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00:01:53
Hello! And welcome. To My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:06
And we're here to do a true crime podcast for you, if that's what you are looking for.
00:02:11
Yeah. I mean, that's what we thought you were looking for. You may have been looking for My Favorite Murder, which is that other podcast about what could it be.
00:02:23
Favorite things. You know, it's the Home Shopping Network podcast. They went edgy with the name.
00:02:30
They know true crime is huge, so. Yeah, it was a smart idea. It's bold, you know what I mean?
00:02:35
It's a bold thing. So if you're here to look at baubles. You're just trying to get a scarf
00:02:42
to match your new sweater. Crystalled scarf. You're at the wrong place, but please stick around.
00:02:49
Throw that crystal scarf around your neck, rip your jugular out and enjoy the spring.
00:02:58
You're kicky. What a kicky scarf. When's the last time you wore a scarf, would you say?
00:03:03
Early aughts, I would say, when they were like trendy, you know? Or, no, yeah, maybe when we were traveling.
00:03:12
What about you? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to think. I think probably like, I know for a fact I bought an infinity scarf
00:03:19
at a CVS somewhere on the East Coast when we were very cold. Like real cold, like Chicago cold.
00:03:27
Chicago, I think we were, it was like DC maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was one of those, we were like, wait, what?
00:03:33
Oh, this is a thing? This is quite brisk in this city. What's going on? What do you have to share
00:03:40
with this Home Shopping Network podcast? It's amazing that you would ask because you know when you were trying to,
00:03:47
you're trying to mop your kitchen, but you're also trying to sweep your kitchen?
00:03:50
No. Here comes the sweep mop. Sorry, I was trying to make up something you'd see on the home shopping network.
00:03:56
My dad was in town and I realized I need a whole separate set of entertainment to please him and me.
00:04:09
So like on Netflix, they have a new 2022 version of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is amazing.
00:04:18
I was like, okay, that goes on the watch list because, come on, World War I dad movie?
00:04:24
Hell yes. We went from there to a movie called The Counterfeiters, which is from 2007.
00:04:32
Did you ever see the movie The Counterfeiters? No. It's a true story. It's so fucking good, Georgia.
00:04:37
It's a true story of a prisoner at Auschwitz who was arrested because he was such a prolific,
00:04:44
He was like the best counterfeiter in either Poland or Germany, maybe Germany. And he was sent to Auschwitz.
00:04:52
And within the camp, they had prisoners working on counterfeit money because part of the Nazis'
00:04:59
plan was that they were going to inundate the British pound and the American dollar
00:05:03
and basically make all of our money not worth anything. That was part of their plan.
00:05:08
Wow. Yeah. I didn't know that. That's cool. I mean, that's not cool. That's cool that that's a movie.
00:05:13
It's an amazing movie. It's a mind-blowing movie. And then the next night, because then we were all into that vibe and that theme,
00:05:23
then I was like, Dad, have you ever seen The Lives of Others? Which is a 2006 movie.
00:05:29
That movie is incredible. Oh, so we went World War I, World War II, post-World War II.
00:05:35
Cold War, Stasi fucking East Berlin style. I got really into East Berlin after watching that.
00:05:43
like stories and such. Because did you do that thing of like, wait, I didn't realize
00:05:48
this happened. How is this possible? Yeah. Deep dive. So crazy. Yeah. So if you've never seen
00:05:54
any of those movies dear listener I recommend all three especially if your dad in town What have you been doing Not enough to have anything to talk about on this fucking podcast
00:06:05
I try so hard to find new podcasts that I like, but I only want to listen to audiobooks.
00:06:10
But none of them are like top-notch enough to talk about them on the podcast. So then I read some books too.
00:06:16
I'm reading yet another self-help book that I can't remember the name of. It's one of those kinds of things, you know?
00:06:23
Is it a self-help book called When You Can't Remember the Name of the Self-Help Book
00:06:27
You're On This Week? How to remember the things that help you remember. In a timely way.
00:06:36
Yeah. I actually listened to, You Might Really Like This. We've talked about this podcast on this podcast before,
00:06:43
but it's Kara Lowenthal's podcast, Unfuck Your Brain, which we've definitely discussed before.
00:06:50
Right now, she has two episodes. So there's two, and they're recent. One is myths about love, and the other one is myths about
00:07:00
self-love. The reason it popped into my head is just because for the amount of self-help stuff
00:07:08
that I consume, and I know you consume, I feel like she's a life coach, but she also just,
00:07:15
she used to be a lawyer as a podcaster, and all those things kind of combine. She is so good at like crystallizing the piece of the connective tissue between the thing that you are thinking about and how she walks you to what the actual solution in yourself is.
00:07:35
So it's like... Yeah, she like makes it clear. Yeah, but it's bigger picture. It's almost like she asks you to step back and look at the way you're looking at it is actually wrong, as opposed to what's the thing, you know, I need to grind harder.
00:07:50
I need to get up at 5 a.m. I need to, there's all the tricks that are trendy. And she's always like, this is all thinking.
00:07:57
You've just decided a thing. Yeah. And if it's your thinking, then you can change it because that's just what you're choosing to think.
00:08:04
Right. And so many things are like that where it's like, there's nothing wrong with your relationship.
00:08:09
it's just what you're just deciding there's a thing happening. So can you change the way you're thinking about it?
00:08:16
It's just really kind of mind blowing. I think she's better than most people at that job.
00:08:21
And it's just really like actually helpful advice. And fuck your brain. Hostess Cara Lowenthal.
00:08:27
I love the name too, where it's like not taking yourself too seriously. She calls herself a feminist life coach,
00:08:34
which basically means she comes from a point of view that we all relate to where it's like,
00:08:40
if your goals might be a little bit different than the standard goals or what maybe you were raised thinking,
00:08:45
it's just all that kind of breaking out of normie thoughts. It's real self-empowerment.
00:08:51
Yeah. It's really cool. Okay, I'm checking it out. I find her so helpful. I need that.
00:08:55
I love that your therapist sends you podcasts too. That's so modern. Well, and also I've been talking to her for so long
00:09:03
that at this point, it really is that kind of thing of like, oh, you have to hear this.
00:09:06
Or like she'll say, I listened to it and it made me think of a thing we were talking about,
00:09:11
which is always good to get advice from lots of different directions. Especially professionals.
00:09:16
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Speaking of professionals, should we do Exactly the Right Corner? Absolutely.
00:09:22
Hey, guys, we have a podcast network and here are some highlights from it. Over on I Said No Gifts, Bridger has a very special guest,
00:09:29
Nicole Byer from Nailed It on Netflix, the cake making show on Netflix. I love her.
00:09:36
She also has the podcast, Why Won't You Date Me? She's a genius, hilarious standup comedian.
00:09:42
She's hosted lots of podcasts. Now she's gone on to hosting and being Emmy nominated for her television hosting.
00:09:50
She's just, she's got it all. It's Nicole Byer. She does. Oh, and also if you're not in the fan cult, maybe you might need to know this.
00:09:57
Every week we publish a unique mini-mini-sode, which means there's two extra hometown stories per episode.
00:10:05
So if you can't get enough, just know that you can join the fan cult. You can get access to those exclusive mini, mini episodes plus content like video.
00:10:16
George and I do Q&As. We record ourselves reading the mini-sodes. We give advice, but it's not as good as some.
00:10:25
We talk a lot about food. That's always very engaging. So go over to MyFavoriteMurder.com if you want to be a part of the fan cult.
00:10:35
Yay. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:10:46
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:10:54
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science, and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:11:02
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:11:09
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:11:13
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:11:22
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:11:28
That's great. Because it served the story. people will say like oh my god i cried at the end it's like yeah dude me too
00:11:34
listen to ear say the audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheart radio app or wherever you get
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Data accurate is of 220-26. It's always so much pressure when you go first. It is a little bit of pressure.
00:12:48
It is a little like you're like the opener of the show. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're like first in bed and the sheets are still cold.
00:12:57
Oh, what a bummer. February 3rd was National Missing Persons Day. And NamUs, which is the nickname for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
00:13:08
That's the national database of unidentified remains and missing persons in America.
00:13:14
According to their data, nearly 600,000 Americans go missing every year. That is wild.
00:13:21
Closer to a million than I am comfortable with. That's a crazy high number. Now, the good news is that most missing people are found,
00:13:32
but on average, tens of thousands remain missing a year after their initial reports are filed.
00:13:39
And that's a year into a case is when most police departments consider an open case to have gone cold.
00:13:47
And at the same time, nearly 4,500 unidentified bodies are found in the United States every year.
00:13:53
4,500? 4,500 unidentified bodies. A year? Yep. That is so many. I know. It's so many.
00:14:03
And linking those John and Jane Does to a missing person case, that's referred to as giving someone their name back.
00:14:12
That's important, often difficult work, as you told in your story about the boy in the box, Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
00:14:20
So today I'm going to tell you the story of one John Doe from the 80s and how he finally got his name back.
00:14:27
Cool. The main sources I'll be using today are multiple Chattanooga Times Free Press articles by journalist Ben Benton, an article in The Tennessean by a writer named Keith Sharon, and a Fox 29 article by Danielle Wallace.
00:14:43
There's more sources and they're all in our show notes. This all starts on December 16th, 1985 in Marion County, Tennessee, which is about 30 miles west of Chattanooga.
00:14:53
There's a fisherman walking along a stream near Interstate 24. It had been an unseasonably warm winter,
00:15:00
and so this guy was just taking advantage of the mild weather to get in some fishing.
00:15:05
But before he gets down to the water, he sees what turns out to be a man's heavily decomposed body alongside the stream.
00:15:14
He immediately leaves to call the police. And when officers arrive, they conduct a thorough search of the area,
00:15:20
but they don't find anything that would identify the man. No driver's license, no credit card, no distinctive jewelry.
00:15:27
And his face is decomposed enough so that they can't even make out defining features.
00:15:34
Yeah. So the only indication of who this man might be is his clothing. He's wearing an L.L. Bean long sleeve shirt
00:15:43
with a blue Oxford shirt underneath it. And he's wearing, it's 1985, remember? He's wearing Jordache jeans.
00:15:50
So one investigator would later say, quote, he was dressed like somebody who had money.
00:15:56
But that's all they know and all they can tell. So the body's removed from the scene and it's examined by forensic and medical experts.
00:16:03
And they determined that this John Doe is somewhere between 25 and 40 years old, that he's 5 foot 10, and that he likely died from a severe blow to the back of his head.
00:16:14
It's no question that it's a homicide. and the experts conclude that the victim's body
00:16:19
has been outside for about a month when he was discovered by that fisherman. So that means that the John Doe was probably killed
00:16:26
somewhere around mid-November 1985. Soon, Tennessee's 12th Judicial District Attorney General's office
00:16:33
takes over the investigation and a 32-year-old investigator named Larry Davis is assigned to this case.
00:16:40
So at first, Larry's hopeful he can close the case quickly. Investigators have the man's age, roughly his height,
00:16:48
indications of his social class, and an idea of when he was killed. But that is not enough to move the case forward.
00:16:55
So Larry chases down lead after lead, but he hits wall after wall. And then on top of that,
00:17:02
detectives could not unearth any evidence from the crime scene, not even fingerprints.
00:17:07
So within weeks, the investigation begins to lose steam. and this John Doe's remains
00:17:12
that investigators begin to refer to for like shorthand as the Jordache bones, they're placed into storage.
00:17:21
But Larry Davis doesn't forget about this John Doe and he never lets the case go.
00:17:27
33 years pass. Wow. Yeah. So many of these stories. I know. That's a part of it.
00:17:34
It's so sad, just the families, you know, the first five years waiting for an answer.
00:17:39
Yeah. And then imagine waiting 30 something fucking years. 30 years, hopefully. And what my personal dream is,
00:17:47
is that the popularity of true crime and the awareness that these stories that keep getting told bring to the fore is that these systems have to get refined Right Because like NamUs was I bet you relatively new in 1985 Yeah If it existed at all
00:18:05
I don't think it existed until the end of the 90s. Yeah. Until like chat rooms existed.
00:18:11
Right. Yeah. That essentially we're staring down the barrel of like, well, if this is the same thing we say every single time,
00:18:18
which is the cops didn't look at this, they didn't think of this, they didn't whatever.
00:18:23
that's something that can be in the conversation that then that gets fixed. With all of that money
00:18:29
that goes toward policing every year, like maybe cut some of that out, give it to the schools,
00:18:36
and then take the other money and put it toward actually solving these cases and using technology and using all the stuff
00:18:44
that we now have at the tips of our fingers to clear some of these away. Okay, so that was a little editorial sidebar.
00:18:52
My apologies. So now it's 2018 and Larry Davis is 69 years old. So he's been working as an investigator at the DA's office this whole time,
00:19:03
but he's starting to think of retiring. But he knows the Marion County John Doe cold case.
00:19:10
It's just still sitting there unsolved. And he does not want to retire without that getting solved.
00:19:15
For Larry, the idea of leaving his post without having completed that unfinished business
00:19:21
is just not okay. So he decides to try something new. So he asks for the removal of the bones from
00:19:31
storage and he has them sent to an anthropologist named Dr. William Bass. Now, you know Dr. William
00:19:39
Bass because he's a legend in the field of forensics and he's most well known for his body
00:19:45
farm at the University of Tennessee. Yeah. Wow. So if you don't know what a body farm is,
00:19:52
it's basically a school or a place that like they devote acres of land to planting different corpses
00:19:59
and observing body decomposition so that when investigators find bodies out in the world,
00:20:06
they can take that information and that data and like put together storylines of bodies and how
00:20:13
they got there and what their story is. It's so fascinating. And it's crazy that you could like
00:20:17
donate your body to science when you die. And that's one of the places you could go.
00:20:23
Yeah. And I think that's one of the most useful ones. Yeah. Yeah. Aside from obviously organ
00:20:28
donation, which I just signed up for, I had to renew my driver's license. And I was like,
00:20:32
oh, that's right. Ding, hit that circle. Hell yeah. Okay. So Dr. Bass leads a crew of scientists
00:20:40
studying the decay of cadavers on their two-acre property at the University of Tennessee. And the
00:20:47
body farms led to some of the most comprehensive research into human decomposition. And it's made
00:20:52
Dr. Bass a go-to resource in unidentified person cases. So when Larry sends the so-called
00:20:59
Jordache bones off to the University of Tennessee for analysis, he is well aware that Dr. Bass
00:21:04
is able to make important determinations about a human's life and appearance just by looking at their remains.
00:21:12
And Larry Davis's impulses are right on the money. Dr. Bass's analysis of the bones
00:21:18
lead to a brand new composite sketch of the Marion County John Doe. And this sketch shows a man with sharp cheekbones,
00:21:25
bright eyes, and long hair who seems to fall into the 25 to 40-year-old age range
00:21:31
that was initially established by investigators. The sketch is uploaded to the NamUs database
00:21:38
where it's accessible to anyone on the internet who wants to go there. So all you have to do is go to namus.gov.
00:21:45
You do an unidentified person search. You filter results for the state that you're looking for.
00:21:52
So this was Tennessee. But Larry Davis knows there's a lot of people who might not be familiar with NamUs.
00:21:58
And he wants as many people to see this picture, this new composite sketch as possible.
00:22:03
So he contacts a Chattanooga Times free press reporter named Ben Benton. And Ben has a long career as a journalist in Tennessee,
00:22:11
and he's been on the staff at the Times Free Press since 2005. And throughout his career,
00:22:17
he's tackled his fair share of articles about local crime. And basically, Larry assumes that Ben would be open
00:22:24
to hearing his idea about writing up an article about this new composite sketch.
00:22:28
So they meet up. Larry fills Ben in on the 1985 John Doe case, and Ben Benton writes the article.
00:22:37
He leads it with the image of the composite sketch and quotes Larry saying, quote,
00:22:43
I want to clear up this case before I die. There are loved ones out there, his loved ones, his mom and dad,
00:22:49
were obligated to find out who these people are, end quote. And that article runs in the January 29th, 2018 edition of that newspaper.
00:22:59
So it's 33 years after this John Doe has been discovered and his story is being told to whoever reads the Chattanooga Times free press.
00:23:09
So interestingly, about 25 miles outside of Chattanooga, a Marion County resident named Barbara King Ladd is easing into the end of her day.
00:23:19
She's a busy stay-at-home mom who's trying to put her kids to bed. And as she's doing it, she picks up her phone and opens up Facebook
00:23:27
and begins to scroll. And she is stopped in her tracks by a headline that reads,
00:23:33
investigators still looking for clues in 1985 Marion County, Tennessee cold case death.
00:23:39
Barbara would later say, quote, I clicked on it and read it, and then it piqued my curiosity.
00:23:45
And if something grabs my curiosity, I'll follow through it until it gets boring to me.
00:23:50
End quote. Love it. Right? But here's what's funny. Barbara isn't particularly interested in true crime.
00:23:57
She does not consider herself a citizen sleuth. in any way. She's just a very curious person and she has a very strong sense of intuition.
00:24:05
And there's something about this John Doe case that feels very solvable to her. It just strikes
00:24:11
her. So as soon as she finishes reading the article and gets her kids to go to sleep,
00:24:17
she decides she's going to start doing some digging. So she does a few quick Google searches
00:24:22
for missing person lists and she ends up on the NamUs website. And once she's there,
00:24:27
she scans the page to get a lay of the land. She goes up to the missing persons tab,
00:24:33
and that brings her to the webpage with all sorts of filters to help narrow down the searches.
00:24:39
And they include things like the missing person's name, their last known communication,
00:24:43
location details, date, age ranges, all kinds of things. So Barbara zeroes in on the details she
00:24:50
knows from Ben's article, like the John Doe's sex location and the date he was found and his
00:24:58
possible age range. And she also looked at the composite sketch. But when she gets to the location
00:25:04
section, which includes a drop-down list of U.S. cities, she waits for a second. And this is where
00:25:10
she gets a weird feeling. She knows that the Marion County John Doe was found in the state
00:25:15
of Tennessee, but she gets this instinct that she should look in different states. Her gut tells her
00:25:21
that the detectives who have tried to investigate this case would have investigated any and all
00:25:27
missing persons cases in the state of Tennessee. And the river this body was found along was right
00:25:34
near the state line. So Barbara also knows that this was a homicide. So she puts herself
00:25:40
into the mind of the killer, even though she's not into true crime. She mind hunts it.
00:25:48
She's a mind hunter. Yeah. And she would later say, quote, I thought it would be worth the effort
00:25:53
to cross state lines to dump a body, which is very true and very common. Yeah. So Barbara first selects Georgia.
00:26:04
Hey. And then Alabama, since the John Doe was found between the two states. So results start flooding the screen.
00:26:12
Barbara taps the first result. It takes her to a dedicated page for that specific missing man.
00:26:17
It says his full name, his personal details. It has a photograph. Barbara cross-references all that information
00:26:24
with Ben's article, compares the photograph with the composite sketch. They look nothing alike.
00:26:30
Barbara knows this isn't the Marion County John Doe. So she moves on to the second name.
00:26:35
Again, that's clearly not a match. She goes back to her search results, hits the third name on the list.
00:26:41
This time when the page loads, there is a photograph looking back at her that is very familiar.
00:26:48
In fact, it looks exactly like the face from the composite sketch. Oh my God. He has the same eyes, the long hair, strong cheekbones.
00:26:56
Barbara immediately closes out of the webpage and texts her girlfriends in a group chat.
00:27:00
And she says, quote, I just solved a case. Holy shit. Oh my God. We got her. We got her now.
00:27:08
Three in, and she was able to find a... Three in. So incredibly, investigators have spent over 30 years
00:27:15
trying to identify the Marion County John Doe. Barbara hasn't even spent an hour searching
00:27:20
before she lands on a name, and that name is Donald Boardman. So she's excited, of course,
00:27:27
but she also has no idea what to do with this information. And she wants to make sure
00:27:32
before she starts trying to tell officials about it that she's right. So she starts looking up Donald Boardman and trying to find anything she can about him.
00:27:41
Donald was 36 years old at the time he went missing, which fits the John Doe's age range.
00:27:47
And his missing persons report was filed within the exact time frame that the investigators believe that the John Doe was killed.
00:27:55
Wow. So these details start lining up. So Barbara decides to send an email to the 12th Judicial District Attorney's Office.
00:28:02
It's hard to say. I think it's just the district attorney's office, but it's a specific area.
00:28:08
And that's, of course, where investigator Larry Davis has been working for the past
00:28:13
33 years or more, 33 plus years. So she sends the email, several days pass, there's no response.
00:28:21
She figures either it got ignored or just got lost in the shuffle. So Barbara sends a follow-up email.
00:28:28
A few more days pass, but then she gets a response from Larry Davis. and he tells her he's going to look into this information.
00:28:36
She's so thrilled that she actually got a reply, that something's going to be done.
00:28:40
Like, she's so excited. She waits to hear. She waits days. She waits weeks. She waits months.
00:28:46
Three years end up going by. Holy shit. So now it's 2021. Oh, my God. And Barbara's communication with Larry
00:28:54
has completely dried up. Why? So she was trying not to step on any toes or, you know what I mean?
00:29:01
just she's like making a suggestion. And I'm sure at some point she was like, well, I guess I was wrong.
00:29:06
Or, you know, I don't know. She was trying to be patient and not step on toes, but she runs out of patience.
00:29:13
Like at the end of that time. So in April of 2021, she decides to go ahead and which also could have had something to do with quarantine.
00:29:22
Like everyone's lives slowed down a lot. So she decides to go ahead and reach out
00:29:26
to the police department where Donald Boardman's father reported him missing. which is the Chambly Police Department in Georgia.
00:29:35
So she basically goes the other direction and tries to contact someone on the other end.
00:29:41
Very smart. So she does it the same way she found the story in the first place. She opens up her Facebook app.
00:29:47
She goes to the Chambly Police Department's page, writes them a message that includes everything she found,
00:29:54
everything you know all the pictures everything and it also includes her picture and her name So she like a contactable person not just a random weird email person
00:30:06
Yeah. And that was her strategy, basically. She would later say, quote, I intentionally decided to send it through Facebook
00:30:13
so the person who received it would know that I was real and would also see my picture and know that I wasn't crazy.
00:30:20
It's just like, ma'am, anyone on Facebook could be crazy. Definitely. And is. But this plan works.
00:30:27
A crime analyst named Lori Bradburn, who basically is in charge of that police department's social media channels,
00:30:34
reads Barbara's message. She's instantly curious about what Barbara is talking about
00:30:39
and all the information she seems to have. But what really sells her is that composite sketch.
00:30:44
It looks exactly like the photo in Donald Boardman's missing persons report. Lori thanks Barbara for her work.
00:30:50
And then she reaches out to Larry Davis over in Tennessee. and says, hey, listen up.
00:30:56
So thanks to Barbara's persistence, Lori Bradburn in Georgia and investigator Larry Davis in Tennessee
00:31:02
are now convinced that Donald Boardman is indeed the Marion County John Doe. But now they have to prove it.
00:31:09
So Lori reaches out to Donald's 71-year-old sister, Debbie Boardman Anderson, who's living in Florida,
00:31:16
and she requests a DNA sample. And Debbie is absolutely shocked to hear from investigators.
00:31:23
She would later tell reporters, quote, for me, it was out of the clear blue sky.
00:31:28
I was not expecting it. There were so many things going through my mind, shock, happiness, relief, and grief,
00:31:34
all at the same time. I was sobbing on the phone. Oh my God, I bet. Yeah. I mean, after 30 plus years of knowing nothing.
00:31:43
Yeah. Let me just take you through Donald Boardman's life really quick up to what happened to him.
00:31:48
So Donald Boardman is born in South Florida in 1950. and by all accounts, he is a very laid back,
00:31:55
very fashionable and very fun-loving guy. He's known to have an obsession with health food
00:32:00
and he was also an early adopter and really loved to tell people about CDs when they came out.
00:32:08
He liked them first, which I think he was probably one of those people just kind of like, look at this modern age
00:32:13
that we live in. Yeah. So for years, Donald works for his family's very successful gift shop business, Boardman's Gifts,
00:32:20
and he oversaw all the new store openings in Florida. Donald marries young, and this is a very strange kind of sidebar factoid,
00:32:30
but he, in his first marriage, became the son-in-law of longtime forensic files narrator Pete Thomas.
00:32:38
That's just a coincidence? Yep. Weird. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. The marriage ultimately ends in divorce.
00:32:49
Donald remarries, this time to a woman he had met just six weeks before. And that relationship ends as well.
00:32:56
No surprise. So around the same time that that second marriage ends, around 1985,
00:33:03
Donald opens a nightclub, but it gets shut down almost immediately because there was an issue with the business license.
00:33:10
So at this point, 36-year-old Donald is in a real slump, but he's determined to get out of it.
00:33:16
that same year, his business folds, 1985, he decides he needs a fresh start. So he leaves
00:33:22
the family business. He packs up and he moves from South Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. He lands
00:33:28
his dream job at a design firm and he rewards himself by buying a brand new white Camaro.
00:33:34
Wow. So on November 16th, 1985, he calls his mom and dad back in Florida. He tells them he's going to be driving his new Camaro down the following week for Thanksgiving.
00:33:45
and he also just conversationally is talking about a health food convention that's going to be
00:33:51
in town that coming weekend in Atlanta that he's really excited to go to. It really, you know, his family's very happy for him. It seems like he's turning everything around
00:34:00
and he's very happy in the new city with his new car and his new job and they can't wait
00:34:06
to see him on the holiday. When Donald's family doesn't hear from him over the weekend,
00:34:10
And they don't really think of anything of it. They know that he's busy with the health food convention,
00:34:16
probably having a wonderful time. But the following Monday, November 18th, when they get a phone call from Donald's new employer
00:34:23
telling them that he never showed up for work, they start to get rattled. They try to call him.
00:34:29
They can't get ahold of him. They can't find him anywhere. So the next day, November 19th, 1985,
00:34:36
Donald's father reports him missing with the Chambly Police Department. They handle cases in a specific part of the Atlanta metro area.
00:34:44
And Donald's family is just hoping that there's a mix-up and Donald's going to show up and explain everything with like a crazy story, of course, which is, I think, how it always happens.
00:34:55
Because Thanksgiving is just days away. But when the holidays come and go and no one hears a word from Donald, the situation obviously goes from bad to worse.
00:35:06
He hasn't called work or shown up to work, and he has not been in his apartment.
00:35:11
Time passes with no word on his whereabouts while the Boardman family just waits and waits in agony.
00:35:17
So Debbie Boardman has a theory about what happened to her brother. As reported by the Tennessean,
00:35:24
she believes he was murdered in Atlanta for his car, for the new Camaro, probably as he was leaving the health food convention.
00:35:32
Oh, shit. Yeah. So on November 29th, 1985, and the police at the time must have listened either to her or put together the same theory.
00:35:42
Because just 10 days after Donald was reported missing, the Camaro was spotted at a barbecue restaurant just outside of Atlanta.
00:35:49
And according to Donald case file police arrested three very drunk people who were getting into the car after eating at the restaurant And when police ran background checks on each of them they learned they all had extensive criminal records And one of them even had an outstanding arrest warrant
00:36:06
Another one was on federal probation for a gun charge. So when the police interview these three people,
00:36:12
it gets more suspicious. One of the men claims that Donald was a customer at his auto repair business.
00:36:18
So going off the context clues in these police reports, they refer to the man's business as a chop shop.
00:36:24
So it's unlikely that this wasn't just a normal above board place to have your car serviced.
00:36:32
Certainly not a brand new sports car. So the man claims that on November 18th, the day before Donald was reported missing,
00:36:41
he'd brought his Camaro in for repairs and never picked it up. And that's when this man and his friends started driving it around.
00:36:48
But when detectives search that repair shop, all the man has to show for these supposed repairs is an unsigned invoice for $347
00:36:57
addressed to Donald Boardman, and it simply says, replace rear end on it. So meanwhile, investigators take the car into custody.
00:37:07
They do a thorough search of the inside. They find Donald's credit card under one of the back seats,
00:37:13
and they soon discover that that credit card had been used to make purchases all over Atlanta.
00:37:18
It had been used at gas stations, department stores, a Chevy dealership, even a motorcycle salvage shop
00:37:25
where police are able to directly link that purchase to the three people who were found in the car.
00:37:32
And every single one of these purchases from this credit card was made after Donald was reported missing.
00:37:40
So these three people become the Chambly Police Department's main suspects in connection with Donald Boardman's disappearance,
00:37:47
but for unknown reasons, they're never charged with any crime related to his disappearance
00:37:52
or for the use of his credit cards or for the car theft. Ultimately, one of the suspects
00:37:58
who already had a warrant out for their arrest is sent to prison. The other two walk free.
00:38:05
Fuck. Yeah. And all of this is, and we have talked about this before, comes up in cases a lot
00:38:11
when there is no body. Right. So you can't prove anything has happened to the person that everyone is worried about,
00:38:18
the person that's missing. Right. In July of 1987, the Boardman family files a lawsuit
00:38:24
naming all three of these suspects as defendants. Complaint says that they, quote,
00:38:29
knew about or participated in the facts and circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Donald Harry Boardman, end quote.
00:38:36
But the case is ultimately thrown out due to lack of evidence tying the three people
00:38:41
to Donald's disappearance. Police in Georgia haven't found Donald's body, so they don't know if he's alive or dead.
00:38:48
And the Boardman family and the Chambly police have no idea that while they're at that point in the case,
00:38:55
over in Tennessee, Donald's unidentified remains are being put into storage. Damn.
00:39:03
Oh, it's so tragic. Yeah. So in the years after Donald's disappearance, the Boardman family struggles with not knowing
00:39:10
what happened to their son and brother. Updates rarely come. Both of Donald's parents pass away
00:39:17
without knowing what happened to their son. I hate it. It's horrible. And despite her deep grief,
00:39:24
Donald's sister, Debbie, does her best to keep hope alive. And what choice does she have?
00:39:30
Yeah. So when investigators finally call 30 plus years later and ask for her DNA,
00:39:37
it suddenly feels like she was right all along. She had reason to be hopeful and she enthusiastically submits her DNA
00:39:44
and waits to hear what happens. And the results come back and it's a match. So the Marion County John Doe
00:39:52
officially gets his name back and it's Donald Boardman. Donald's sister Debbie says
00:39:58
that when she finally got that news, she was so flooded with shock, grief, and relief
00:40:04
that she, quote, got immediate amnesia. This is her quote. She got immediate amnesia.
00:40:11
I mean, amnesia, that's something you see in the movies. For two or three hours, my husband said I had no clue what was going on.
00:40:19
Oh my God. Just shock, pure shock. She was in pure shock. I mean, like, it's amazing and it's such a change.
00:40:27
And it's a change that it sounds like she had to go through by herself. I mean, like she had her husband, but her family and the people that were there when it happened.
00:40:36
And she just has to process it herself. Chilling. Yeah. So there are still many unknowns about Donald Boardman's murder case. There's no conclusive
00:40:48
answers on how or why he died or who killed him. The three suspects originally named have all since
00:40:54
passed away, but the identification of Donald Boardman's remains have given his sister much
00:40:59
needed closure. Debbie tells the Chattanooga Times Free Press that, quote, thank goodness I'm still
00:41:04
alive. I've carried this with me since I first got married. I'm so sorry for my mom and dad who
00:41:10
never knew, end quote. Debbie recently received her brother's ashes and announced plans to hold
00:41:16
a memorial for him at sea. Her hope is that investigator Larry Davis, Lori Bradburn, and of
00:41:21
course, Barbara King Ladd will all be available to attend. Oh, so Barbara got her props. She got her
00:41:28
props. Well, yeah. This lovely ending to Donald Boardman's otherwise tragic story shows how curious
00:41:34
citizens can provide crucial assistance when it comes to unraveling decades-old cold case
00:41:40
mysteries. Investigator Larry Davis tells reporters that, quote, I'm so glad Barbara went to the source
00:41:47
and gave her thoughts to Lori. If she hadn't, I'd still be looking for Donald. And Barbara herself
00:41:53
chalks it up to divine intervention She tells reporters that quote I think it really cool how God brought us all together to solve this case There is Larry Davis who originally investigated the case and kept it
00:42:06
in his heart all these years. He had the idea to contact Ben to do a story to raise awareness.
00:42:12
Then I came along and read the article. And when the case stalled in Tennessee, it was through prayer that I decided to contact Champley Police Department. I chose to contact
00:42:21
them through Facebook where my message was received by Lori Broadburn. Without Lori,
00:42:26
I don't think we would have been able to find Donald's sister. So it took all of us working
00:42:30
together for this case to be solved and for Donald's sister to finally have some closure
00:42:35
regarding her brother. And that's the story of how after 37 years of waiting, the Marion County
00:42:41
John Doe got his name back and his name is Donald Boardman. Wow. Right? Oh my God. Yeah.
00:42:50
I have the chills right now. Also, she got it on the third try, Barbara. It's wild.
00:42:57
I want to go to NamUs immediately and start like, just like scrolling. It's just so funny.
00:43:02
She must have been absorbing something from somewhere because that idea that she immediately
00:43:08
like took it and turned it on its head and was like, well, if they've already looked
00:43:12
here, I'll look where no one's looking. Yeah. She's a smart cookie. Yeah. Yep. Oh my God.
00:43:19
Great job. Thank you. Fascinating. I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some
00:43:55
of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about
00:43:58
it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the
00:44:04
listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book
00:44:09
that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like,
00:44:19
Yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Okay, so today I'm going to tell you about a case that's well known in Spain, but hasn't got a lot of attention in the United States.
00:46:07
It's called The Strangest Disappearance in Europe by Interpol, which is, of course, the international organization that helps in global criminal investigations.
00:46:15
It's been over 30 years since this happened, and the case is still unsolved. Today I'm going to tell you about Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez, who was also called the missing boy of Soma Sierra.
00:46:29
Okay, so the main sources I'm using today are an El Espanol article by Marina Ochoa,
00:46:34
an article by Skylar Aries on medium.com, an article from the Morbid Library by CJ Lynch,
00:46:41
and an unattributed Spain's News article, and the rest you can find in the show notes.
00:46:46
And also we relied heavily on Google Translate because a lot of these articles were in Spanish.
00:46:51
So forgive me if I'm saying things wrong. I won't know. Good. I'm going to go comacidese every five minutes just to keep you on your toes.
00:47:02
Okay. So let's start. It's the summer of 1986. Wow. I just realized these timelines kind of match up our stories.
00:47:09
Wild. That's Hannah Crichton doing her work. She's so good at matching our stories.
00:47:14
I love it. Summer of 1986 in the south of Spain, Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez is a 10-year-old boy.
00:47:22
He is an excellent student. and when Juan Pedro gets excellent grades on his report card,
00:47:27
his father, Andreas, wants to reward him for his hard work. So Andreas works as a truck driver
00:47:33
and he's brought Juan Pedro with him on short trips in the past, but now to reward him,
00:47:39
he's gonna take his son on a much longer trip. Andreas has a job that will take him
00:47:44
to the Basque region of Northern Spain. Juan Pedro has read all about the Basque region in school,
00:47:50
so he's really been wanting to visit. He's really excited about this trip. His mother, Carmen, decides to come along
00:47:55
to keep an eye on her son. And so on June 24th, 1986, The family hops in the truck and begins the cross-country road trip from Cartagena in the south of Bilbao in the north.
00:48:08
I've been to Bilbao. Have you really? Uh-huh. How? Why? In the mid-90s, Greg Barron and I were sent there by ESPN2 to co-host The Running of the Bulls.
00:48:20
Holy shit! It took place in Pamplona. It was when I was still drinking. Greg and I drank the entire time. It was hilarious.
00:48:27
Oh, I wish I could see that footage. I bet it's hilarious. It's ridiculous. I mean, and also we both thought we wanted to do the running of the bulls on the way there.
00:48:36
Hell no. And then I saw one of it because it happens like the whole time during this festival.
00:48:43
It is one of the scariest things I've ever seen. I can't imagine. It's mayhem. Cobblestone streets, thousand pound bulls, drunk and hungover people running in front of you.
00:48:54
Oh my God. You fall down and you're trampled by, you know, 10 bulls. Like it's so, so, so crazy.
00:49:01
But part of the clip package they put together was all the nightmare things that have happened to people over the years.
00:49:07
You just see people getting pulled up by the horns and flipped into the air. Like these bulls are like not messing around.
00:49:15
It is so frightening. I can't even tell you. That sounds horrible. Yeah. I love Spain.
00:49:22
That's such a cool story. Okay. So they are transporting in this truck because it is a job that he's taken.
00:49:28
They're transporting 20,000 liters of sulfuric acid. That's over 5,000 gallons. That's enough liquid to fill a medium-sized above-ground pool.
00:49:40
Wow. I know. Isn't that wild? Have you ever been in an above-ground pool? Hell yes.
00:49:45
They're all over Petaluma. Oh, I've never been in one. People would just stick them out in a field.
00:49:51
There's like a little ladder to get in. But then once you're in, it's just like any pool.
00:49:55
Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Okay, so the trip that they're taking is roughly 515 miles,
00:50:00
which should take close to eight hours. Juan Pedro and his parents begin their journey
00:50:04
at around 7 p.m. on June 24th and drive through the night, but they make several stops along the way
00:50:10
for gas, for food, to rest. Their last stop is at an inn around 5.30 a.m. the next day,
00:50:18
which is June 25th. Andreas and Carmen get coffee while Juan Pedro gets milk and a pastry.
00:50:25
The waiter who serves them is struck by Juan Pedro's distinctive outfit, saying he's wearing matching bright red pants and a bright red shirt.
00:50:32
So it's confirmed that he's seen them. After their short stop, the waiter watches as the family gets back into the cab of the truck.
00:50:40
This is the last time anyone will see any of them alive. Oh, no. So after this last stop, the family starts driving through a mountainous area known as the Soma Sierra Pass.
00:50:51
The roads are narrow and winding with sharp turns. And this is a big truck. I mean, it's carrying a huge load.
00:50:58
It's not the safest drive even for a careful driver. But around 6 a.m., Andreas strangely starts driving dangerously fast
00:51:06
out of nowhere. He gets up to 90 miles an hour in this big truck on this dangerous road.
00:51:13
And it's not clear why he's speeding. No one knows why he's speeding so fast. All we know is that he was driving like this
00:51:19
between 30 and 90 minutes. And he hit several other cars in the process. So something happened.
00:51:26
Oh, something's going on. Yeah. One car gets its mirror knocked off and another is rear-ended,
00:51:31
but the truck doesn't stop. As the truck speeds down the pass, Andreas hits another driver head on.
00:51:37
The cab carrying the family crumples and the whole truck flips over off the road.
00:51:43
And there's photos of it. It's a total wreck. And the cistern of the 20,000 liters of sulfuric acid
00:51:49
starts pouring out onto the roadway. Am I wrong? Sulfuric acid is like, you can't touch that.
00:51:56
Yes. It's like poisonous, toxic, dangerous. Yeah, definitely. Okay. And a cloud of toxic gas immediately rises from the crash site.
00:52:04
Kind of reminds you of that recent... The train wreck in Ohio? Yeah. How about the fact that the train wreck in Ohio happens?
00:52:12
That's why they went on strike. They were saying like these, all these safety precautions, everything.
00:52:16
Yeah. Like they're cutting everything. And that that company offered, it's the equivalent of $5,000 per person
00:52:25
that lives in that town. And they just did $55 billion worth of buybacks. Anyway.
00:52:30
It's so fucked up. It's so fucked up. Yeah. The Spanish Civil Guard arrives quickly checking out the scene for possible survivors Miraculously the driver of the car that was hit head on by Andreas he alive However Andreas truck cab has buckled
00:52:46
and the first responders quickly discover that Andreas and Carmen are dead in the cab of the truck.
00:52:53
They've likely been killed on impact and their bodies have only been slightly damaged
00:52:57
by the sulfuric acid spilling into the cab. But it's not safe for them to retrieve them from the truck
00:53:03
until the leak is under control. So it is toxic. You can't touch it. Thousands of pounds of lime and sand are brought in to soak up this acid
00:53:12
and prevent it from contaminating nearby streams and rivers. So later in the day, as the crash cleanup process continues,
00:53:20
Carmen's parents are finally called. They're informed about the accident and the death of their daughter and son-in-law.
00:53:26
And the first thing they say is, and the boy? Police up to this point haven't realized that there was supposed to be a third passenger in the truck.
00:53:33
They didn't even know to look for a kid. Oh my God. So of course they freak out.
00:53:37
It's been 10 hours since the crash and only now are authorities learning about Juan Pedro.
00:53:43
Oh my God. So as soon as the Spanish civil guards hear about Juan Pedro, they begin to search the scene.
00:53:49
They check the truck and the immediate area around the accident. Juan Pedro isn't there.
00:53:54
They even sip through all the lime and the sand that they had dumped and he's not there either.
00:53:59
They only find two pieces of evidence that Juan Pedro was ever in the cab of the truck at all.
00:54:05
the sole of a child's shoe, and a cassette tape of children's music. They search the entire crash site and the surrounding area.
00:54:13
They can't find Juan Pedro. Some experts find it hard to believe that Juan Pedro could have survived the crash at all,
00:54:19
though we know for certain that the driver of the other vehicle survived the impact,
00:54:23
so it's possible. An initial thought that's very bleak and gruesome is that the sulfuric acid might have dissolved his body,
00:54:31
leaving nothing to find, but chemists quickly dispute this, Even if his body had been completely doused in sulfuric acid,
00:54:37
it would take days for a human body to break down. And even then there would be some evidence like teeth left behind.
00:54:44
Just chilling. So that's ruled out. So where is Juan Pedro? Immediately investigators begin interviewing witnesses
00:54:51
and plastering missing persons posters all over the region. At the same time, the police are looking for Juan Pedro.
00:54:57
They are also looking into the cause of the crash. Given the out of control way Andreas was driving,
00:55:03
they suspect there was something wrong with the brakes. But, you know, he drove for 30 to 90 minutes like that,
00:55:10
at that speed. Yeah, he could have taken his foot off the gas, so it wasn't. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was downhill or what,
00:55:16
but there seems like there would have been a way to stop it, yeah. Right. And when they investigate the truck,
00:55:21
the brakes are completely intact and fine. Oh. Yeah, so the truck was in working order
00:55:27
right up until the collision, and it's presumed that Andreas was speeding on purpose,
00:55:32
so it wasn't the brake. Investigators are able to salvage the trucks. I'm not going to say this right.
00:55:36
Tachograph. Tachograph. Which is a device that automatically records the speed and distance of a vehicle,
00:55:43
including any stops that are made. And they find something very strange. Between the departure from the inn and up until the crash,
00:55:49
Andreas stopped the truck 12 times. And we're not talking stop like he pulled over to a rest stop,
00:55:55
but stopped like stopping at a red light. So just like pauses. there's no red lights or stops on the stretch of road at all. So that's weird.
00:56:04
He's just stopping and then starting in the middle of the road. So that's really 12 times
00:56:09
doing that is really odd, especially if you've been behind a truck before. If they were doing
00:56:13
that, it would be very odd. You would think a responsible driver and a professional driver,
00:56:19
if he was doing something like because there was a problem, he would pull off the road.
00:56:24
You wouldn't just keep testing it out or like trying to fix it or whatever. Right.
00:56:29
Totally. So some of the stops recorded are just two to three seconds, but the longest stop is over 20 seconds.
00:56:35
So they just chilled there for a minute for some reason. The stops didn't follow any known traffic patterns
00:56:41
and the roads were clear that day. So there's no explanation for the stops. Crazy.
00:56:46
There are several theories about what happened to cause the crash and about where Juan Pedro might be.
00:56:50
Some of these theories hinge on a mysterious white van that was allegedly seen near the crash site
00:56:55
right around the time of the accident. Witnesses describe a mustached man and a blonde woman
00:57:01
driving up to the scene of the accident before police arrived and grabbing a small parcel
00:57:06
out of the wreckage of the truck and driving away. These sightings are unverified.
00:57:11
The white van is never found and the couple's never identified. And witness accounts have changed over time which does take away from their credibility But the story does fit in neatly with a theory that many believe to be true which is that Juan Pedro was kidnapped by drug traffickers
00:57:28
This is a pretty reasonable theory since Spain in the late 1980s was a huge hub for the international drug trade.
00:57:36
Half of the illegal drugs entering Europe came through Spain at that time. So in 1987, the Spanish media reports
00:57:43
that trace amounts of heroin were found in the compartment of the truck that was storing the sulfuric acid.
00:57:49
Oh. Yeah. This leads many to believe that Andreas was pressured into smuggling drugs against his will
00:57:55
and that Juan Pedro was possibly kidnapped as a way to ensure he would complete a delivery.
00:58:01
Some people believe that Juan Pedro was kidnapped during that 20-second stop. Oh.
00:58:06
Wow. Mm-hmm. They attribute Andrea's increased speed to either being upset about his kidnapped child
00:58:12
or that he was possibly chasing the kidnappers. Like that makes sense, doesn't it?
00:58:17
That makes perfect sense, yes. They allege that the white van and the couple who took the parcel
00:58:22
add intrigue to the story, of course, but it's all unverified. Juan Pedro's family believes he's still alive
00:58:29
and that he was kidnapped before the crash. The family even reports that after going public
00:58:34
with this idea, they began receiving threatening phone calls from a, quote, very large but unnamed criminal organization.
00:58:42
They say they went to the police, but they weren't taken seriously. The family continues to be vocal about what they see as a failure on the part
00:58:49
of the Spanish authorities to investigate Juan Pedro's disappearance thoroughly.
00:58:54
Another theory is that Juan Pedro was actually in the cab at the time of the crash,
00:58:58
but was thrown from the truck and survived and wandered away. Even though many eyewitnesses to the crash saw him walk away from the truck,
00:59:07
It's still possible that in the chaos of the moment, he just slipped away unnoticed.
00:59:11
It's believed that he might have wandered off to look for help or to find water.
00:59:15
Maybe he had sulfuric acid on him. Some theorize that he might have gotten lost and later died from his injuries,
00:59:22
that he had sustained in the crash, but the surrounding area has been searched many times and his body's never been found.
00:59:28
Some people think he might have survived but sustained a major head trauma, resulting in him becoming disoriented and losing his memory.
00:59:35
This theory goes along with an alleged sighting of a child who looked like Juan Pedro in Madrid
00:59:39
in May of 1987, almost a year after the crash. A man reported that he was approached
00:59:46
by an elderly blind woman who was led by a young boy. The boy looked to be about 10 or 11 years old
00:59:51
and the woman said she was an Iranian refugee and asked for directions to the American embassy.
00:59:57
She said that she and her family had only been in Spain for six months. She made it sound like the boy with her
01:00:02
was a family member, but the boy spoke fluent Spanish in an accent that matched the region of Southern Spain
01:00:08
that Juan Pedro was from. It didn't make sense to the man that this boy had just learned the language.
01:00:15
When he complimented the boy's Spanish speaking skills, the old woman got visibly nervous and changed the subject.
01:00:21
Though he didn't recognize him immediately, the man later saw a missing poster of Juan Pedro
01:00:25
and he swears up and down that this little boy that he met who was leading the blind woman
01:00:30
was definitely Juan Pedro. Holy shit. I mean, and then nothing comes out of this alleged sighting.
01:00:38
Yeah. I just imagine, like, if you're that man, even if you're wrong, the children look similar.
01:00:45
That would drive you insane for the rest of your life. Like, how frustrating. Totally.
01:00:50
In the years that follow that 1987 sighting, there are reports of a child dressed in red
01:00:55
wandering on the outskirts of several different rural towns, all in the area of the Soma Sierra
01:01:01
a pass, but nothing has ever come from these sightings either, which seems a little like
01:01:06
outlandish, right? That part. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's likely we will never know what happened to
01:01:12
Juan Pedro or why his father crashed the truck that day. I think they were chasing the kidnappers,
01:01:17
don't you? And I think the drug trade makes sense. Yes. Having trace amounts of heroin in a glove
01:01:23
compartment where it's like, you don't put anything in there. No. Unless you're trying
01:01:28
to hide something. Right. And then the like strange man and woman who'd stopped in the white van
01:01:33
and grabbed something out of the truck. If that's real, that is crazy. There have been attempts
01:01:38
to use genealogical DNA from Juan Pedro's family members to help find him, but nothing useful
01:01:44
is turned up. But hey, maybe it will. I mean, this stuff happens all the time. That's right.
01:01:49
Nobody has been found, alive or dead, that matches the description of Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez.
01:01:55
If he still alive he would be 47 years old And as time goes on this becomes more and more of a mystery And I think the Spanish people are obsessed with it And that is the tragic and strange story
01:02:07
of the missing boy of Soma Sierra. The idea that he was, that the father was driving a truck
01:02:14
filled with sulfuric acid, it doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Yeah. Like that basically he's already driving something
01:02:23
quote unquote dangerous. So then was that part of the reason where it's like, if they kidnap the son,
01:02:30
knowing he wouldn't chase them because of that danger element. I don't know. It's just making my brain go a thousand miles a minute.
01:02:38
Or if like the crash is over here, then all of the authorities are going to be so worried about that spill.
01:02:43
Yeah. That they're not paying attention to any other detail. Right. Something happened to him before that.
01:02:51
And it's just a coincidence that he crashed afterwards. It's just what a weird coincidence,
01:02:56
but it doesn't seem like that. I mean, it doesn't seem like a coincidence. It seems like they were driving that truck
01:03:02
like it was the movie Speed. Yeah. And they were like, we have to go. Yeah. Or we can't slow down.
01:03:10
You also wonder if a father would really take his kid on a drug run. That doesn't seem very likely, you know?
01:03:18
No, it almost seems like he was like an, it could be that he was an unknowing mule.
01:03:25
And that's why they went to get that package. It's like, oh, you've been doing this for a long time
01:03:30
and that's why you didn't know you were doing it. Those are the people that... Right.
01:03:34
Maybe the trucking company or something. They're never suspicious. Yeah. So it's just like, oh, it's just in there.
01:03:40
Yeah. That makes sense. God. I want that mystery to get solved. I do too. That's a nice double feature.
01:03:48
Yeah. Those two stories went well together. Well, great job to both of us today.
01:03:54
High fives all around to you and I. High fives with both hands. Good job. Thank you, you too.
01:04:01
Good job to all citizens, sleuths everywhere. That's right. Keep it up. Maybe one day we'll tell your story.
01:04:07
Yeah. Wouldn't that be cool? And thank you for listening. We appreciate you. And, you know, even if you found us on accident,
01:04:15
thanks for getting this far. Hey, listen, we have a lot of the same qualities as the Home Shopping Network.
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