What Is The FBI Hiding About Tom Messick? | Missing 411

Tom's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in nearly 9 years I'm Aiden Mattis and welcome back to [Music] llod back in 2022 Aiden and I took a trip up to Brand Lake New York to take a look at the case of Tom messic and Tom was one of those missing 4011 cases that really got me into the whole phenomenon I heard about it through Mr Ballin and it it kicked off this entire thing this channel probably does not exist without me hearing about the Tom messic case and in the first year or so that we were making content almost everything was part-time you know outside of our day jobs didn't have a ton of time to research it all of that but we did take a weekend over the summer to head up to Brand Lake which is in Warren County New York it's a little Northwest of Albany and we talked to some locals we drove around we investigated the woods a little bit but we didn't get to do a a ton of on the ground stuff to the extent we would like to and we also didn't really have the time to really dive into everything that had happened and in the last couple of years as I've spoken to more people as I've dug up some more resources what I've what I've come to feel about this case and I think you'll understand as we go through it but what I've come to feel about this case is that it really is one of the inexplicable ones even if on its face it feels like it should be so simple I went back into it thinking all right well there's you know this is probably going to be pretty straightforward it's going to be a higher quality retelling of our old video on the case and it's not because as I was going back through it reminded me oh yeah there there are a few Missing 411 cases that aren't just mysterious on the surface there are several that you really drill down into them and they make no sense at all this is probably one of the big ones to start I think I want to tell you guys a little bit about the area in which it happened which was Brandt Lake New York which technically is part of the town of Horan uh I probably pronounced that wrong but I it's a it's a little Hamlet it's a village basically that sits on the southern end of the lake it's got a population of just 62 people but man when I tell you it is this idilic little Valley it looks like it is out of a teen Coming of Age movie from the 9s like I I got up there and I went oh man if this was in basically any other state in the country I would move here it was it was so pretty um Can is that in frame we actually liked it so much we stopped into a little store we interviewed a guy and we decided we wanted to buy this guy up here this little brt Lake sign because we were like ah this was such a good trip we want to take something home from it I will say the time we spent at the days in and Albany was horrifying uh there's a whole movie that could be made about how terrifying that place was but that's not the point of this video aen shut up and put your money where your mouth is that's what you get for waking up in Albany while there is that small full-time population that lives in the area it is a very popular tourist destination especially from people from the more populated more dense areas of Upstate New York like Albany Brunswick Troy and in Troy specifically lived a man by the name of Tom messic an 82-year-old 82nd Airborne veteran and while that is pretty old that is a that is an old man he was still active he went out and hunted with his friends his sons he was camping hiking fishing still doing all of that despite the fact that he was essentially missing an eye and was partially deaf but he didn't let that stop him and he and his kids and three other families every single year would go up to this camp that they owned up in hag New York uh right off of Battle Hill Road and they would just hunt from their Camp every once in a while they'd go a little further out but for the most part these guys would stick around this little piece of property they owned and go from there but on one of these trips in November of 2015 they decided they were going to go to a different spot one that Tom and his son Rob had actually never been to before a little spot called Lily Pond it was there during what was supposed to be just a quick 2hour little outing for their hunting group that Tom messic seemingly vanished Into Thin Air and speaking of making something vanish Into Thin Air I want to tell you about our partner today fume fume is a simple all natural device made out of wood and metal that helps you make all of your bad habits vanish Into Thin Air and one of the coolest things about fume is that it does that entirely through air there's just a hollow wooden tube a little allnatural flavoring stick set in this nice little metal frame you put it in here it's nice and heavy it fidgets a little bit and just air in case you're wondering what does it do what's the point a lot of us get stuck in habits these could be physical habits they could be chemical habits but the point is it's hard to break them and it often takes people at least two weeks to get over the simple ones fume seeks to replace those things that form a bad habit not by getting rid of the Habit altogether but by switching out the bad for stuff that is good instead of being electronic fume is completely natural instead of vapor fume just uses flavored air and instead of harmful chemical flavoring fume uses delicious allnatural flavors it's simple instead of being bad fume is good it's a habit you're free to enjoy and makes replacing your bad ones easy filling that void in a natural guilt-free way and one of the things I've really been happy about since we partnered with fume is the number of success stories we've seen in our own comments of people saying hey I gave it a try and it's been helping me out hey I decided to get this for my mother to try and help herk quit a habit it just makes us happy that we're able to bring you a product that you guys use and enjoy and this time we have another aspect of the product to pitch you you might be asking where do I store this phenomenal beautiful little product and the answer is quite simple on the fume Bas it's magnetic and you can you can spin it around it's kind of fun you know you just get a little spinny spin I'm going to be honest the Basse thing gives me like one of those fancy pen holder Vibes so it'll look good on your desk we get it stopping is something that everybody puts off because it's hard but switching to fume is easy enjoyable and even fun fume has served over 150,000 customers and has thousands of success stories and there is no reason that you can't be one of them join fume in accelerating Humanity's breakup from Bad Habits by picking up the journey pack today just head to tryf nume.com Lodge or scan the QR code on your screen and use code lur Lodge to get 10% off when you order the journey pack today that is TR f.com and code lur Lodge to get 10% off your order and speaking of habits one thing that we have made a habit of here at the lore Lodge is including little Regional history segments with all of our videos we understand that history isn't everybody's thing and maybe you're not interested in that you're just here for the mystery so if you're not interested in hearing about the Mohawk it's fine to go ahead and skip to the next chapter of the video nobody's going to judge you like honestly nobody will even know but if you are interested in learning about the Mohawk and really the entire five nations Confederacy itself then stick around I guess a good place to start would be to say that iroy defines both a cultural group and a linguistic group the iryan languages are part of one of the world's primary language families that means they're like Indo-European or afroasiatic there's not a a larger known linguistic family involved here the Mohawk were an iroan speaking group that lived in what is now Eastern Upstate New York with their border kind of being around the same spot where the New York Vermont border is today considered a primary language family the Iran Lang languages were spoken across a swath of the Northeastern United States parts of French Canada and a couple of pockets down in the American South and while the term iroy typically brings to mind tribes like the Sena kuga wanida onanda or of course the Mohawk that's just the tribes that were known to the Europeans as the five nations Confederacy in addition to that Confederation known in their language as the henani or people of the long house there were a bunch of other Iran speaking tribes and confederacies for example in the central Woodlands of Pennsylvania lived the susqu hanuk while around the Great Lakes lived the Erie and the Huron in the American South the Cherokee held portions of Western North Carolina and Eastern Kentucky while their Tuscarora cousins held territory in the Eastern portion of the state and parts of Southern Virginia among the hosani the Mohawk were known as the Guardians of the East charged with maintaining the border between the iroan speaking Confederation and the various Algonquin tribes that surrounded them such as the moh an but in order to understand the Mohicans themselves you kind of need to have the broader context of that five nations Confederacy and really where the iroy came from because they're an anomaly in the Northeast their language doesn't really closely match with the ones surrounding it which are primarily Algonquin and historically the way we've understood things is that the Algonquin moved West they started on the eastern coast of the United States and Canada and then they moved to the interior but they don't seem to have encountered the ioy along the way according to their migration stories and of course that leads to the question of were the iroy even there during the Algonquin migrations and the thing is the exact origin of the iroy peoples is pretty unclear and it's not totally understood some Modern Scholastic theories have placed their origin on the St Lawrence River near Montreal while some of their oral Traditions their own storytelling sells of a migration coming from the West it did seem odd to me that a completely different linguistic group would have orig originated around Montreal and not been mentioned by any of the groups around them prior to around the 15th century so I decided to go and look you know well where did what did they say where do they say they came from Ray Fadden also known as tahan torren told an account of the iroy migration story as it was given to him by a tus orora elter through a traditional iroy uh beaded belt and I decided to take a look at that one as a version of the story to consider the belt was created in 1958 but the Elder who passed down the story was born back in the 1800s now tah torren Ray faden was actually a European American he was a white man but he was married to a mohawk woman and over the course of his life he became very involved in Native American historical and traditional preservation he was actually made a member of the tribe and upon his death the Mohawk lobbied to have him granted the full honors of being an iroy member his family even founded a mus Museum that was a museum of the history of the Six Nations ah real quick in 1722 it became the Six Nations when they added the Tusc Aurora now according to his account the story of the iroy began many many years ago in the land where the Buffalo roamed at which time they lived beside the Great River near the villages of the wolf Nation this is generally understood to mean that they originated in the Great Plains that they lived along the Mississippi River and that the wolf nation is the pawy and according to the belt the paon were their friends and allies it goes on to say that their territory was Southwest of the Great Lakes with the Rockies to the west and their Villages located at the outlet of the Big River the version of this I saw online appeared to be an interpretation not given by faten uh it appeared to be an interpretation from from a university that suggested Big River and Great River were both the Mississippi but I'm not sure that I agree with that the reason is that the outlet of the Mississippi is much further south than Pono territory it's actually like New Orleans it's it's NZ territory historically the pony lived in what is now Northern Kansas and Nebraska so if we're talking about either the Illinois or the Missouri River being the big river that they lived on the outlet of that makes a lot more sense as both empty into the Mississippi uh at St Louis it goes on and for reasons unknown the iroy packed up and left migrating Northeast until they came to their eventual point of settlement in New York this also suggests to me that the Big River could have been the Illinois because they could have followed it up to Lake Michigan where Chicago now is and then headed east across what is now Michigan reaching Ohio and then Pennsylvania alternatively they may have followed the Mississippi to the Ohio and Then followed the Ohio northeast into Pennsylvania and then up into New York and all of this would happen before the year 1450 ad because that is when the five nations Confederacy was founded and while that story may seem far-fetched for a group that ended up in New York York there's actually a lot of good reasons to believe it around the year 1450 ad the Mississippian cultures began to go into Decline and it's entirely possible that some of the Mississippian groups might have felt the pressure earlier and a migration in the 1300s OR 1400s would therefore make complete sense the iryan languages are another Factor as they're nothing like the alanan languages which surround them yet some Scholars have proposed a link between iroan and katawan the latter being the linguistic family of the Pon people additionally there are cultural links the iroy were a matal lineal uh matal local society that was also in some ways matriarchal this is far more similar to the suin and katawan and Mississippian groups than to the alonquin just for context a matal local Society is one wherein when there's a marriage the man moves into the family Village of the woman not the other way around in any case once the iroy settled competition both within their own community and with the neighboring Algonquin groups necessitated the formation of tribal confederacies the five nations Confederacy formed at the beest of legendary leaders hawaa Deano WIA and a matriarch by the name of jagon who together crafted the Great Law of Peace that peace however did not extend to non-members with the new formed five nations Confederacy quickly gaining a numerical advantage over their Rivals and while the five nations did not have a responsibility to join together in Warfare they very frequently did in turn they were able to extend their territory and influence far beyond their little corner of New York at the expense of other tribes one example of this is that the people who sold portions of Northern West Virginia Southern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to the English were not the shaune who lived in that area nor the LPE who had migrated to that area but rather the iroy who didn't even live there their military and economic strength also allowed for complex cultural development and the Mohawk are a well documented example their societ soety was clan-based and amongst the Mohawk there were three main Clans these were bear wolf and turtle all members of a given Clan were considered family membership of the clan passed through the mother's line and marriage within the clan was strictly forbidden they lived in villages comprised of wooden long houses which were multif family dwellings that typically measured somewhere around 80 ft by 18 ft by 18 ft though this could vary and some were as big as 250 ft long if you've ever played Assassin's Creed 3 you're probably familiar with this setup the long house also became emblematic of the iroy religion that was eventually supplanted by Christianity during the colonial period and the Mohawk did well during that time allying with the British to fight against the French and in doing so holding on to basically their entire territory that alliance with the British however would eventually be their downfall because they sided with that Empire once again during the American Revolution Now by this time the five nations had grown to the Six Nations and of those six nations only two sided with the United States in any form those two tribes were the wanida and the Tuscarora in the end the Americans won that war and full-scale settlement of what had formerly been iroy territory preceded and eventually men like Tom messic found themselves hunting the exact same lands that the Mohawk once did born March 14th 1933 Thomas E messic was a man who understood outdoor survival he had been a member of the 82nd Airborne and spent his entire life hunting and fishing he continued performing these activities even after losing most of the function of his right eye due to a gunpowder explosion and according to family and friends these were Tom's favorite activities hunting camping fishing and ones that he shared with his wife Beverly and his three sons Tommy Eugene and rob a resident of Troy New York just outside of Albany Tom was a very well-liked member of the community with his wife Beverly telling David ptis in 2018 he probably taught every one of the kids around here in reference to the hunting and survival ISM aspect of life in his old age Tom wasn't quite as quick as he once was but he made up for it with his experience and his familiarity with the forests he hunted every year his family and three others would head up to a camp they had in ha New York just off of Battle Hill Road and spend a week hunting typically the men would hunt directly from the campsite but on November 15th 2015 they decided they were going to try out a new spot one that Tom and his son Rob had never been to before and that was on Lily Pond Road near Lily Pond at itself just a couple miles east of brt Lake now the path to Lily Pond is a rough unpaved Forest Road that winds for about 2 miles off of New York State Route 8 and the way that they planed to do this hunt was it was going to be a rather quick one and it was going to be a deer drive so they were going to set up a line of Watchers near the road and then another group would go out into the woods circle around and push any deer they came across towards the Watchers who would then take the shot now reports vary on exactly who was out there that day and who role was what with initial reporting saying that there were six men there and that's from The Post Star a local newspaper if the postar is correct and there were only six men out that day then they were Al rasmusen Roland gendin Joe Capelli Sid sharp and then Rob and Tom messic the postar Articles say that two men were assigned to be Watchers one of which would have been Tom while the other four would have been going around to be the pushers and the reason I mentioned that and I I phrase it the way do is that some of the accounts of those directly involved in the search and in the hunt itself uh differ from this specifically those of one of the Rangers and one of the hunters in 2022 speaking to the Catskill Appalachian research Company New York State Forest ranger Charles keal said there were four Watchers and that they were aligned near perpendicular to the road he had the same total number of hunters as the postar but a different number of Watchers Sid sharp on the other hand said that there were seven people involved in the hunt but did agree with Charles keal that there were four Watchers also according to Sid they had parked their trucks next to Lily Pond itself and then the order of the Watchers going up the road away from the trucks was as follows Al was the first Watcher I was the second then Joe capitelli and then Tom he also told David pitus that it had been his idea to hunt Lily Pond Road saying he had mentioned that we had state land up there we agreed to hunt it the road to Lily Pond now Rob messic did not give a number to David pitus or at least if he did it was not included in the documentary but he did contradict Ranger keal's account according to rob the Watcher group was parallel not perpendicular to the road he also said that each man was only 30 to 40 yards into the forest at most with 100 yard increments between them based on that we would say that Tom was probably between 4 and 600 yard up the road away from Lily Pond being the closest of all of them to Route 8 Rob messic also told politus that this was only intended to be a quick little 2-hour thing they had already gotten out late in the day it was around 1: p.m. so they agreed that they were going to meet back at the cars around 3:00 p.m. and of course it is worth acknowledging that 1: p.m. is very late to start hunting I was unable to find any information coming directly from the hunting group to explain why they went out so late in the day it's possible that they had been hunting earlier as well and decided that this was going to be more of a just for fun kind of thing but like I said it there's no knowing for sure cuz nobody said anything and the thing is as one might expect they didn't come across any deer at 1: in the afternoon but more oddly they didn't come across any Wildlife at 1 in the afternoon no Chipmunks No squirrels no small game nothing just according to everybody there the forest was silent and back in 2022 Aiden and I were up there and we were in the woods and I can say for sure the woods were not quiet it was it wasn't you know constant chattering like you were in the jungle but you heard Birds calling you heard rustling around in the brush it's not silent there and yet as far as everyone says there was not a sound to be heard out there except for one thing reported by Sid sharp and what Sid told David politus was I'd say it was probably 150 yards something like that up towards the top of the hill I told the cops but they just passed it off you know he also said that this was he explicitly said that was not in Tom's Direction which means that Ranger keal's account where he says that Tom was up the hill like several hundred yards away from the road has to be inaccurate if what keal was saying was true then the sound came from precisely where Tom was all of this would suggest that Rob's orientation with them 30 to 40 yards into the woods parallel to the road is correct while keal is off still the question of exactly how many people were there remains unanswered because Sid says seven but every single report that I could get my hands on that wasn't quoting Sid said six and I never came across a seventh name regardless the group returned to the trucks around 3: 3:30 p.m. all except for Tom who should have just been 400 yards up the road according to rob it was just one of those things where he should have been out by now and then we went and started looking for him and the first thing anybody did was call him over the radio because they all had walkie-talkie so they figured ah well you know maybe he just lost track of time or maybe he you know went to go pee something like that who knows but he should answer his his talkie but there was no answer so they tried the universal hunter in distress signal and fired three shots from their rifles and that's the kind of thing that Tom should absolutely know meant either he's lost or someone else in the group has lost but he didn't call over the radio he didn't fire any shots of his own so everyone decided all right somebody should go down and get one of the Rangers and around 4:30 p.m. they reported Tom missing the rest of the group continued looking until it got dark at which point some of the guys headed back to Camp while Rob stayed to keep looking for his dad honking the horn flashing the lights calling out he also called his mom that evening and told her dad's missing in the woods but don't worry we'll find him when Beverly offered to drive out Rob told her no no don't come up I'm sure we're going to find him and I'll call you but confident as Rob was they didn't find him that night and the next morning a search began in Earnest and because at first everybody assumed that Tom had simply wandered off gotten lost maybe thought he saw or heard something so the sheriff's department only assisted the search Warren County sent their 13- man search and rescue team up to assist the New York Department of Environmental conservation's forest rangers who were actually leading the search effort that first day which was Monday November 16th 2015 about two dozen people comprised of the local state troopers the Warren County Sheriff's Department the New York state forest rangers and members of Tom's Camp all went out to search the forests and they decided to start with the trails that Chris crossed the area figuring that if Tom had wandered off then at some point he should have come to one of these hiking trails and maybe followed it somewhere they didn't find anything the first day but the second day the search effort grew as support was offered by local volunteers as well as 34 members of search and rescue teams from the New York State Federation of search and rescue teams meanwhile at the fire station in Brandt Lake about 8 mil by Road from where Tom went missing volunteers worked hard in the kitchen to supply The Searchers with sandwiches and drinks anything to keep them going out in the woods and these guys were working because that second day of the search it wasn't just those 34 members of the search and rescue teams that showed up there were additionally another hundred or so volunteers from just around the area the total number of Searchers involved on day two was approximately 150 people and those Searchers moved in groups of 8 to 10 using a bump line technique which basically meant that they each had a ranger assigned to their group that Ranger would set up two lines of string that formed a rectangle and they would start at one end they would line up shoulder-to-shoulder they would walk from one string to the other and then they would tie off that section to show it had been done they would then go to the next sector walk forward tie off turn walk back tie off just for miles and miles and miles but nestled amongst all the information about number of volunteers and search method and all of that is one very odd little detail which is that the New York State Department of Homeland Security allegedly showed up to help with communication there is no further information on this and in fact I'm curious if this was a misidentification because later articles mention that the FBI was there but don't say anything about Homeland Security and that detail about the FBI comes on the third day of the search Wednesday and in my opinion this is probably the strangest aspect of the entire story because the FBI does not show up for adult missing persons that just it's not within their perview that is solely the job of the local police or the sheriff's department or the state police it's just not what the FBI does they'll look at organized crime they'll look at serial killers they'll look at interstate crime but one guy going missing in the woods while hunting is not FBI level and especially not after just 3 days back in 2022 while we were preparing to go and shoot Into Thin Air the story of Tom messic I called the FBI and they said they'd get back to me and then they didn't so I called again and they told me that because it was an open case they couldn't comment at all they they couldn't tell me anything and I checked with a lieutenant Smith at the Warren County Sheriff's Department who informed me that yes it is in fact an open case which meant filing a foyer request was pointless on day three they also expanded the search area though they were becoming puzzled as to how Tom could have possibly made it out side of the search area without coming across a well-marked trail or even a road or home and on top of that it was expected that as soon as Tom realized he was lost he would retrace his steps make a call over the radio leave scraps of clothing to show where he had gone or at the very least fire three shots from his rifle to inform people hey I'm missing and when you look at the terrain Tom's age and the fact that he was half blind and half deaf it's even more unlikely that he would be able to make it even out of ear shot let alone out of radio range and the reason I bring up earshot is because sound carries up there we checked I'm going to say your name respond and when you stop hearing me let me know okay yep yep yep yep yep yep okay right now I'm yeah I can hear you perfectly clear can you hear me I can hear you yeah by Thursday the search and rescue effort had covered a full four square miles of forest in the Lily Pond area but there was still no sign of Tom even with assistance from National Guard helicopters still Searchers held out hope that they catch a glimpse of Tom's red and black plaid hat his duck boots or maybe some of the camo he'd been wearing however Tom had gone out there that day without water bringing only his walkie-talkie a Snickers bar his 3030 rifle and a knife all of this was of course complicated further by his history of heart problems to that end many worried that at this point in the search 4 days in they probably wouldn't find Tom Alive by the time Saturday arrived the search effort had swelled to over 250 people with volunteers assisting Agents from the State Police Department of Environmental Conservation fire department and the Warren County Sheriff's Office and possibly still the FBI though they weren't mentioned by name here despite that massive number of people combing the woods they still found nothing that weekend then by Monday the 23rd they had covered 7.3 square miles of territory and had received the assistance of 106 officers from the New York State Department of Corrections who were specifically trained to hunt down fugitives in the woods do there had actually been a couple of runaway prison inmates in the Brant Lake area earlier that summer though one had been killed and the other apprehended long before Tom went missing dude tried to make it to Canada he did not at this point Searchers had used dogs divers helicopters canoes mountain bikes and basically anything else they could find to try and locate the 82-year-old but not a trace of him had been found no rifle no walkie-talkie no clothes not even the rapper of his Snickers bar and there weren't even theories as to where he could be everyone was simply confused the one thing that did come up was that uh a Town supervisor by the name of Matt Simpson did note that there were a lot of old homesteads and mines back there so maybe he fell into one of the mines however they' brought in dogs and the dogs didn't even pick up a scent let alone track him to a mine how although it had rained on Thursday so it could be that the scent was just washed away but then on Tuesday November 24th another curveball hit the case another elderly man disappeared from his own 158 acre property on beroy Road in scherville just 42 Mi south of Lily Pond also if I got sherille wrong I I'm sorry it could be scherville it could be scherville I know here the the skookul probably looks like it should be pronounced schle but uh we'll go with scherville how about that the missing man was Fred Fritz drum a 60-year-old retired councilman and an avid Hunter and Outdoorsman and he was reported missing at about 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday the 25th approximately 20 hours after was last seen by his wife Ruth very few details about the circumstances under which he went missing and the search that uh transpired are available but from what I can tell it was generally similar to the level of effort that went into the Tom messic search from what little is online I can say that uh according to Ruth she left for a grandparents breakfast around 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning and when she came home Fred was gone he hadn't taken his cell phone and his car was still in the driveway as to why she waited until 6:00 a.m. the next morning to report him missing there's no way of telling it could be that she thought that you had to wait a certain period of time because police departments have frequently told people that in the past who knows in this case there were about 150 people who took part in the search and because it was not on State Forest land the Saratoga county sheriff's department was leading it now nobody knew if these two cases were actually connected and they weren't investigated as such but one one thing that does stick out to me as just weird is Thanksgiving and I will explain that for some reason a lot of post 2015 articles as well as David ptis is missing 4011 the hunted say that Fred drum went missing on Thanksgiving Day 2015 but they all also say he went missing on Tuesday Thanksgiving is always on Thursday it could be a simple reporting error that one person said it was Thanksgiving Day and because a lot of Journalism is just taking what somebody else wrote and rewarding it and posting it to your own website maybe that detail just got copied over and over and over again alternatively it could be a slip up regarding his wife's Alibi that said I have no evidence aside from that weird little detail about Thanksgiving to suggest that his wife had anything to do with his disappearance so I'm not going to accuse an old woman of doing something either way on the actual day of Thanksgiving the search for Fred drum was winding up while the search for Tom messic was winding down the messic family had asked most of the Searchers and agents involved with the case to go home and spend the holiday with their families while they kind of came to grips with the likelihood that Tom was not coming home searches did continue for both men but the Tom messic search was wound down to just a few Rangers and a smattering of volunteers by the 30th of November since then the search for Tom has been ongoing but in a a much more informal way every once in a while they'll send ring ERS out to patrol the forest they will put out calls for information and on a couple of occasions they brought out kadab dogs to search the area now cadaver dogs when properly trained are good they can smell bodies from a couple of miles away and they can smell bodies under you know feet of dirt or water but to this day neither man has been found and in the near decade that has followed their disappearance a number of theories have Arisen these theories range from alien abductions or Bigfoot attacks to Tom getting lost to one suggestion that he was never there in the first place that last idea was actually pitched To Us by a Brant Lake resident and business owner whose name was rich rich was very familiar with the area having hunted and fished at Lily Pond in the surrounding woods and in his opinion if Tom was out there he would have absolutely turned up somewhere part of his reasoning was Tom's expertise as a man of Tom's knowledge should have left a trail or sought help rather than just wandering completely aimlessly Rich also informed us of another possibility related to an Old Sawmill in the area he said that it had closed some 70 years back and that it left behind a huge sawdust pile covered in decades of foliage and loose soil and had Tom wandered over top of it he could have easily just plummeted into what was essentially a sinkhole but from what I can tell the Sawmill was on the southern end of Brandt Lake and Lily Pond is toward the Northeast end so I don't think that the the sawdust pile is a a workable option here looking back at the idea that Tom had never been there in the first place I have to ask the question why lie about it then the only thing that comes to mind is that somebody involved here conspired to end Tom's life and make it look like he had just gotten lost in the woods this would require a lot of lies from a lot of people so I decided to go back and look at you know the demeanor and what was actually said did these people look remorseful did they look uh you know guilt did did they say anything that contradicted one another when Rob messic was talking to David politus about his father back in 2018 in my opinion watching him on screen he seemed wistful and spoke of his father fondly and while he did appear calm it seemed more like he was just at peace with the situation and had accepted that his father was gone basically he was subdued but not in a way that suggested dishonesty Tom's wife Beverly came across to me as loving describing Tom as a very good husband very good father father and I don't think you would find anybody who ever met him who didn't like him she also made a point of mentioning how their yellow lab sits by the window every day waiting for Tom to come home now Sid was certainly very Gruff in matter of fact but he seemed like he was fondly remembering his good friend it didn't seem like he was angry with Tom that he was guilty about Tom just he was an old guy who wasn't super emotional but you know he missed the guy and his story matched Rob's story at least so far as the parts David potis shared go and the reason I say that is because later in missing for one the hunted David pitus goes and takes a look at the case of Aaron Hedges and I have confirmed speaking with the sheriff's department out there that he left some stuff out of the interviews in addition to that I found no evidence that there were any insurance policies or claims associated with Tom's death and while the guy was by no means poor nobody really stood to gain from his death so since everyone seemed to love the guy and nobody stood to gain from his passing it seems unlikely to me that he was killed somewhere else and then this story concocted to convince everybody he had just wandered off additionally both Al Rasmus and Roland gendrin said that they were there with Tom that day so that's two more people corroborating that Tom was there and that brings us to the next possibility I've wondered if Tom half blind half deaf 82 years old and growing more frail with each passing year wanted to go out on his own terms maybe he planned a trip with his family and friends to go one last time and die doing what he loved if this was his plan it doesn't seem like he would have told many people about it though we can kind of ascertain that from the statements made by people who knew Tom and were there with him that weekend for example Roland gendin told North Country Public Radio it was a good day and something went wrong elaborating he wasn't supposed to travel that far he was supposed to go into the woods and sit this was in November of 2015 just before Thanksgiving and at that time like many others he believed that Tom had simply wandered off and gotten lost after that he said haven't seen him since no idea where he disappeared to it's devastating also along with Tom was Al rasmusen who said he spent the first five days searching but then his knees and his back just hurt too much cuz these are old guys so he had to go back and he decided that the best way he could help out was cooking in the kitchen that doesn't sound to me like somebody who thought his best friend had just gone off to end himself as for Rob Messi he was one of the pushers drivers likely with gendin who's the only one not mentioned along the uh The Watcher line he was one of the last people to stop searching and while it's possible that he did know and he was Keeping Up Appearances I I have no real reason to believe that he would be covering it up the only one of them who stood out at all to me was Sid who didn't seem like he felt remotely guilty about being the person who suggested Lily Pond that day in addition Sid went back to the camp that night he didn't stay over overnight to help Rob look which would make sense if he knew that Tom wasn't intending to come back it could be that Tom confided his wishes to Sid but felt that if he suggested they go out to Lily Pond people might get suspicious after he disappeared so Sid made the suggestion they went out and Tom did what Tom did the big problem with this theory is that if that is what happened if Tom did die in those woods he should have been found by Searchers or caver dogs and if not that it's still a popular tourist area you would think that somebody would come across his remains eventually so if Tom was there and neither he nor his friends ended his life what happened I think the FBI's involvement is an incredibly important detail here because we've only ever come across FBI involvement in an adult missing person's case one other time and that was The Disappearance and accidental drowning of Dakota James in 2017 in Pittsburgh and according to all the reports I could find when Beverly messic asked the FBI why they were there they told told her and this is her quote something wasn't right with his case but we don't know what they wouldn't tell her anything else if the FBI was involved it means that they must have thought that whatever happened to Tom he wasn't just simply lost he didn't just go missing he also wasn't a victim of simple crime like murder or kidnapping they had to believe that this was organized serial or Interstate crime now Vermont is just 14 Mi east of Lily Pond in Brandt lake or about 36 and2 if you drive up past tyon tooga so interstate is an option but why that would be their assumption hard to say because I couldn't find any related crimes in Vermont in that time period but because illegal grows moonshine stills meth labs all of those can comprise both organized and Interstate crime they kind of have to be considered the problem I have with that angle is purely how fast the FBI showed up they were there by day three when nobody had suggested it was foul play yet in order for them to be on the scene so quickly you'd think that they would have had reason to be monitoring the area for missing persons cases the question is why and there may be an answer more related to the adarac area than the whole Interstate crime aspect and I say that because in June of 2007 Irene horn went missing from West Canada Lake Wilderness about 35 miles west of brand Lake she has never been found in June of 2006 Jack Colony vanished in Moose River PL wild forest about 50 Mi west of brtt lake he was 46 and has never been found in April of 2006 George laforest went missing from a fishing site along Cedar River 30 or so miles west of brtt lake he was 45 and has never been found in October of 1993 Thomas Carlton failed to return from a hike in the high peaks Wilderness some 37 miles west of brt lake he was 44 and has never been found also throughout the 1970s another three people disappeared completely in the adarand deex question is does any of that matter does it suggest a serial killer and I ask that because serial killers tend to have a victim profile so we have to look at the victims did they have anything in common did they have differences you know what what ties them together if anything well Irene was the only female one of the ones who went missing in the 1970s was a male child one was only 19 one was in his 50s one was in his 60s and one was in his 80s so all of that's different but what about similarities well three were in their 40s two were named George two were named Thomas uh several were hunters and several were just hikers or campers that means that of the missing essentially the only thing that connects all of them is geography they all went missing in the aderan deex the only grouping here with any degree of consistency is the three white men in their 40s who went missing between 1993 and 2006 in the same 1500 squ mile area which is just a lot of space when you consider all of that it seems seems unlikely that the FBI would jump to serial killer and it also seems unlikely that they would jump to Illegal grow or to Interstate crime but what other options are there there's not many and the fact of the matter is even if the FBI did think it was a serial killer or organized or Interstate crime that doesn't explain the complete lack of evidence and the total disappearance I say that because a still grow operation or meth lab would have been found during the search because even a meth lab can't be completely removed every last bit of evidence within hours in addition to that Tom had no known enemies and a serial killer would have had to have snuck up on Tom killed him and carried the body and all of his belongings including a rifle away in under two hours and all of this would have to be without a trace that he'd been there keep in mind Hunters are typically pretty good trackers which means that they would have been looking for Footprints now it wouldn't be hard to catch Tom unawares he was half blind and half deaf but carrying a 170 lb man and his rifle out of the woods to a place where you can then remove them from the area all without being seen or leaving any Trace that you were there is just so incredibly implausible especially when you consider the fact that the nearest person was only 100 yards away and that's not even contending with how or why they chose to Target Tom who had never been to the Lily Pond area before and as far as anybody can tell nobody knew they were going there that day except them so with all of the normal stuff under the FBI's jurisdiction seeming unlikely one has to wonder what they meant when they told Beverly something wasn't right with Tom's disappearance so at this point we kind of end up moving towards the the xfiles side of things and I always used to say when you've exhausted all of the rational options you have to start looking at the irrational when everything that's possible has been ruled out you got to consider the impossible and the fact of the matter is the Adera much like the appalachin to their South are known for a sort of high strangeness and there are plenty of tales of people hearing strange noises coming from out in the woods or dogs barking at things that nobody can see and just kind of General weird Vibes out in the wilderness some accounts talk about shrieking or grunting or growling noises that are unlike any known animal in the area and then of course you have to think about the fact that Sid reported that he heard a noise and he said it sounded like a loud snap or a crack and along with all of that is another issue related to sound which is the complete lack of wildlife noise while they were out for their hunt and the thing is it wasn't just Sid that said that Rob also said it was oddly quiet they couldn't hear any Wildlife didn't see any Wildlife either and UND Sheriff uh Shawn Lawrence also said this he told David pitus that it was definitely strange how quiet it was while they were out there that they they didn't come across Wildlife they didn't hear anything didn't see anything and that that was unusual for the area and as I said we've been in there there's at least chattering of birds constantly you heard rodents rustling around under the leaves all the time I mean it was the woods it sounded like the woods and when I think about what Sid said he he really couldn't describe the sound it was he just said it was unusual it was his son Sid sharp III who said my dad said it was like a loud snap or a crack and it brings to mind another story that I've read about from the West Coast from British Columbia uh recited by JW Burns but told to him by a a shalish uh Native American who said that once upon a time when he was a younger man he and some other young men from the tribe were going hunting and they came across what appeared to be a large hole in the side of a mountain like a like a big cave and there was a large Stone right next to it a round Stone and he said that he went back and he spoke to the Elders of his tribe and they told him oh that's where the saset live don't go there and of course you mean saset that's there's a whole thing we're doing a Bigfoot series it'll come up but the reason I bring it up is that he said that the Elders of course told them hey don't go there that's dangerous it's where the saset are uh saset being these large hairy very strong wild men that they said lived off in the woods of British Columbia and of course being young men this guy and his buddies went back only to find that the hole in the mountain wasn't there anymore but the stone still was and they realized that it appeared somebody had rolled the stone in front of the hole in the mountain so you might consider that that unusual sound was the sound of a stone door closing over a hole and you have to ask the question if that's what it was did whatever closed that door take Tom given the lack of other disappearances in the area and the logistics of having a community of humans or near humans living underground which again we'll get into in the the Bigfoot videos later just go watch those for that I can't get into that here it's just it's it's too much either way it you know it seems far-fetched but the thing is so does absolutely everything else about this story so I'm not sold one way or another on it I'm curious I am intrigued as to what could have happened here and of course as always we want to know what you guys think the way that we do these videos is that we we'll do a topic and then we'll revisit a year or two later based on what people have told us I there will be often suggestions that oh you guys missed this Source go read that you guys uh did you consider this and we'll go and we will look at things and we will revise as we go we've done two videos on almost every missing form one case that we've covered because the first one was you know not great it just wasn't well researched and people helped us to find the right sources and to do a better job so if you've got ideas questions comments suggestions please let us know in the comments below and if you want to support what we're doing here at the lore Lodge you can subscribe to our patreon for just $1 a month or you can subscribe here on YouTube for $5 a month there are higher patreon tiers and they get you stuff like mugs uh but you know we're only asking for $1 I would also highly recommend joining our Discord that is the easiest way the fastest way to get updates on everything that we're doing to interact with the community and to get maybe you know some some time to chat with us because we do pop in there now and then you can get there by going to https bit. l/ jooin the lodge or you can probably just ask somebody to post the Discord link here we also have other channels you can check out the weird Bible is returning very soon in fact if you're catching this Premiere good news it's it was yesterday so if you want if you want weird Bible it's there just go to the weird Bible Channel and and it's about Samson if you want to see wendon Thornbury and I laugh hysterically at the dumbest thing for 5 minutes straight well it's in there probably I don't know Aiden hasn't finished editing the video yet the laughter will be there it just might not be the the whole 5 minutes we also have other channels like the history Hut we have the lore Lounge we have my personal channel the Aiden Mattis we're going to be bringing uh our our short film channel in very soon that'll be some version of redacted media uh but yeah that's that's it for the other channels you can also follow Aiden he has a film Channel and you can find us when we were 0 babies um you can also support us directly by buying our merch through any of the little boxes under the video right now or by buying our coffee it's done with Tableau Roasting Company we worked closely with them to create a blend that we actually like we have had plenty of comments that say this is the best coffee I've ever had and as somebody who drinks it every morning I happen to agree and if you like these topics but you want to catch in a live format come to the Q&A session all that we do those Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. right here on this channel you can also catch the video on demand and this uh tonight we actually shot the very last one before we go bananas and upgrade the entire setup we're getting new microphones and mixing board more cameras uh a nicer you know actual podcasting table instead of an old dinner table that my parents gave me so starting either the third or fourth week of March the show will be back and it will be better than ever we will have guests every other week and then the off weeks we'll be talking about the topics we have covered so if you're interested in coming to those please do so and uh I guess all there's left to say is I am Aiden Madison thanks for stopping by the L [Music] Lodge [Music]

Channel: The Lore Lodge

Views: 381,397

Keywords: the lore lodge, lore, folklore, history, culture, education, entertainment, social studies, humanities, anthropology, aidan mattis, missing, 411, tom, messick, david, paulides, bigfoot

Id: a2BN3ng8Jxk

Length: 51min 31sec (3091 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024