and pleading for them to get him out and that he missed his mother. Amateur spelunker Tullio Barnaby, a 23-year-old, had come over and joined the vigil that night. The plank plan shocked him for its foolishness, and so too did the scene. It was like everyone and no one was in charge. The well opening had been widened in hopes that a very skinny person would be willing to be lowered down to remove the piece of wood that was obstructing the tunnel. And since Tullio was a spelunker and was comfortable in confined spaces and was pretty skinny, he volunteered himself to do it. As he was lowered down, he quickly realized the inside of this tunnel was not a straight shot. It was more like a corkscrew. And so because of its windy nature, he was not able to get down to the wood. And so he signaled to go back up again. And when he reached the surface, you know, he didn't have the wood in hand, but he told the fire brigade that because of the windy nature, it's unlikely Alfredo fell all the way to the bottom. He's probably stuck somewhere in the middle, which is a good thing. But we have to be really careful as we pull him out that we don't do [music] anything that unintentionally causes him to slip farther into the hole. Tullio's suggestion was they go out and recruit professional spelunkers to be involved in the rescue because they would understand how to get someone out of such a tight space so far down in the ground. But the fire brigade disregarded his advice and said we don't have enough time for that. At 6:00 a.m.
the next day, about 12 hours after Alfredo's fallen into the swell, the fire brigade would make another very poor decision. They decided they would drill down another hole parallel to the one Alfredo was in and they would drill down past the point they believed Alfredo was, at which point they would turn and drill laterally and connect to the tunnel Alfredo's in, grabbing Alfredo, pulling him across and back up the new tunnel. Tullio objected and he said the vibrations from this drill are almost certainly going to dislodge the boy and cause him to slip farther into the tunnel. But once again, the fire brigade did not listen to him. The drilling began about 2 hours later and by that afternoon, Alfredo's plight had become major national news with every single TV station playing a 24/7 live broadcast of the well, watching the drilling take place. Even the Italian president made a special trip to the well to see how it was going. But the drilling was very slow and Alfredo, he had that microphone next to his head and he was crying half the time. Then the other times he was just pleading with them to get him out and saying he was cold or that he was tired and the rescuers would say, "We're going to be down there to get you. Don't fall asleep. We're going to get you out of there. Finally, after 36 hours, they had drilled all the way down to their intended stopping point, and they began drilling across into Alfredo's well.
When they finally broke into Alfredo's well, rescuers rushed in with flashlights and looked up and looked down, and there was no sign of Alfredo.
And they called it up to the top, and they said he's not here. And then all of a sudden, they heard a faint voice coming from all the way down at the bottom of the well. The vibrations from all of the drilling had indeed caused Alfredo to slip all the way to the very bottom. They estimated he was approximately 30 m below this new parallel tunnel, and at that depth, the temperatures would be freezing. And so now, Alfredo, on top of everything else, was facing hypothermia. They quickly lowered the microphone again down to Alfredo, and they told him, "We're going to get you out of there. We're sorry we dropped you, but we're going to get you." And Alfredo's voice came back weak. He was tired. He was sore. He was freezing. He was crying. It was like the situation was just getting so much worse by the second, and rescuers knew they had to get to him probably in the next couple of hours, or that was it. And so, another skinny man volunteered to go down into the hole, and they lowered him, and he would go all the way down to the bottom where Alfredo was. And he would call up that he found him, and that Alfredo was alive. But Alfredo was stuck waist-deep in this mud that the guy could not pull him out of. And so, every time he'd begin to raise him slightly out of the mud, he'd lose his grip, and he would fall back into the mud, going deeper into the mud each time. And after the seventh time of not being able to do it, Alfredo was getting dangerously close to being neck-deep in the mud. And so, the guy had to be pulled back out again. As soon as he was pulled back out again, more men volunteered themselves to go in there and try to yank him out, but many of them were not able to even get down to Alfredo. They would get stuck along the way. A couple did get to Alfredo, but they said his condition was worsening.
He was weak. He wasn't even assisting trying to get pulled out. It was clear they were reaching the end. Finally, at 6:36 a.m. on Saturday, so 2 and 1/2 days after Alfredo fell in, they could not get him to respond on that two-way microphone. And so, they sent down a sonar probe, and they could not detect a heartbeat, and doctors declared him dead. The next day, liquid nitrogen was poured into the hole to preserve the body, and then 31 days later, they were finally able to extract it. After it was all over, the 25 million plus people that watched this take place live on television were crushed with what happened to Alfredo. There was a general sense that lots of people let this poor child down, which led to his death. But, the person who was ultimately held accountable for it was the neighbor who had illegally dug the well. And so, the neighbor was charged with manslaughter and was sent to jail, but their sentence is not publicly available online. So, that's going to do it, guys. If you found the secret in today's of 2007, Chris had been working as a park ranger in southeastern Pennsylvania for a number of years, and by and large, he enjoyed his occupation. Some of the time, he got to do what he loved, which was hiking in the forest. And some of the time, it required doing something he hated, which was office work that usually required staying late at night.
On one of those late nights in August of 2007, Chris's boss, Mike, said that he needed to leave the office and go down the access road to this tool shed they had. He needed to get some equipment and bring it back up to the office for some reason, and he said he'd be back in about 15 minutes. As soon as Mike left, Chris decided, "You know what? I'm going to take a break from my work, and I'm going to step outside for a minute."
Right in front of the office building was a little staff parking lot, and then about 50 m beyond that was the edge of this really dense forest where the access road that Mike had just gone down to get to the tool shed basically split right through the middle and went straight out past the office. When Chris stepped outside to take his break, he sat down on the front steps that overlooked that parking lot and the access road, and he was just kind of looking out towards the forest, not thinking about what he was looking at, just kind of mindlessly sitting there, when all of a sudden, he just started to feel like, "Someone's watching me. And instinctively he turned around to look back into the office as if maybe someone was behind him, but he remembered that he and Mike were the only ones there that [music] night. So, no one's going to be behind him. And so he turned back around and he looked out at the parking lot and he didn't see any movement [music] and he looked down to the edge of the forest, which he could see because the moon was fairly bright that night. So, the illumination was pretty good. And there was no movement against the tree line, there was no animals, there's no people and Mike had not come back yet. So, there's nothing going on in front of him, there's nothing going on behind him, but he just could not shake this feeling that someone was watching him. And so Chris, you know, he's not easily spooked, he's used to being out in the forest in the daytime and at night. He's used to being at this office. A lot of times he worked at the office on his own at night. So, he's used to this environment. And so he thought, you know what? I'm going to go look around. And so he walks down the steps and he walks into the parking lot and he begins looking behind some of the cars. There's only a handful in the lot.
There's nothing in the lot and he keeps walking till he's about 10 m away from the edge of the forest and he looks into the forest and it's too dark to see anything and there's nothing out here.
There's no movement, there's no animals.
Mike is still not back yet. And so even though he could not shake this sense that someone is watching him, he felt like, you know what? I did my diligence and there's no one out here. So, it's just got to be in my head. And so he decides he's going to go back inside.
And so he turns around and he starts walking back up towards the office when all of a sudden he hears this whooshing sound come past his head. He didn't know what it was, but it sounded like someone took a stick and threw it overhand. So, it's spinning like a tomahawk as it passed by his head. And because this sound was so loud and he was already on edge about someone potentially watching him, that he actually dove as soon as he heard it and fell to the ground and scrambled around and looked at the tree line from where this thing came from, but there's no one there. And he scrambles to his feet and he's still looking around and he starts backpedaling towards the office with his eyes still on the forest, and his attention kind of shifts from the forest to what was just thrown at me. And he turns around [music] and starts walking around looking for something on the ground, like a stick, to see if something really was thrown at him, but he can't find anything. He didn't do an exhaustive search. He didn't look under every single car, but an initial scan turned up nothing. And then he turns back to the forest, and he doesn't see anything out there, and even though again he feels totally stressed out, like something's out here and I can't see it.
>> [music] >> He's like, "Am I going crazy? Did that really happen?" cuz I can't find this big stick that apparently flew past my head. So, is this all happening in my head? But regardless, he's totally freaked out, and he sprints back inside the office and locks every door. 20 minutes later, Mike comes blazing up the access road. He stops in front of the office and runs up the stairs. Chris goes over, unlocks the door, and he lets him in. And Chris is about to tell him about this crazy stick-throwing incident, but he can tell Mike is really upset about something, probably more upset about whatever happened to him than Chris is about the stick-throwing thing. And so, Chris tables his story.
He locks the doors behind Mike, and he turns to him and he says, "What's going on? What's wrong with you?" At first, Mike doesn't say anything. He just paces back and forth inside the office. And then finally, Chris calms him down, and he gets him to explain what happened.
Mike tells him that he was down at the tool shed, which is about a half-mile down the access road, and about 20 m off the road into the forest. And he's at the shed, it's open, and he's pulling out the different pieces of equipment he's going to bring back to the office.
And he says, "All of a sudden, all the hairs on his body stand up. He's got goosebumps." And immediately, he thinks, "Someone's watching me." And he turns around, and there's no one there. He looks to his right and his left. He kind of pokes his head in the shed, like, "Is someone hiding in the shed?" There's no one in there. He walks to the back of the shed. There's no one behind the shed. And he's just totally stumped why he's feeling this way. He goes back to the front of the shed and he's going over in his mind what made him feel this way and he can't put his finger on it, but he cannot shake this feeling of someone watching him and it's making him totally anxious. So, he gets all the things he needs in the shed as quick as he can, he locks it up, he turns and he starts speed walking back out to his truck. When he gets about 5 m away, he hears footsteps running right to left behind him back where the shed is [music] and because he was already completely on edge about someone watching him in the woods somewhere, he doesn't even turn around to see what that is. He knows he needs to run to his car and get inside and put steel between him and whatever is out there. Once he's inside, he locks the door, he turns on the ignition and looks one last time in the direction of where he came from and to his horror, there is a man walking into the woods right next to the shed, turning the corner behind and disappearing into the woods. His instincts were spot on. He was being watched and that's when Mike hit the gas and sped back to the office. Chris then tells Mike about his stick throwing incident because all of a sudden that seems a whole lot more real and they both agree that whoever threw something at Chris [music] is probably the same guy who was hiding near the shed with Mike. Concerned this guy might come back and break into the office, they stay the night there and they watch the whole time, they don't see him again [music] and the next morning they file a report and they tell the incoming park rangers what happened, but after this there were no more reports of this strange hooded figure roaming around the forest and to this day Chris and Mike have no idea who he is or what he wanted, but they can both agree whoever he was, he was bad news.
In the summer of 2015, a young man named Paul was on his last day of a 7-day solo backpacking trip through a very remote area in Utah called the Dark Canyon Wilderness. Dark Canyon gets its name from its steep walls that block light in the morning and in the late afternoon.
It's an area that's only accessible by foot and it's not uncommon to go in there and not see another person the whole time you're there. That morning Paul got up and set off on a day hike that would take him through [music] a very forested area up onto a plateau where he planned to camp out for the night. About a mile into the hike he found some amazing elk antlers and he decided he wanted to keep [music] them.
So he threw them on his backpack and rested them at the top and continued on his hike. But the added 15 pounds of weight proved to be far more exhausting than he was anticipating and very quickly he blew through all of his water. Even though he was within 1 mile of his final destination, this plateau, he decided to stop because he was so dehydrated he needed to find water. So he puts his pack down, he puts the elk antlers down and he starts walking around and amazingly he does find some water. Granted it was kind of a gross puddle of standing water, but he figured I can boil this and it should be okay.
And as he's preparing a fire to boil this standing water, he figures, you know what? If I'm making a fire here, I might as well just make my camp here. So he sets up his tent and then he makes a fire and he's about to start boiling this water when he realizes how dumb he's being. If there's a puddle of standing water right here, then probably just a little ways upstream there's going to be some running water. Why don't I not boil this crappy water that will only yield, you know, a couple sips of water and go look for the running water where I can drink as much as I want. So he puts the pot down and he leaves all of his gear at the campsite and he begins walking up this mountain to hopefully find a stream. And after about a half mile of walking up this mountain he finds this little spring.
Immediately he's down on hands and knees drinking as much water as he possibly can because he's super dehydrated.
>> [music] >> And after he's drank for quite a while, he reaches down to his belt where he kept his water bottles and he realized he left all of his gear including his water bottles at camp. So he didn't have a way to collect this water. And so he's like, "Shoot, I got to go back to camp and [music] get the bottle and come back. I'm going to burn a bunch of energy." But he's like, "You know what?
What can you do? I I need the water. And so he gets up and he turns around and he starts walking back towards his camp.
And immediately he starts to feel really anxious as he's walking back. He can't help but feel like someone's behind him watching him. And he kept turning his head thinking he's going to see someone just over the mountain who's quietly stalking him. And he just could not shake this feeling. And so as he's walking back to camp, every little sound he hears is totally throwing him off.
Every little rustling leaf, every little bird overhead, he's totally on edge because he's convinced someone is behind me or someone's over there, someone's watching me. He finally gets back to camp, he gets his water bottles, and he considered not going back to the spring [music] because he didn't want to cover that distance again because of how stressful it just was. But ultimately he knows he needs the water. So either he's going to sit here for a really long time and boil a bunch of stagnant water or he can just suck it up, walk to the spring, get some water, come back, and be good.
Before he walks up to the spring, he grabs a really big stick to use as a club, and then he walks up. So now he's got some protection. And immediately as he begins that half-mile trek to the spring, the anxiety pours right back over him and he can't help but feel like someone is watching him. But he gets up to the spring, he fills his water bottles, he turns around, and he starts walking back. And he walks down this little rock face and lands on the trail he had just been on a minute ago, and he stops because he sees something on the ground that wasn't there before. A fresh mountain lion print is placed right in between two of his footprints that he had just made on his way back to the spring. Meaning, there's a mountain lion somewhere right around here that's not just watching me, it's hunting me. Paul doesn't really know what to do, so he runs to his campsite and gets in his tent and huddles in his tent [music] for the rest of the night hoping a mountain lion doesn't attack him. And fortunately it does not. And what he thinks probably happened was when he picked up those elk antlers and put them on his backpack and was walking around with them, he probably attracted the mountain lion that thought he was an elk, and therefore food.
>> [music] >> In April of 2020, a 17-year-old named Sam, who was an avid outdoorsman, decided to go on a one-night hike in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. The mountains' name has a bunch of supposed origins, but the one that's generally accepted is people are afraid of the Superstition Mountains because of all the mysterious deaths that have occurred there. And so, because people would avoid these mountains in fear of mysterious death, it became the Superstition Mountains. But, Sam was not superstitious and regularly came out here to go hiking, in particular on this loop that went through a canyon. And so, this one-night overnight he planned on doing was going to be on that 8-mile loop where he'd do 4 miles in, camp out, and then 4 miles back. And he planned to do it with a friend, but his friend at the last minute canceled, [music] and so Sam teetered on not even doing it, but ultimately decided, "Okay, I'll just do it by myself because I'm very familiar with this area." On the day he was supposed to go do this hike, he had planned on getting there early in the day to have maximum lighting, but due to some unforeseen circumstances and traffic and bad road conditions, he didn't get to the trailhead until 5:45 p.m. that night. Sam knew it was a bad idea to start this hike so late because he was going to run out of daylight. He probably was not going to make it 4 miles to the point where he planned on camping out, but he figured with his good health and fitness, he could probably quickly make his way to the two or even three mile mark, and there were some suitable campsites there. And so, he decided he would kind of risk it and just try to go as fast as he could and use the daylight he had to reach a suitable campsite. But, he wasn't able to move as fast as he thought he could, [music] and soon the sun was down and it's totally dark, and he's got his flashlight, but that only is able to shine like 10 ft in front of him. And then, at one point, he nearly falls off of this rock, and he knows had he fallen, he would have gotten really badly hurt, and he's 15 miles away from the nearest help, and he's in a bad cell phone service area, and the roads getting out here are treacherous. No one knows exactly where he is, and it dawns on him that you've made a pretty bad choice, and you should stop right now and make camp here and not try to risk it any further. And so, as it happened, where he was, there was this forest right nearby, and he could see there was a clearing about 30 ft off the path when he shined his light. And so, he walked into that clearing, and he found it was a great spot to make camp. And in fact, on the edge of this clearing was the remnants of a fire pit. It was very old, but it at least showed someone had camped out right here, and and they seemed to have made it just fine, so suddenly he was feeling pretty smart, and he felt pretty good about where he was staying for the night. Now, Sam intentionally did not bring a tent. He liked to sleep on a sleeping pad with a sleeping bag over that, and then he would string up a tarp over the top of him in case it rained. And since this clearing was surrounded by a bunch of pine trees, he was able to string up his tarp over the top, and it was perfect.
And pretty soon he had a fire going, and then he cracked open a can of beans, and he began eating his dinner. And as he was eating, he started to get a sense that something was off, something was not right. He began scanning the tree line as if he was going to find something out of the ordinary, but his visibility was incredibly limited because he was sitting right up against a fire, and if you've ever sat next to a fire in a dark forest, your visibility is like 5 ft >> [music] >> in a circle around the fire. You really cannot see beyond that, and his vision was also limited by all the pine trees that encircled his clearing. So, he really could only see what was immediately around him, nothing else.
And he starts thinking, "That's got to be it. Maybe I'm just nervous because I have no visibility." But as he's rationalizing this kind of bad gut feeling, a rock the size of a marble comes soaring into the campsite and lands at his feet. And he looks down at the rock, and immediately he connects that to that sense of dread he had. He's looking around a little more aggressively now, but again, his vision is very, very limited. And so, for the next 15 minutes, Sam is really aggressively scanning the tree line and listening really intently and he doesn't hear anything. He doesn't see any more rocks get thrown and so he begins to rationalize and convince himself that there's nothing wrong here. That feeling I have, oh don't worry about that. He starts telling himself, you know, I must have kicked a rock. That's what it is or maybe a rock fell off a tree. But either way, it's something totally explainable and you got nothing to worry about. And after a little while, he convinced himself and he got into a sleeping bag under his tarp and he went to sleep. of hours later, Sam wakes up and he has that same sense of dread and now it's back with a vengeance and he can't hear anything, he can't see anything, but he's definitely feeling like something is wrong. And at that moment, as he's listening really intently and looking really carefully, he hears the sound of rustling leaves. It [music] sounds like someone walking through leaves about 30 or 40 m away from his campsite. And initially, he can't tell if this person or animal is walking towards his campsite [music] or away, but over the next 30 seconds or so, the sound start to fade and he convinces himself that okay, they've left and everything's fine. But just in case, he wanted to grab his flashlight and shine it in that direction and so he reaches next to him where he had left it when he had gone to bed a couple of hours earlier and he can't find his flashlight. He's looking around for it and he can't find it and he's like, man, that's weird. I had it right here, right next to my body and it's not here anymore. And that's when the alarm bells start going off in his head because the only way this flashlight moves is if he moved it. And if it's not here, how did it move? And so he jumps out of his sleeping bag, he ducks out from under the tarp and he's looking around on the ground in the immediate vicinity of where he was sleeping to find this flashlight. And as he's looking, out of the corner of his eye, he sees some light.
>> [music] >> And he turns his head and in the same direction that he had heard those footsteps, those rustling leaves when he was still laying down, he sees his flashlight laying on the ground about 10 m away. Which means someone or something had been less than a foot away from him to get this flashlight that was right next to him while he was fast asleep and totally helpless and had moved it all the way over there. And immediately Sam thinks to himself, "That's a trap. They are trying to lure me away from my campsite." Suddenly he felt so scared he wanted to vomit, but he knew in order to survive this situation he needed to keep his wits about him. So he puts his boots on and he grabs his knife and he knows he's not leaving this campsite. In fact, he's going to build the biggest fire he can. He's going to stoke that fire as big as he can get it and he's not going to go anywhere near that flashlight. For the next several hours Sam just stood in the middle of his campsite holding his knife preparing to confront whatever the heck is out in the woods. And over those several hours he would hear footsteps approach his campsite, turn around, and leave. Every time the fire got lower he noticed they would come closer and closer and closer and when he would stoke the fire they wouldn't come as close. But at about 3:00 a.m. he ran out of firewood. So unless he went into the woods to get more he'd be out and he's certainly not going into the woods.
That's the whole point is to avoid the woods where this thing is. And so as the fire died down Sam prepared himself mentally for whatever happened next because he knew that with that fire gone this thing was comfortable coming all the way in, coming all the way up right next to him to get the flashlight. And so finally he hears the footsteps approaching and before this the closest they had come was maybe about 15 m away.
They were far enough away it didn't feel intimate. It was terrifying, but he had some [music] distance.
This time they walk right up to about 3 m away, but they intentionally come behind the thickest group of trees so he can't see them. And it's still dark outside and he's in that bubble of light near the fire so he's blind to whatever's on the other side of those trees, but he knows they're there and they've stopped. And for 2 hours this poor kid is standing in the middle of this campsite facing in the direction of whatever is behind the trees. Probably his imagination is going crazy at this point with what could be behind those trees, just waiting for whatever happened next. But ultimately, the only thing that would happen is the sun would eventually come up, and right before it actually popped over the horizon, this thing on the other side finally moved.
It turned around and ran away, and it did not come back. And so, when the sun finally did come up, Sam didn't just charge out of there cuz he's still thinking there could be a trap. He waited until it was totally full sunlight, and then he packed up everything he had, and he practically sprinted back to the parking lot, back into his car, and he drove non-stop for 20 mi until he got to a gas station where he could park and collect [music] himself. And when he got there, he got out of his car, and he went in, and he got a drink, and when he came out, he noticed someone had written something on the dust on the back window of his car.
And he walks over, and it just says, "Sleep well?" question mark. Sam is confident whoever was stalking him at his campsite is the same person or group of people that wrote this message on his car. And now Sam just wonders, "What would have happened On June 29th, 2003, a 14-year-old boy named John and his best friend, a 16-year-old named Mark, were walking in this back alleyway behind a row of shops in Manchester, England. Mark had asked John to go back there, to which John was a little bit confused because it was just a dead end back there. But he went back there anyways because he figured, you know, Mark must have a reason. And so, they're walking along this alleyway when Mark suddenly comes to a stop. Then he turns to face John, and John's looking at him inquisitively, and Mark just reaches out and grabs him by the shoulder before pulling out a huge knife and drives it into his stomach and says, "I'm sorry, bro." Pulls it out again, drives it into his chest before releasing it and letting John fall to the ground. As soon as John hits the ground, he looks up at Mark, and he says, "You're killing me." And Mark says, "I had to do it. If you He all the details, you would understand." And so, after only a couple of minutes, John goes quiet and he's laying still on the ground, and Mark would stand there just waiting for about 20 minutes to ensure that John really was dead before calling the authorities and claiming some madman had snuck up behind them and attacked his best friend, and you got to send an ambulance as fast as you can. When the ambulance arrived, to Mark's horror, they were able to keep John alive, and they were able to get him to a hospital where he nearly died twice on the operating table, but he ultimately would make recovery. And when John was well enough to speak, he would tell police that Mark is the guy who attacked him, but he had no idea why. When Mark was confronted with these allegations that he was the one who attacked John, he quickly confessed. And the police thought, you know, this is a strange case, but pretty open and shut, and they arrested Mark for attempted murder. When investigators began digging into the motive behind this attack, they, along with Mark, were not prepared for the totally bizarre story that unraveled.
The judge in this case would say, "Well-schooled fiction writers could not come up with the plot of this real-life story." And so, this crazy story starts 4 months before the stabbing in February of 2003. In February of 2003, Mark was a 16-year-old student who was also a part-time dishwasher at a restaurant near his home in Manchester, England.
Mark had okay grades, but even by his own account, he was nowhere near an academic. In fact, he was quite dim-witted. He was very close with his family, who all lived in a very modest home in a very modest neighborhood. By all accounts, Mark was living a very ordinary life. That year, Mark discovered an online chat room for teens in Manchester, England, and it was designed to, you know, make friends and talk about fashion and sports. And initially, when he logged into this chat room, he was just watching. He wasn't really participating. But over time, he became a very active user, and in fact, became totally obsessed [music] with this chat room and basically put everything else in in life on the back burner, to the point where his grades were tanking and he was staying up all night. I mean, this really took over his life. Also, in February of 2013, John was a 14-year-old student who lived in Manchester, England, but not near Mark, and at this point he had not met Mark yet. He was incredibly intelligent and polite and charming, and he was an excellent, excellent student, and he went to a very, very prestigious school.
But while John's academic life was going really well, his home life was kind of in shambles. His mother had a series of really crappy boyfriends that always left and they always left her feeling very depressed, [music] and it was just a very sad environment around his mother. And John, unfortunately, had grown up believing one of his mother's ex-boyfriends was his biological father.
And even though this boyfriend had abandoned the family, John at least knew who his dad was. But it would turn out his biological father had actually abandoned him when he was a brand new baby, and he had no way of figuring out who his dad even was. John really wanted to escape his home life. He wanted to just live somewhere else, have an adventurous, happy life away from all the sadness and depression he was around all the time. And so it was in that frame of mind that he discovered this chat room, the same one that Mark had discovered. Although they don't know each other yet, they're both entering the same chat room. John's initial interest in this chat room was not nearly as high as Mark's was. Mark pretty much immediately became obsessed with being in this chat room. John was a little bit more reserved, but his mom purchased a laptop for him, which suddenly gave him 24/7 access to this chat room, and he found himself going on there all the time. To the point where he was staying up all night and even skipping meals just so he wouldn't have to leave his screen even for a few minutes. The main focus of this chat room was supposed to be sports and movies and entertainment, but the real reason teenagers were flocking into this particular chat room was to flirt with each other. And Mark and John were no different. They both really enjoyed, you know, these flirtatious interactions they were having with different girls on this chat room. But, John's interactions with the girls was very friendly and wasn't going to go anywhere. It was not really intended to. Whereas, Mark fell head over heels in love with the girl he was flirting with, and her name was Rachel. Rachel was a 16-year-old living in Manchester, England, who worked at a gym. And when Mark saw her pictures, he was just totally smitten with her, and he sent her a direct message, not really expecting her to write back, but she did, and she seemed at least somewhat interested in him. And that night they stayed up all night chatting with each other, and Mark is just over the moon.
For the next couple of days, Mark and Rachel were talking non-stop on this chat room. And then at some point, Rachel says, "Hey, I really want to introduce you to this guy I met on this chat. He reminds me a lot of you. I think you guys would get along great.
His name is John." And Mark was like, "Okay, cool." So, Rachel introduced him to John, and they hit it off right away.
And the three of them formed their own separate chat thread outside of the main chat room. And very quickly, through this separate chat thread that they were on pretty much 24/7, Mark and John would become best friends, and Mark and Rachel would fall deeper and deeper in love with each other. Every time John and Mark were in this chat room, they would use a web camera, but Rachel didn't have one. And initially, that really frustrated Mark because he wanted to see his girlfriend in real time. But, she said she didn't have the money to get one, and then she said she was shy. And so, Mark's getting frustrated, but she says, "Mark, come visit me. You don't live that far away. You can see me in real life in real time." And so, initially Mark's excited, and he's, you know, he's talking to John about how excited he is to go see his girlfriend, but then he gets cold feet, and he makes an excuse, and he doesn't go. Rachel's [music] disappointed, but she asks him again a couple more times if he'll come visit her, and every time he would agree, and then he would kind of chicken out. But, after the last time he canceled on her, he finally got the courage up, and he invited her to come visit him. [music] And this is is she started getting cold feet. And they kind of went back and forth until they basically stopped asking to visit each other and they just decided that their relationship was going to live online even if there wasn't a web camera involved. About 3 months after Rachel, Mark, and John had started their own separate chat thread, a new user popped up inside the main chat room. It was a fairly controlled group, so it was pretty easy to tell when there were new people added, and this individual only wrote in pink text. [music] So, he stood out. His name was Kevin, and he told the group that he was a stalker and that he had a foot fetish. And the group thought this guy was pretty weird, but they figured it was just, you know, some kid trying to get attention. They didn't think much of him. But shortly after Kevin's arrival, Mark would get a private message from Kevin that said, "I know you're Rachel's boyfriend and I'm her stalker and I'm going to hurt her."
Mark didn't know what to do, so he just went to Rachel and he said, "Hey, I got this strange email from this guy named Kevin who says he's going to hurt you and he's your stalker." And Rachel kind of made light of it and said, "Oh, just ignore that guy. I don't know what that's about." And John didn't know what to make about it either. So, Mark just kind of ignored it. And then the next day when Mark logged into the chat room, Rachel wasn't there. Now, Rachel always logged in at the same time that Mark did and that John did. It was very rare that she wouldn't be there. And so, Mark asked John, you know, "Have you talked to Rachel today?" And John said, "No."
And then Mark went into the main chat room and he asked some people in there if they had seen Rachel or talked to her and they said, "No." And that's when Mark went into his email and he had another message from Kevin. This message again was about Rachel, but this time Kevin saying he actually has Rachel hostage and the only way he's going to release her is if Mark lets Kevin look at his feet because again, he has that foot fetish. And so, Mark, interestingly, does not go to the police. He doesn't tell anyone about this. He just says, "Okay, I'll do that." And so, he lets him see his feet and then Kevin writes back saying, "Okay, I've released Rachel." Later that day, Rachel came back online and she thanked Mark for what he did, but she felt really bad that he had to be kind of humiliated in that way and she said, "You know what? We really need to meet up. We need to see each other face-to-face. I want to apologize to you and give you a hug." And so they decide the next day they're going to meet up finally in town together. But the next day when Mark went to the rendezvous point, Rachel didn't show. In fact, after this missed meeting, Rachel never contacted Mark again. She just vanished.
When Mark got back to his computer, he asked John, you know, "Have you talked to Rachel?" And he said, "No." And again, he went into the main chat room and he asked around and no one had heard from Rachel. And then a couple of days later after just continued silence from Rachel and Mark's really upset about this, he notices a rumor being passed around in the main chat room about how apparently one of the members of this chat room abducted and killed another member of the chat room. And Mark's thinking to himself, "No way. That can't be about Rachel." But almost immediately after this rumor was kind of announced on the main chat, people started chiming in that they think it could be Kevin, the guy who writes in all pink, the guy who claims he's a stalker, and this girl Rachel because they had both logged out around the same time and had not logged back in again. They were the only ones in this chat room that were that inactive. And then after that, dozens more users were commenting that this was actually true, that Kevin had indeed abducted Rachel and killed her. They'd heard about it in other chat rooms and at school. And all of a sudden, Mark's reality is just coming crashing down and he feels so guilty that he probably could have done something to stop this and he didn't. But then interestingly, even though Mark was devastated, just crushed by what has happened, he just continued to log into the chat room and acted like nothing had happened. And John picked up on this strange behavior and began kind of delicately asking him, you know, like, "Are you Are you doing okay?" But Mark made it clear he did not want to talk about it. And over time, the rumor about what happened to Rachel and Kevin just kind of left the chat room and it just seemed like people moved on including Mark and including John. Over the next month, John and Mark's relationship really strengthened.
They continued to speak in that private chat, now missing Rachel, so they were only interacting with each other in there, and they even began meeting up in person and hanging out in real life.
About a month after Rachel's disappearance, a new person popped up in the main chat. It was a woman, her name was Janet, and she wrote in all capitals, and she reached out to Mark.
And she said to Mark that she was a mother of two, she was married, she was 44 years old, she was a real estate agent, but secretly, she was a spy for the British Secret Service. And in fact, she was the third most powerful person in all of Britain, and she was contacting Mark because she was sent to recruit him. She told Mark if he agreed to work with her, not only would he become an agent like her, he would become fabulously wealthy, and he could be her boyfriend. Now, of course, to an adult, this sounds preposterous and sounds like an obvious scam. But you got to remember, Mark at this time was extremely vulnerable. He's just lost his girlfriend under very suspicious circumstances, but no matter how it happened, she's gone and he's still grieving her loss privately, and he's just not a very bright person, so he's kind of primed to be taken advantage of.
And she was promising him all the things he wanted in life, status, money, romance. And so, even though he didn't necessarily believe everything Janet was saying, he wanted to believe her, and so he went along with it. He did not tell John about his interactions with Janet, perhaps signaling that he didn't fully believe it and was maybe embarrassed to give away details, but we don't know. As soon as Mark told Janet he was prepared to work with her, she made him swear an oath through the chat, and then told him he would need to go to London for initiation, where he'd be meeting the Queen amongst other dignitaries and officials. At this point, Mark asked a couple of qualifying questions, namely, "How would I explain to my mom that I was just going to suddenly leave for a couple of days in the middle of the week and miss school. I have to give her a reason for that. And she would say, "Your mother will be looped in on this process. In fact, once you go to London for initiation, we'll be in touch with her giving her progress reports on how you're doing, and you'll have two opportunities every day to call her."
Feeling satisfied that this was in fact legitimate, he told Janet, "Okay, you know, when do you want me to go?" And she said, "Well, there's a caveat. You have to pass a series of tests before you're going to be allowed to go to initiation." This is where Janet explained to Mark why he specifically was being recruited. She said his friend, John, was actually not named John. His real name was James Bell, and he was a very, very important person, but she couldn't say why until he passed his first test. And so, Mark's very confused by this, and he says, "Okay, well, what's the first test?" And she says, "Well, you need to demonstrate you can protect your friend, [music] James Bell. And so, I want you to escort him from his school to his dentist appointment tomorrow. You're going to be his bodyguard for 1 day, but you can't let him know you're his bodyguard. He can't know that you know his real identity. So, if you can do that successfully, when you get back, I will explain to you why he is so important."
At this point, Mark is very committed to this, so he says, "Yep, I'll do it." He reaches out to John that day, and he says, "Hey, can we hang out tomorrow?"
And John tells him, "Yeah, but I have a dentist appointment right after school, so maybe after that." And Mark says, "Oh, don't worry, I'll tag along for your dentist appointment." And John's like, "Great, I could use the company."
So, the next day, Mark meets up with John, aka James Bell, and he walks with him from his school to his dentist appointment, and he doesn't notice anything suspicious, so he doesn't need to do any body guarding duties. And after the dentist appointment, the two of them just go to a mall, and they spend the rest of the day together. Once Mark got back to his house and opened his computer, there was a message waiting for him from Janet, and the message said, you know, "We had agents following you, and you did a great job.
You passed your first test. Now, I can tell you why James Bell, your friend John, is so very important. And she told him that at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is this big safe that only a couple of countries know about, and inside of that safe is 568 billion pounds, and it belongs to the Queen. But only one person has access to that safe, and that person is James Bell. Literally, his body would need to be in front of the safe for its special scanner to scan him, recognize it as James Bell, and then it would open its door. Despite its implausibility, Mark believed this was real. Not so much because he naturally believed the safe at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was real, but it was because he totally believed Janet was real. Janet had the ability to know what he was wearing, where he had gone that day, what he was up to. I mean, she seemed to know everything about him, and it's because she told him she has agents monitoring him all the time, disguised as bus drivers and teachers and mailmen. That basically he was under constant surveillance, and she explained to him that that's what happens when you're being recruited. We have agents watch you. So, when Janet gave Mark his final test, despite how shocked Mark was at what he had to do, he was willing to do it because he really believed he was doing it for the government. The test was simple. Mark needed to kill John, aka James Bell. And she explained to him that James Bell actually had an inoperable brain tumor, and he was going to die any day. And if the wrong country found out about this, they could steal his body after he died, and they could use his body to gain access to the safe.
And so, we need to preemptively end his life, take control of his body, and get that safe open. She told Mark if he completed this test, he would move on to the initiation phase in London, where he would meet the Queen, and he would get his first paycheck of 80 million pounds, and he would officially become Janet's boyfriend. Mark is in so deep at this point, he is fully committed, and he says, "Yes, I'm prepared to do this."
And she says, "Okay, your new name is Agent 47695 and you need to go buy a large knife."
She said there was going to be an abort code for this test, which was going to be 6969, and if at any point he hears anybody say that to him on the day he's supposed to carry out this attack, that means it's off and do not do it. So, on June 29th, 2003, around 11:00 a.m., Mark and John, aka Agent 47695 and James Bell, met at a bus station in Manchester. Mark took John down the alleyway that Janet had instructed him to go down to commit the stabbing, and she had assured him she would be one of the first people to arrive on scene. She would be dressed as a detective and she would ensure he did not get arrested.
And so, once he was in position, Mark turned around, grabbed John by the shoulder, pulled out his knife, said he loved him, and then began stabbing him.
When the police arrived, Janet was not there and Mark, after giving his statement about what happened, was asking the police officers, "When's Janet going to be here?" And no one knew what he was talking about.
After John survived the attack and said Mark was the one who attacked him, Mark would tell police, "You know, you got to find Janet. She's the one who can explain what's going on here." But Janet never arrived because Janet didn't exist. Neither did Rachel. Neither did Kevin. Neither did James Bell. Neither did 189 other accounts that Mark interacted with on a daily basis inside of that chat room. And all of those fake accounts were determined to be controlled by one person. And that one person was John.
When John was confronted with all these confiscated chat logs that clearly showed he was behind all of these accounts, he confessed. John said he never entered this chat room in order to do any of the things he did or, you know, to manipulate Mark. He said when he joined, he just saw a picture of Mark and was kind of in love with him and wanted to get closer to him but didn't know how. So, he created Rachel in order to get closer to Mark, but then became jealous of Mark's love of Rachel, so he killed off Rachel using Kevin, and he didn't expect Mark to believe it. He thought he would pick up that this is all made up when he's involving this stalker that's abducting and killing Rachel. But when he saw Mark totally believed it, John realized, "Wow, Mark's pretty gullible. I wonder what else I can get him to believe." And before long, he created Janet who had complete control over Mark. And originally, John was using Janet to make Mark spend more time with John. He was going to be the bodyguard of James Bell, which was really John. When John started to feel guilty about what he was doing to Mark, he realized there was no good way out of this without kind of exposing himself and definitely losing his friendship to Mark, something that, in a weird way, he really, really cherished. And so, he decided that the only way to end this was for him to die. And that's when he had Janet flipped the script from protect James Bell to kill James Bell.
And even on the day where he was going to get attacked, he had given that abort code, so maybe some part of him thought, "I don't necessarily want to go through with this." But he never used the abort code. He was literally prepared to die to protect that relationship with Mark.
Mark might have had suspicions that something was up with Janet or even Kevin or Rachel, but he never suspected John was behind any of these accounts.
He learned about this betrayal when they were in court and John is confessing once again to being behind all of these people that Mark had been interacting with. Apparently, in court when Mark is hearing this for the first time, he was just standing there mouth open, just completely dumbfounded that he's hearing this. And then he would say afterwards, "I've been such a fool." Mark was convicted of attempted murder, but he only spent eight months in jail, and then he was given a two-month probationary period where during that time, he could only go on the internet with supervision, and he wasn't allowed to enter into any chat rooms. John was convicted of inciting his own murder, which no one else has ever been charged with, so this is a first. And he was not given any jail time, but he was given 3 years of probation, where in that time, he was not allowed to use the internet without supervision, and he also was not allowed to enter into any chat rooms.
And both boys were told they had a permanent restraining order on the other. So, for the rest of their lives, they will never interact. So, that's going to do it, guys. If you found the secret in today's episode, let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it, so give us the time stamp. And if you're the first to do that, >> [singing] >> I followed her thinking it was light.
Every road I thought was true >> [music] >> led me further into you, not the you I used to know, >> [music] >> but the one I couldn't hold.
I kept walking through the signs, even when they cut like lines.
>> [music] >> I mistook the the painful guide.
In the >> [music] >> half-light, your silhouette bends, tracing cracks where the [music] daylight ends. [singing] Every word you left is a silver thread, >> [music] >> woven through the places we never said.
You said We will pin you at the top of the comment section. If you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already, please offer to water the like button's plants while they're away on vacation, but as soon as they leave, instead of watering their plants, just crank the heat up and don't come back.
Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly three, four, even five video uploads. If you want to get in touch with me, you can direct message me on Instagram or on Twitter. My username for both platforms is the same. It's John Ballen416. I also
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