4 Mysterious Deaths and Disappearances | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by brilliant hey remember books they're those things we used to read but now use us toilet paper now that that's all gone the way books get published has changed a lot over the last hundred years for example back in Victorian times most books were serialized meaning they were released one piece at a time and literary journals and then later consolidated into book form and the absolute master of the serialized book form was Charles Dickens Dickens was known for his cliffhangers he'd hook people in with fascinating characters and harrowing situations and get people invested in their outcomes then raised the stakes and then just as a drama reaches a fever pitch just boom leave him hanging people clamored for the next installment of his story so much so that while he was publishing his book Little Dorrit he left a cliffhanger where the main character may have lived or may have died nobody really knew and when he published the next installment of that people literally stormed the boats at the dock that were unloading the next installment of this book and a riot ensued today we only write it over things that are important like if our team wins a Super Bowl the point to all this is we as humans crave closure we don't like it when things are unanswered we don't like it when things are unfinished and so when things are left that way we scramble for any answer we can come up with to give ourselves a little bit of closure even if that answer is kind of out there so today we're going to talk about five mysterious deaths and disappearances some of which defy all explanation and some of which have pretty surprising answers I'm putting together a video of mysterious disappearances there are a million options to choose from many of which you guys have sent to me over the years but the five that I picked here I picked because well it's my channel and I thought they were interesting I tried to mix it up between famous ones that you've probably heard of and more obscure ones that you might not have heard of some of these have perfectly rational explanations behind them some of them defy a whole reason whatsoever so I hope this is at least entertaining or thought-provoking for you let's get started Michael Rockefeller came from a relatively wealthy family he might have heard of them they were you know the Rockefellers his grandfather was oiled magnate john d rockefeller who became the first billionaire in the world in 1916 his father John Dee's son was Nelson Rockefeller who was vice president under Gerald Ford so yeah rich people in politics not a new thing yeah Michael Rockefeller just had the whole world handed to him he could literally do anything he wanted with his life he traveled widely he went to school at Harvard graduated 1960 with degrees in economics and history no big surprises there and during some of his travels he became fascinated by anthropology and primitive arts so when an old college buddy of his asked if he would join him to help you to documentaries shooting the tribes in New Guinea he jumped at the chance the film was called dead birds that was shot in 1961 by his friend Robert Gardner and he served as sound engineer on the crew and while he was there Michael got to live and study with the Asmat people and he became so fascinated by them and their culture that when he got back to the United States he immediately started preparing for another trip to go back there and yeah after a month or two of preparation he hopped on a plane to go back to New Guinea to take photographs and collect some of their primitive art and he was never seen again but before we get into what happened to him let's just talk about the Asmat people for a second what was it about this tribe that fascinated him so much what was it that could make somebody that could literally do anything he wanted in the world give it all up and go live in the jungle with him could it be because they share wives or because they drink urine during bonding rituals or maybe it was a practice of killing their neighbors their rituals headhunting and cannibalism yes they were known to do all those things but they also had an extremely complex language with 17 tenses to it and were known as master woodworkers in fact their carvings are really popular with art collectors around the world including Michael Rockefeller he had planned to make a book of photographs about the people and create the world's biggest exhibit of asthma at art but then in November of 1961 he disappeared this is what we know Michael and a small team of researchers were crossing the best river in a catamaran and a strong gust of wind knocked it over they were unable to get it back upright again so they all just hung on to the hull overnight now according to others in the boat that next morning Michael decided he was gonna make a swim for the side of the river which was a good three to ten miles away but he was a strong swimmer and he thought that he could make it so Michael swam away looking for help and that was the last anyone ever saw of him now the obvious assumption is that he drowned in the river but after an extensive search no body was ever found which leads to two main theories one his body was consumed by a crocodile or a river shark and two he was eaten by local tribes people who again were totally cannibals so New Guinea was a territory of the Netherlands at the time so the Dutch authorities were the ones that carried out the investigation and in their investigation they talked to a couple of priests that Michael was on his way to visit they seemed pretty convinced that Michael was killed and eaten by cannibals in the region and they even believed that it was done as an act of revenge for a shooting that happened four years before that in fact one of the priests named Cornelius van kessel wrote in a report in all-caps quote it is certain that Michael Rockefeller was murdered and eaten by Otts janap he may have just sneezed at the end their van kessel even provided names of people in the local tribes that he believed had parts of Michael's body but for one reason or another the Dutch authorities didn't think that these priests were reliable and they didn't follow up on that so Michael Rockefeller went to a dangerous place and a bad thing happened to him you know I mean any number of animals could have eaten his body after he drowned in the river and maybe it washed ashore or something like that and it's a very large area it's quite possible that it washed up somewhere and just never got found so the story would have just ended there except for a documentary that was made eight years later 1969 a film crew was shooting footage Diaz met people just doing their basic daily stuff hunting canoeing cooking that kind of thing but in one shot of the men in canoes something stood out a white guy wearing a beard or at least an unusually pale guy wearing a beard which was unusual for the Asmat people this question was posed in 2011 with a documentary called the search for Michael Rockefeller where they speculated that maybe he had joined the tribe maybe he wanted to get away from civilization and do that or maybe they even installed him as like a wizard in their culture because they believed that white people were imbued with magic at the time magic that we call technology so maybe he survived or maybe that's just a pale dude with a shadow crossing his face and some old grainy footage the mystery is still considered unsolved highway of tears is a 724 kilometer stretch of highway 16 in British Columbia Canada and it stretches between the towns of Prince Rupert and Prince George it earned its name because it's been the site of dozens of mysterious disappearances and deaths from 1969 to 2011 most of whom are women from indigenous tribes there are 23 First Nations that border highway 16 poverty is rampant there most families don't have enough money to afford a car so hitchhiking is common in fact public transportation didn't even reach there till 2017 plus they're often seasonal migrant workers that travel through to work in the canneries nearby this was the case of Alberta Williams in 1989 she was a 21 year old woman working in the canneries and Prince Albert when in the summer of 1989 she went missing she was out drinking with co-workers at a bar after work one day and according to some eyewitnesses when she left she got into a car with her uncle and a non-indigenous man her body was later found in the bushes along Highway 16 on September 21st 1989 she had been sexually assaulted and murdered her death was tragic obviously but it did jumpstart some investigations into other mysterious disappearances that had occurred along that highway nine young women all of them indigenous but one turned up missing or were murdered along this highway from 1989 to 2006 October of 2007 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had expanded their investigation to include 18 women and also included sections of highways 97 and 5 but indigenous groups in the area say that that 18 number is actually misleading that it's actually much closer around 40 in fact Human Rights Watch says the British Columbia has the highest number of unsolved murders of indigenous women in the world so the case is now ranged between 1969 and 2011 and yeah the number of them may exceed 40 people now because there's such a high concentration of these instances in this area speculation has run rampant everything from serial killers to satanic cults to more paranormal stuff like Bigfoot and windigos the authorities don't think that it's a serial killer because there's no real links between the murders and it's been taking place for so long it's impossible that it was just one person doing all of it sadly the most likely answer here is it just an area with a lot of easy targets young poor women from marginalized and ignored communities with endless space to bury the bodies and lots of animals to consume it if you're a human predator that's about as good as it gets there had been some convictions for the murders like 21 year old Cody legible cough who was arrested in 2010 for the murder of Laura and Leslie further investigations found they knew was also involved in three other murders in the area he received a life sentence in 2014 just last year Gary Taylor Hanlon was found guilty of the murder of 12 year old Monica Jack in 1978 she disappeared while riding her bicycle near the town of Merritt Hamlin's also charged with the murder of 11 year-old Katherine Mary Herbert who went missing in 1975 and Bobby Jack Fowler killed one victim in 1974 was a strong suspect in the deaths of two others from 1973 and possibly seven others on the list however Fowler died in u.s. prison in 2006 now there has been some controversy around how much the Canadian authorities have been taking these stories seriously because they are occurring to indigenous women critics argue that cases that involve white women get a lot more press attention which gets more police attention which means they more likely to get solved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened up a 50 million dollar investigation into these cases in 2015 and part of these investigations is looking into allegations of police misconduct which has been a typical refrain from the First Nations people that live in that area but as of this video many of these cases remain unsolved On January 27th 1959 seven men and two women left on a hiking trip to the Ural Mountains in Russia the plan was to leave from a city called viiay and hike to the top of the mountain called otorten it was going to be a 14-day journey covering 190 miles most of the group where students are graduates of the euro Polytechnical Institute they were all considered to be expert skiers and hikers but regardless they never made it and the reason why continues to be a mystery to this day now in the face of it you know people going missing over a two-week hike over 190 miles of mountains in the middle of a Russian winter might not sound like much of a mystery but the circumstances around this particular expedition are super weird and have kind of become an internet phenomenon in fact you've probably heard of this before if you like to watch mysterious content but yeah they left on January vii and there was originally another member of the group named Yuri Yudin but he kind of fell sick at the beginning and he went back home before he headed back the group leader Igor Dyatlov told him that he would send him a telegram when they got back to viiay and he expected that would be around february 12th but it could be longer so when February 12th came and went nobody really thought it was a big deal but as the day's kept passing the relatives of the group started to get a little bit concerned and they demanded an investigation the first rescue groups were volunteers that left out On February 20th later on the army and the police got involved now February 26 they found the group but this is where things get weird searchers found a badly damaged and abandoned tent that still had all their stuff in it including shoes it was covered in snow and even weirder it was cut from the inside footprints led to the nearby woods where they found the bodies of doroshenko and krivonishenko near the remnants of a burnt-out fire and weirdly they were only wearing their underwear branches on a nearby tree were broken up to 16 feet high so the researchers suggested that possibly they climbed out there looking for something they later found traces of skin on the branches which kind of verified that theory searchers found yot love and calm Agora's body the next day between the woods and the tent and Slobodan was found on March 5th all three of them look like they were trying to return to the tent and all three like the others were only in their underwear the medical examiner's ruled the cause of death is hypothermia now the fact that they were found only in their underwear is weird but it does have a rational explanation it's called paradoxical undressing and it's actually something that happens often in the late stages of hypothermia as the nerves become damaged the brain functions start dwindle it kind of creates a sensation of extreme heat so people thinking they're burning up they start to take their clothes off which of course just accelerates the problem but as the risk the bodies were found over the next couple of months even more mysteries began to appear other members took longer to find because they were actually in a ravine that was covered with snow about 250 feet from the woods and they were also just a few feet away from an improvised shelter these were dressed better than the others but these had fatal injuries like skull injuries and chest fractures one of them was missing her tongue but despite these internal injuries that one doctor actually suggested we're at the same level of force that you might expect being in a you know a car crash they had no external injuries it was all inside and maybe the weirdest of all some of their clothes were radioactive the government's official wording at the time was the Dyatlov made some critical mistakes and that the group was overtaken by overwhelming forces of nature some of this makes sense the disrobing on kid has talked about that can be explained away the tongue that's missing was probably from an animal that they got to the body that happens pretty often but some of them mishmash of these other weird pieces of evidence that were laying around has led to some pretty wild speculation you know why did they abandon their tent and so violently literally cutting themselves out and so just exiting how could they have had internal injuries with no external wounds and what was with the radioactive pants one theory is that they were attacked by the Mansi which is an indigenous tribe that lives nearby but they're a peaceful group and there was no evidence to indicate that they were attacked in any way I know there was the wild animals attacked them but again there were no tracks of wild animals anywhere around there was nothing to indicate that could have happened some think they may have eaten some psychedelic mushrooms I got all disoriented something - possibly an avalanche killed them but the area that they were in we had a very slight slope to it so that wasn't very likely plus than their journals they said that the snow was light at the time and of course people turn to supernatural answers like a Yeti attack which again there was no evidence of any kind of animal attack of any kind and of course some people think that UFOs are the answer now interestingly there is some testimony from other hikers in the area that said that they saw orange globes in the sky at the time but this actually leads to one of the more interesting theories which is that the Soviet military may have been conducting some military exercises in the region at the time dropping water known as parachute mines and these are mines that detonate the air and they have been known to cause internal injuries but not external injuries and bodies on the ground and then there's an idea that infrasound may have led to their deaths there is a wind phenomenon known as the Karman vortex street which can create some terrifying sounds that disorient people wind's blowing through the past may have been worked as they hit the side of a mountain which might have created little mini tornadoes that had deafening noise but under certain conditions this can actually create infrasound sound that's too low for us to hear but we still experience it in other physical ways studies have shown that it can have effects such as sleep loss dread and shortness of breath filmmaker and author Donnie i-car believes that it might have been a combination of these things the tornado noise the infrasound and the you know darkness in the area that may have created a mass panic amongst a group now honestly this theory is the most interesting to me but it is still unproven and the case remains unsolved the Mary Celeste was a 282 tonne Brigantine ship that set sail from New York to Genoa Italy on November 7th 1872 on board where Captain Benjamin Briggs his wife Sarah and their daughter Sofia as well as a crew of seven people transporting 1701 barrels of denatured alcohol and then about a month later on December 5th the ship was found floating about 400 miles east of the Azores and Portugal crew from the British Brig de gracia boarded the Mary Celeste and what they discovered or didn't discover has been a mystery ever since and what they didn't discover was anybody the ship was completely abandoned and apparently abandoned in a hurry because all of their personal belongings were completely undisturbed there were still six months of food and provisions left in the ship captain Briggs his cabin was completely untouched all the way down to his daughter's indentation was still on the bed and the last log in the captain's journal was set for November 25th saying that they were about six nautical miles from the Azores it was like they all just disappeared the inspecting crew even pointed out that the crew of the Mary Celeste left their tobacco and pipes behind and apparently that is not something a sailor does so could it have been pirates it's not likely they didn't take anything all their valuables were still there the cargo down the bottom was completely untouched with the exception of one alcohol barrel that spilled it found three feet of water in the bottom due to a busted pump and a frayed rope that was trailing behind the back of the ship but other than that there was no sign of foul play with no explanation the authorities just chalked it up to an abandoned ship and they towed it back to port and that should have been the end of the story of the Mary Celeste that should have just faded into history and it would have except for a short story that was published thirteen years later it's a short story called J Habakkuk Jason's statement and it was written in 1884 by Arthur Conan Doyle who you may have heard of he's written stuff like the lost world Sir Nigel maybe you've heard of Sherlock Holmes the story is about a revenge seeking former slave who killed his fellow passengers and then escaped on a ghost ship known as the Marie Celeste the story's popularity revived interest in theories around the real mary celeste and these theories range from that's crazy to one is that the ship was attacked by a sea monster because of course it was legends of giant squids and murderous whales and Krakens were popular amongst the seafaring world back in those times but there was no evidence of anything like this happening on the ship the ship was completely undamaged some suggested that the ship was haunted by an actual ghost that may have scared away the crew or just you know taken them to the other side and this wasn't totally out of left field there was a captain who had died on the ship beforehand it was originally called the Amazon but then it ran aground and the accident killed the captain and then it got renamed the Mary Celeste so some people speculated that the previous captain was still there haunting the ship or just that the ship was cursed because it did have some tragic events in the past now getting back down to earth some people speculated that it might have been a mutiny of some kind but again there was no evidence of any physical altercations on there and the captain's log didn't seem to you know note that there were any suspicions of a mutiny on board now the most likely scenario is that the crew abandoned ship for one reason or another because there was a piece of evidence that I cleverly left out for narrative purposes earlier and that is that a lifeboat was missing so they did definitely abandon ship but what could have happened that caused him to abandon ship in such a hurry that they didn't even take their most personal belongings with them the answer in one way or another probably has something to do with that one spill barrel of alcohol now one theory that was examined by dr. Andrea Sela at the University College London was that the fumes from that alcohol could have exploded due to a spark possibly from a crew member opening the door or while smoking a pipe model an experiment that showed that it wouldn't be enough to actually leave soot or really damage the ship but it might be strong enough to blow the hatches open which might have been enough to scare people off the boat now another theory suggests that as they started sailing into lower latitudes and the temperature began to change that alcohol down the bottom may have begun to evaporate a lot more rapidly and then come with the higher humidity in the air may have formed a bit of a mist or a fog that the sailors interpreted a smoke so thinking the ship was on fire they rushed everybody into the lifeboat now both of those are possible but the problem that I have a both of those is that like I said before they found a tattered rope attached to the back of the ship and they think that they may have tied the lifeboat to that rope and I'm not sure if they would do that if they thought that the ship was exploding or on fire so here's my theory my theory is that the barrel of alcohol spilled and then as they went into warmer climates it started to evaporate a lot more rapidly and it probably created enough fumes that it became hard to breathe on the ship so the captain ordered everybody on the lifeboat tied the lifeboat to the back of the ship thinking they would give it a little bit of time to air out and this would explain why nobody brought their personal stuff with them they just thought they'd be out there for a few minutes maybe just half an hour or so and then once they got into the lifeboat for whatever reason that rope came untied and the ship with its sails still up caught a breeze and just say all the way just imagine being on that lifeboat and watching this ship gets smaller and smaller and smaller in the distance as the realization overtakes you you're I mean it's tragic but imagine if the biggest mystery in maritime history all came down to a badly tied knot now of course there's a lot of mysterious disappearances that could have made this list and who knows if this video becomes popular I might do another one so put your favourite down in the comments below or I should say the one you find most intriguing you shouldn't have a favourite death but I will say I struggle with this one quite a bit because a lot of these mysterious disappearances aren't that mysterious to me like a million Earhart I mean tragic of course but I mean there's no mystery there for me sure her plane went down over the ocean why didn't they find the plane because she went down over the ocean Jimmy Hoffa he made a whole bunch of enemies he pissed off a lot of mob guys how could that have gone wrong in fact there's sort of a whole genre of missing-persons cases that are going to the category of missing for one one which I've had a lot of people asking me to make a video about it you could say that it was an inspiration for this video but the missing for one one thing usually focuses on people that disappear in national parks and you know why they disappear what could have happened to them that kind of thing and the examples and the theories usually spiral into paranormal stuff like UFOs aliens crypto creatures or you know conspiracy theories hidden agendas stuff like that but again it's that's just not mysterious to me you know national parks are wilderness areas where a lot of people go who aren't used to being in wilderness areas many national parks are filled with challenging terrain and predatory wild animals I mean I'm not trying to downplay the tragedy of it but I don't think you have to go into woowoo territory to explain it don't get me wrong I love a good mystery as much as the next guy I love a good alien story I love a good Bigfoot sighting but to me what's more interesting are just the little mistakes the little you know things that get overlooked that wind up making the difference between life and death between being just another day and a tragedy like the Mary Celeste the whole thing may have just come down to a not coming untied but that's how life works you know we like to apply the biggest and most sensational answers to things because we like to think that big things require big answers but we see over and over and over again in life that sometimes it's just the the tiniest oversights that lead to the biggest problems or I don't know maybe it's aliens unravelling mysteries is all about gathering evidence and applying sound logic to the conclusions that you come up with and if you would like to superpower your logical thinking I highly recommend the logic course at brilliant through thirty-seven interactive quizzes and 290 exercises this course covers logical fallacies strategic deductions multi-level thinking game theory and even the logic machines and make computers possible this of course is just one of dozens of classes on brilliant where you can learn everything from quantum mechanics to computational biology or just bone up on algebra logic and general scientific fundamentals you can go as basic or as advanced as you want you can do it through solving problems which trains your brain to think like a scientist and gives you problem-solving skills you can apply to everything in your life plus there are daily challenges little problems to flex your brain every day to keep those brain muscles strong they can be downloaded on your phone you can take it with you on the go or just do it right from your bra so if you want to feel a little bit smarter a month from now than you do today you might want to check out brilliant they're offering the first 200 people to watch this video 20% off your subscription for life if you go to brilliant org slash answers with Joe and they do have free weekly quizzes and problems that you can go check out if you want to get a little taste of it but sign up down below it's in the description brilliant or slice answers with Joe and go do it big thanks to brilliant for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon that are supporting my team growing an awesome community I love you guys there's some new people that have just joined I gotta murder the names real quick we've got Gordon C Frank de Besser Philip dick Knutson purchased Knutson Gabriel V Raymond high viscous Sevilla Kelly Smith Jeff Meyer Holtz Derek shield Jeff Thomas David Wolfe Sara bourgeois Elliott DeFeo Chris edgier Jeff Sexton Jill Tyler Soren tutto James Holmes and Nicolas Aswang thank you guys so much if you'd like to join them get hourly access to videos and behind-the-scenes stuff amongst just having access to me in a cool community you can go to patreon.com/scishow t-shirts are available at the store dancers with Joe calm slash store kind of felt like just doing a little representing myself today there is some branded stuff on there I don't normally promote it but you can go find some clever sciency garb there's t-shirts hoodies stickers mugs shall I go on it supports me and it supports a designer over in Prague that does a great job of that anyway you can find it at the store answers a Joe Tom slash store please do like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here maybe check this video out Google thinks you'll like that one according to some of the stuff you've seen or any of them that might show up down here on the side with my face on them and if you do enjoy them I invite you to subscribe I'll come back with videos every Monday alright that's it for now you guys go out there have an eye-opening week stay safe and I'll see you next week love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 1,129,705

Rating: 4.9142346 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, Michael Rockefeller, mary celeste, highway of tears, as mat people, dyatlov pass, mysterious deaths, mysteries, mysterious disappearances, Missing 411

Id: T-wQmE3jY4c

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020