Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi, everyone, welcome to Mother Knows Death. Recently, on Mother Knows Death, we talked about a local news story involving three cars pulled out of the river, one of which that had human remains belonging to a woman who was missing for fourteen years. It's always shocking when a missing person is found years later, but this case was even more shocking because the body was not found by police, but it was found by a nonprofit missing person's advocacy
organization called United Search Corps. On today's External Exam, we will be talking to Doug Bishop, who is an underwater search and rescue expert as well as founder of United Search Corps. Hi, Doug, Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks so much for being here. I just learned about your organization and I can't wait to share it with all of our listeners because it's so great. But before we start talking about this recent case, I want to know a little bit about your background, like how did you get interested in underwater search and recovery?
Right, pretty much by accident. I've spent my entire life in the towing industry, and several years ago I got into recovering vehicles underwater, utilizing different technology to discover vehicles in order to recover them for environmental purposes, and it just completely transformed into helping families full time to find their missing loved ones, particularly in missing ursus cold cases where people are missing and also missing with vehicles.
So that is why you started this organization. What made you feel like there was a need for this particular organization, Were you having people to you or what made you decide to start this organization.
Well, after being a part of solving dozens of cold cases in similar fashion, we you know, came to the conclusion that, you know, there's obviously a big need for this type of specialized searching within missing persons cases. When you bring up the element of cold cases, you know, then you're now factoring in different agencies a lack of resources in order to work cold cases. You know, some states, in local municipalities, they don't even have the budgets for it.
So we're encroaching on what uncovered a gray area within law enforcement, especially when it comes to the utilization of sonar within searches, and we deemed it necessary to form a nonprofit so that we can hopefully one day get the support that we need to do this on a large scale, but also give back and correct the gray area which I would just referred to within law enforcement, and start training and consulting with agencies like we've been doing in order to put those who are in place
to do it full time, you know, pretty much equip them with the knowledge and wherewithal to do it themselves.
Does your organization just specialize in underwater rescue or is it for any person that's missing someone or has a cold case that has not been solved.
You know, each case is unique, no case, no case is the same, you know, area is the same. We rely solely on donations, so we're at the mercy of donations to do any type of search. So number one, it's our funding. Do we have the funding to do a search and or are we the right resource for that? We work with other organizations when we're not the right resource. We do searches that are on land as well. And also a big part of what we do is advocate
for families. Most of the families that we come into contact with have never had any help at all, and they don't necessarily know or we're aware that anything like this even exists. So, you know, advocating for a missing person and their family is the number one biggest thing that we do, not to mention searching as well as you know, bringing answers to the family, like we've been able to do, you know, several times over the last couple of weeks here in Jersey.
So how does a family This is my question because I've never heard of anything like this, and I love that we get to share this and this case hopefully will really blow this open for you because it's such a great thing that you're doing. It's just how does somebody even find out about you that that just has a case like this? They do maybe a Google search or something and come across your website. How do they go about contacting you info?
You know, ad United search core dot org. That's our email for case processing and also our website, United search core dot org. And you know a lot of our cases come through agencies from detectives themselves and family members or simply community members that reach out that are familiar with the work that I do, such as stories that are written podcasts like yourself the podcast as you're doing
right now. Will fall on the years of some missing person's family or a community members somewhere that will take the time to look into cases in their area and send us an email saying, hey, guys, we found this case in our area, and so forth. Regardless of how we get a case, we vet them and then we enter them into our system. That way, when we're in particular areas, you know, we can reach out to family or local law enforcement to be utilized as a tool for that particular case.
So when you get cases submitted to you, what what's the process like? Do you have a board that you all sit down and talk. Is this something that we could handle? And if so, how I guess you did say earlier that there were times that you think it's not within the realm of what you do, and then you would send it elsewhere.
Yeah, So we number one, we process every email our volunteers do when they come in. Then they're passed on to another layer of vetting and then you know, either myself or one of our other specialists will look into it, which we're all volunteers. Basically none of us get paid to do this. And when we're able to vet them
to make sure that somebody is missing. Uh, then you know, it just breaks that barrier of okay, this is a legit case because for those of you who are listening and watching this, there were half a million people go missing every year and the majority of them are found. So a lot of the missing person's cases that do get turned into us end up being cases, you know, just from older information that haven't been updated, articles and posts, podcasts, videos,
you name it. So it's really important that we vet them, and you know, our process mainly is, you know, is this a legit case? For one? Is there components here that forced us to reach out to law enforcement? Are their components? You know? Is their family involved? Is there
no family involved? All of those different things we break down within that case once we know it's a legit case, and then we decide our board decides whether or not we have the resources to take on that case or where the appropriate resource and it just pretty much gets disseminated like that, you know, according to you know a bunch of different moving factors. There's every missing person's case
is different, every area is different. The circumstances within those cases, the individual that's missing, there's no case that's the same. So it's pretty complex.
And for this particular case that we're talking about. So this family called you, how how can you give us a timeline as to when they contacted you about their family member that had been missing for so long.
Yeah, so we initially did not get notified by family on this particular case. The Black and Missing Foundation did a post on their platform mentioning the case details which Black and Missing Foundation is a great advocacy group for
spreading awareness for people that are missing. They mentioned that there was a vehicle involved in this disappearance and quite a few people sent us emails in regards to this and us being in the region over the last month and a half, we had the opportunity, in between other operations in New York to come and perform searches on this particular case, and thankfully we were successful. I'm here
in the Philly Camden region. We have seventeen different cases where people are missing and missing with vehicles, so there's a lot of searching that's going to be taking place, you know, over the next several weeks.
What made you guys look in that particular area for the car.
Pretty much every case that we do, before we do it, we develop a profile on the person that we're looking for, which is, you know, what information do we have with the who, what, when, where? Why? The the who were they? Where were they employed? Their home address, what were their hobbies? Where did their lovers live, their family members live? As much information as we can gather to determine where we search.
In this particular case, the biggest thing was, you know, according to law enforcement, her last known whereabouts were at her home that evening. Her son actually spent the evening with her, left around eleven PM, and several hours later she you know, just vanished. Her children visited her house once they realized she was gone, noticed that she had not returned, so we knew it was pretty accurate that her last known location was her home address. Verify location.
At that point, without any other you know, mitigating factors or something taking us into a different area, It's then okay, weird need to identify the closest body of waters that are deep enough to conceal a vehicle, which in her scenario, she was just several blocks away from the Cooper River itself. Where we ended up locating her vehicle was just approximately a mile down the Cooper River near a park area where there's basically no obstructions for a vehicle to enter
the water. So the Cooper River was our main focus to start with. Typically, you know, we didn't go from there was the next closest body of water, which you know, in this scenario, it would have been the Delaware River or one of the other smaller reservoir ponds and so forth in the region.
Yeah, and I guess that would make sense that she would be driving around her neighborhood. I'm very familiar with the area because I told you earlier. My husband's a firefighter there, and I've lived around here my entire life. I just want to describe to everyone with this particular area where you found the car, is that every single time we drive by it because it's the Cooper River
is a big river. But this particular area where the car was found is behind this semi seedy strip mall area and behind the pub, which is like this awesome restaurant that we love. But every time you go back there, you just you're just like, something good's not happening back here. It's just like a little shady back here.
Yeah it's really dark. It's a really dark area.
Yeah, it's just dark and it just looks. It just looks. It's not It's funny because the Cooper River is very beautiful. On the other side of Route on thirty, it's there's people rowing and sitting there eating like picnic. And then on the other side of the road, it's it's nobody's just sitting back there to look at the pretty water. It just looks a little shady, I guess, I would say, back there. So you so the car then was not
sticking up out of the water. You went, how did you how did you first determine that there were car cars under the water at that at that particular area.
Yeah, So we we arrived later in the day and you know, we put our equipment into the river, I would say, adjacent to the wah Wah downstream from where we ended up locating right there near park. We immediately detected a vehicle right there off the park's edge. We set up our dive equipment we don't want it, identified that vehicle, and then continued the search up the river
into the Cooper River. Because we've previously searched other parts of the Cooper River in the past, so this particular stretch was of importance to clear this time, and when we got up there to where we located her vehicle, we located an additional five vehicles in that entire little stretch there, so a total of six the vehicles that were able to be removed, we did remove all three of them, one of them in which the one that did contain Bernardine's remains.
Well, that's just so amazing. It's just crazy to think that so many people just drive their car into the river and it's there, nobody knows.
Yeah, that particular area, you know, which is great for you guys being local, and I'm sure you have a lot of local following, you know, advocating for a safety barrier. There is real deal. There's no obstruction, let alone even a curb at that location to prevent a vehicle from
going in. We did move the picnic table right in front of that little area right there, but a picnic table was not going to stop you know, someone having a medical accident or somebody that is intoxicated or simply recklessly driving and loses control and enters right into the river. One vehicle is one thing. Two vehicles, three vehicles, six vehicles in that area. Obviously there's over you know, whatever you want to label it that. You know, there's a
risk factor there that has been identified. Big time vehicles are going in there. Let alone, we're addressing somebody that has lost their life in doing so. So there's it's an issue there that needs to be corrected for, you know, so this doesn't happen in the future.
Do you have any idea what the other cars were doing in there? Did they did they have license plates on them or that's I mean, that's just something you don't really deal with.
Yeah, So we we identify all the vehicles as much as we can during our searching that you know, when we give that data to the local, state or federal agencies in the area, uh, you know, they can decipher whether or not they're connected to other major crimes and so forth. Most of the majority, of overwhelming majority of vehicles that we find underwater are connected to you know, violent crimes and insurance fraud and and so forth. You know,
no cars underwater for a good reason. So it's it's it's always alarming to find a car, even though you know, we've we've found so many of them, you know, across the country, and it's good to get them out. It's not only is there evidence possibly in those vehicles, but those you know, the tons of toxins within the glues, the oils, the synthetics, they don't need to be in
our waterways if we can get them out. So it's it's good that we were able to get the three that were recoverable out of the river there.
What's the feeling like when when you pull the car out and it's the one that you were looking for?
It's very power, powerful stuff, you know, we're in those moments, you're realizing that you're able to give a family and a community answers to a nightmare. You know, no human being is meant to go through a tragedy and losing somebody and not knowing what happened. That's the worst. We're
not wired. Nobody is wired for that. And when you don't have those answers, you know, you're you're forced to put up walls and create walls of what ifs, and those things just sit there and they sit there, and what it built within those walls because you put them up is torture. It is torture being in between those walls. So having answers to something you know and that now allows you to process and grieve and move on no matter how horrific the loss is. If you have the answers,
you can process it. You know, without those answers, you can't process it. And that's that's just a real life nightmare that we're just not meant to go through. So knowing that you can relieve I can relieve those families of you know, that type of grief and relieve them is there really aren't words within the human language that can describe that. Really, it's it's powerful.
Yeah, I mean, what you're doing it's just so great. I always say that on the podcast. We talk about these stories all the time of people that you have a loved one that goes missing, and there always has to be some amount of hope that maybe she drove away and she just had a mental breakdown and started another life and she'll want to come back or something. When you don't have a concrete body and think about this, when like kids get kidnapped or anything, it's just so
terrible to have. It must be the worst thing that a human has to go through, really, So that's so cool that you're able to help people with that. So when you found her car, obviously you were going to open it and see what was inside, and I know that there were human remains inside. I'm assuming after fourteen years it was just skeletonized remains. What was that something you were able to identify yourself.
Or is that?
I mean I know that you guys called the police at some point and say, hey, we found this, but you were able to identify that, Yeah.
We've and yeah we identified the vehicle. We identified you know, the vehicle in the remains prior to notifying law enforcement. That way, you know where we're not unjustly you know, creating you know a lot of resources to be wasted. So whenever we do make those notifications to law enforcement, you know, we were pretty thorough with what we turn
over to them. And yeah, this vehicle it was identified to be her after the fact during the recovery, which Camping County Prosecutor's Office was absolutely thorough with their exhaustion of resources and the resources capability was just really top notch. I do this around the country, So when I say that, I can say that, you know, that means a lot.
When I say that, don't take it lightly, because there's a lot of there's a lot of this country that our law enforcement does not have the capability or the resources due to budgets and all of that type of stuff, or simply that's just an adequate whereas though since I've been here in Jersey has honestly been one of the most impressive experiences on the recoveries that I've done recently related to cold cases.
Well that's good to know because I live here.
Yeah, yeah, very thorough. The Medical Examiner's Office, the Prosecutor's Office, Camdeon PD, the Belmoir dive team was lights out. They were able to to get the job done. It it's not easy to do this type of stuff in water. You can't see there's because it's lights out, there's no eyes. You got to use your ten ten eyes in order
to see underwater. And when you factor in currents and also you know, doing something as serious as an underwater forensics recovery, uh, there's there's very little room for error. And the guys were just lights out with it. So when you.
Call police and in these cases, is there ever any like weirdness stepping on toast thing, you're you're working in my jurisdiction thing, or how is your work received?
Never? I never have a problem, you know, communication is key, respect is key. If I have twenty law enforcement representatives out there, a good majority of them are familiar with the work that I do. And also it's it's it's how you carry yourself, it's how you represent yourself. And you know, I just don't have that problem, thankfully. Knock on wood. There's never a lot of egos involved. Obviously
after the fact. You know, when you involve media and so forth, there you get a lot of the component of how come this guy did it? And you know, you know, the resources that we have, you know, tax payers dollars going towards didn't do it. You always get a lot of that. But what I do is specialize. There is no training in law enforcement for what it
is that I do. Like they falls back on that gray area that we identified, which is why we form the nonprofit and the technology that I'm utilizing today didn't exist when most of these people that we recover went missing. So there's a there's a lot of different factors into hey, why did this guy do it? And they didn't do it? Outside of that, you know, those pretty much never have a problem. It's always a pleasure to work with law
enforcement across the country. And it's surprising, you know how a lot of times just kind of like surreal that I'm even capable of doing these types of things. But it keeps happening and happening and happening, and even though we're sitting here discussing one of the cases that we've recently saw, still just doesn't seem real. It's some pretty extreme stuff. It's I mean, it's the kind of thing that like miracles are made of, and it's just really surreal.
I was thinking that, like this family, because I want to know what happened when you call them and what their reaction was. They must think that it's a miracle that you were able to do this for them.
Yeah, the family was absolutely amazing, just some of the most genuine, caring, down earth people that you could ever meet. And her children have lived the last fourteen years not knowing where their mother is, their grandmother is, And that's that's tough, you know, any family that loses their loved one mentioned earlier, you know, it kind of you you have to draw on the blanks. You have to what
if what happened, where are they? And then you have all the nasty scammers in these cases, and I deal with it in almost every cold case that I work with, where people which attack these families and their most vulnerable moments, knowing how desperate they are, and so you know, they they go down these rabbit holes of these leads and these people that are talking to them year after year after year, and it's torture. It's absolute torture. But you have to follow up on it as a family member
because you just want to find your loved one. You just want you'll do anything to find your loved one, whether it's travel three states away like they did, and you know all this other stuff that I really don't want to get into, but it's tragic what they have to go through, you know, year after year after year.
And then when you involve any other component as far as you know, anything going on in their life at the time that may be off just a little bit, then they become these extravagant conspiracies of what ifs, and this happened or that person did it because this doesn't add up now, because that doesn't add up, it's it's oh,
they did it. You know something's off here, And those are just natural those are the natural torture things that go on within families of lost ones that don't have answers because they don't know, and simply giving them the answers, I mean, you could see it just melts off of them. Everything that they've been carrying just instantly disappears instantly. And that's just something that I mean, you can't even put
that stuff into words. With this, like watching it just melt the way and all the worry go away, and that the shock of you know, grief finally being able to set in processing you know, now they know, you know, a lot of the situations that I get into, some of them are great, some of them are horrific. But even in those moments like they're they're still able to
process it, you know. And the family was very very grateful when I met with them, and uh, I don't know where, Like it's just I'm just at lost for words to try to even to describe what it is, even though I've done this whole lot. It's tough. It's it's it's tough stuff to try to describe because it's it's not natural to be able to. Yeah, just you're like healing somebody, you know, they're being healed by knowing now you know, all of the things like that they
described to me. Moving forward, now they can do without knowing, you know, you know, long I have to look over your shoulder wondering, ohways at them? Or am I going to see them? Or I wonder if they're coming back, or I wonder if this horrific thing happened, or you know, there's so many different variables to it.
Yeah, especially when an adult is missing with a car there, I guess there always is the possibility that they just kind of ran away and started a new life or something. And I can't even imagine what that's like. And then growing up as a child with your mother missing like that and feeling did they not want to did they not love me? Did they leave me? You know, you just don't have any And she she had a history of depression or something. Is that correct?
Yeah, she's she had some issues with with with depression. They tended those things tended to get inflated a little bit, like I was telling you about, the little thing become really big things, and you know, in an investigative standpoint and so forth, Yeah, it's it's natural for that to happen. You know, there were some factors that led people to believe you know that she left, she might have harmed herself, and so forth. A lot of times when we find the where, it makes the why a lot more clear.
In this scenario, I mean, I firmly believe that this is simply an accident along the corner of that road, late at night, it's very dark, zero zero obstructions to get in, and you know, there's obviously other vehicles in there too that went in at that same spot or nearby. It's just so easy to say, oh, you know, she did this or she did that. It's it's not a natural thing to do. You know, That's not a natural
way for a you know, a woman to go. Yeah, So I believe it was just an accident, just a really tragic accident.
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I'm just curious if it was like icy conditions or anything.
No, there were no icy conditions. It was really good weather in but it was at night when she went missing. Theoretically, there were neighbors that said that she left late at night, and it fit the Sun's timeline. The Sun had visited with her the night before prior, and she was fine, She was very loving. She had had a couple of drinks that evening. I believe there was a beer still sitting on the porch. So why she went out, we
don't know. We don't know why she went out, but I think it's just just simply an accident.
Yeah, I mean you can on that road back there. It's it is pitch dark back there, and it's the back of a shopping center, which isn't the greatest shopping center, so it's probably not well lit. And you could drive really fast on that road if you wanted to.
Oh yeah, And while we were sitting there, we were, you know, wondering, like, man, we're going to see it in right here because a big sweeping bin. Cars are racing back and forth, and you know, there's a lot of energy back there, like you were getting at and people, you know, up to no good people that are in and through there. They're cutting through from main Street to
main Street, so they're rushing to get through there. And then at night it's so dark, even when they're with me and you know, the FBI and other people out there that like it was pitch pitch black out there, and if it weren't for the lights on our dive unit, you know, yeah, it's really really creepy back there at night. For sure.
I've known you've done some other interviews before this even happened, just because you are an underwater recovery expert, and I know that you were recently on the news talking about the men who died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore when it collapsed. Can you explain what may have happened to the victims in that case on the bridge? Yeah, like they were they were working on the bridge, right, and some of them were possibly inside of their truck eating lunch or something.
Yeah, and then the initiative reports that we got and so forth, you know, coroborated that like they were having lunch. There were several of them that were in a vehicle or two and they were trapped, absolutely trapped. You know, whether or not it's you know, a bridge tragedy, an accident like we're discussing that Bernardine was in, or a simple roadside accident. It's key to have something that will prevent you from being trapped within your vehicle. I can
only imagine what that's like. I know, I've found a lot of people trapped that were trapped in their vehicle, and I can guarantee you each and every one of them wished they had something that could get out of the vehicle. So I'm very passionate about the the tool that we sell on our website, United search core dot org, The Window Breaker it's made in America. It's the most cost effective ten dollars you can spend in your entire life. Pretty much. It will save your life, it can help
save somebody else's life. It'll cut your seatbelt, it'll bust open your window, and it's priceless. It's absolutely priceless to have one of those on your keychain. And if you don't have it, it's going to take a miracle to get out of your vehicle. It's not easy. There's a lot of myths of using your head rest to get out. Your head rest is not going to break your window, your visor or some people have these fancy devices that they keep in their glovebox. Anything in your glovebox is
not going to be accessible in an emergency. The odds of you being able to reach your glove box when you're pined to your seat or so forth, or your car has flipped, or your car has gone underwater and you know there's pressure issues and all that, just those seconds of having that in your globbox is not going to help you. You need something that's accessible near your steering wheel and it's going to stay there within arm's reach, or it's not going to be of use in order
to save your life. Those moments are I'm sure, really really horrific moments for anybody who has, you know, gone through anything like that. I've been in a towing industry in my whole life, so I'm very familiar with really bad accidents and whether that's in water or on land. Simple car accidents kill people every single day, simply from smoke inhalation. A small accident that you would look at
and think, wow, somebody died in that accident. Well, yeah, their doors were pinned a little bit and they couldn't get out. Meanwhile, you know, smoke got into the cab and and you know they couldn't release the smoke because the windows don't go down, so you need something to break the window. There's so many different factors of why it's important to have that particular tool, Like I was on Fox discussing, it's important it'll save your life or
to save somebody else's life. Whether it's a hot day like you were talking about it today it was a hot day at the zoo. If you were to come in the.
Parking ride, my brain completely.
And if if you're in a park a lot and there's a child or an animal trapped in a car and you can seriously see that something like this, they need to be rescued. If you have that on your keychain, you can easily pop somebody's window. And I'm not advocating for this, but absolutely do it. You know you can. You can save a pet, a child. It happens all the time, all the time. Every single day, somebody loses their life because they do not have one of those devices.
And it's ten bucks ten dollars. Is I mean we can even buy anything anymore for ten dollars, let.
Alone, you can make a coffee.
Yeah, yeah, it's tough. In any of those that we sell, all one percent of the proceeds go to helping families advocating for them searching. Every little bit of it goes to what it is that we do at United Search School.
Do you think the guys on the Francis Scott key Bridge if they had a similar type of tool? And because this is how I look at it, and this is why I'm glad that I heard that interview with you, because I don't I don't really think about that. I drive in the car all the time with my kids and stuff, but I don't. I'm like a regular person.
I don't really think about that I'm ever going to fall into the water because I say, like, oh, I don't live down the shore, even though I do cross water all the time, I'm on the bridge whatever, so I don't. I don't really. I never really thought about what I would do if I was in the car with the kids. So what is this acronym that you have that helps people with that?
So it's swoc or it used to be sw COO. But the gist of it is when you have that tool, it's you cut your seatbelt. If you cannot catch your seatbelt off. A lot of times your seat belt will jam. You cannot get it off. Your seat belt will kill you in a lot of these car accidents. So having something that can slice through it seatbelts Number one. Window, You go for your window, whether your electronics still work,
put it down. If they don't work, which is really common, or it's the pressure won't allow it to go down. You can use it to bust the window open. After your window is open, your seatbelt window out. Children are first. That's the acronym as we stand right now, And this is developed by Gordon respect Out of Canada, who is a professional when it comes to being trapped in a
vehicle underwater. He has done the most extensive research when it comes to that, and that's what it is that we follow at the United Starch Corp. Which is seat belt first, then your window out. Children are first. Always children first, because once you get out, you're not getting back in that vehicle. So if you were to get out and your children are in there, your children are trapped, you have seconds to react. In some of these cases, your car does not float flaw depending on the current.
Every car is different, everybody of water is different temperature, there's so many different factors what a vehicle does when it enters water that it's just a second's count. So seatbelt, window out, children are first. That's the acronym everybody needs to remember when they're trapped in an accident of any kind, which is seatbelt, window children first.
Yeah, that's so good to know, because it's just I think that a lot of people every day that are just living their life and distracted by everything just aren't thinking about that kind of stuff. And then you know, a rescue as expert like yourself will always you would be fine in that situation. But like a regular person.
I can't even say that because seconds count, you know, seconds count. So if I'm not able to, you know, I will. You know, I can fall victim to anybody can't. But being aware of this and taking the appropriate measures to mitigate risks, such as having a little ten dollars tool, is key, you know, because like you said, you don't think you live near water, but you cross over it. I've had cars clear those little concrete barrier walls on the outside of bridges and nobody ever even know guard reels.
Accidents happen, cars go off road, the other person involved in the accident never stops because they're intoxicated or they're wanted or whatever factors. Reading they don't stay. Meanwhile, you know, nobody saw anything, you know, and there's no sign of any damage to a bridge or a guard reel. So it can happen. It can happen, absolutely to anybody in the biggest thing is it's not just water. It's not just water. The odds of you going into water and
losing your life are so small. You have way more odds of losing your life in a just a simple car accident on the roadway without even going into water. You know, so it's it's knowing about simply that tool. And I'm not here to just sell a tool. It's not about that. But it really is critical. It really
is critical. When you've seen as many when you've recovered as many bodies as I have out of vehicles, and you've done so in predicaments, you can tell that that person was trying to escape, they were trapped and literally a glass coffin sort of. I mean, it's important. It's important when you've cleaned up as many accidents as I have from from you know that are fatal that people should have lived in simply because they were trapped and died of smoke inhalation or fire. And it's important, it's
really really important. One of the most dangerous things anybody listened into this or watching us will ever do is get behind the wheel of a car. It's extremely deadly. You know, we're so comfortable in our cars. We love them, no matter how fancy or much of a beater it is. We're so comfortable. It's our car. You know, we're listening to music. We all have our own little vibe in our car, and it's our own little bubble. That bubble gets popped, really really quickly, and it always happens when
you least expect it. You know, death doesn't give notices until after the fact, you know, so there's no warning. So what are you supposed to do? You know, you're you got to just be aware and then also, you know, take the necessary steps to equip yourself to be prepared for an emergency. It's really the biggest thing that you can do.
Yeah, it's smart because I wait, you just got me when you were saying, oh, what are you going to grab something in your glove compartment? And I think, like I have napkins in there, some extra straws and like phone chargers, So there's just nothing that would be able to even caught a seat out for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of other devices out there that claim that they can, you know, save your life and this and that, and you know it, the one we sells made right here in America, and it's regular regularly rigorously rigorously tested with really really high end you know certifications. It's any other tool is going to be made, you know, not in America. They're not certified
like that. And it is really important that you have the appropriate tool and a lot of those other ones that don't even really work, and it works sometimes they cost so much and they're not going to save your life. Anything in a glob box is not going to save your life. You might as well put it in the trunk.
Really, I have it's true because you think you don't think about your car getting smushed up in the process too, Like it's not like you normally sit in your car.
Yeah, I put myself down and everything else. I put myself in a vehicle and flipped it up down with a forklift. And it was shocking how I was pinned to my seat by my seat belt. It was it was shocking to me, even though I knew I was being flipped over when I was upside down on my seat belt, the way I was pinned to my seat was Yeah, like I said, if it's not around your steering wheel and within arm's reach, and I'm not talking about leaning arms reach because you were pinned to your seat.
If it's not within arm's reach, say your visor or your you know, dash steering wheel area, you're not going to be able to access it.
In a lot of accidents, it's not going to be able to It's it's really well, I know what I'm buying.
When this interview is done, you're gonna be like, you need to send me one of those right away. So all right, So we obviously know about this case that we just talked about this week, have you This isn't the first one that you've that you've helped out with. So you've done this before and gave closure to families before in different situations.
Correct, Yeah, the dozens of times locally. We can talk about the other one that the Prosecutor's office just sort of unsealed yesterday, which was the case that I saw a couple of weeks ago in Richfield Park, New Jersey, right outside of Jersey City, West, New York. Charles Stanton Murphy vanished forty two years ago, And oh wow, Yeah, I found his vehicle just a couple of blocks from where he was last seen forty two years yep.
Yeah, that's so mind blowing that you know, you're you're looking for your family member all this time and they've been especially this morning, Camden, like, these people have probably driven by that area of the river for years, hundreds of times just to think she's right there.
Wow, I like your word for word what was said to me with family and friends. It's just beyond disbelief. And it's typical once we make a discuss because you start like wow, like how many times have I been here? You know, you know, I've even fished here and so forth, Like it's it's pretty mind blowing once you realize, wow, really all of this time, like right here obviously, you know we're talking about areas not a lot of people
want to be in. Most of these waterways. We make discoveries and you know they're they're not really swam in, they're really you know, some of them are murky and his. Yeah, you just would never think what's below the surface of a lot of waters in America but out of side, out of mind type of thing. What's below the surface you just don't know. And if it was pretty water, everything would be found already. So a lot of it has to do with you know, just yeah.
So those other cars, So you said you found a totalist six cars, So those other ones are still under there and nobody has any idea what's why are they're there? Like, what's happening with that?
Well, I'm I dove on all of the vehicles.
It's not accessible.
I dove on all of the vehicles, I assess them. We turn that data over to the prosecutor's office. They are handling it. They do have a really good plan in place to take care of that. I can't discuss that information just because it's still being investigated within the prosecutor's office, but they're taking the appropriate measures necessary to make it happen, though, I can tell you that they took it very serious.
That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here today. It was really great to talk to you. And I'm sure everyone that's listening now is just happy to have this information in case they're currently going through a situation like this, or god forbid they're ever in a situation
like this. It's just good to know that there's someone out there advocating for you, because, I mean, the police are busy too, right, so once yea, once they're done working with your case and they're dead with leads, it's kind of like they need to move on to the next case too. So yeah, justify, Thanks so much for being here.
Yeah, you're welcome, You're welcome. Thank you for having me, and uh, you know, just to reiterate on that, you know, the justification they have to justify their user resources. Every department does in order to best serve the public interests, and a lot of people don't really understand that particular dynamic. So it's really nice for you know, our organization, we can come in and help families and if we have the resources in order to do searches, we don't have
to justify it at all. We can come in and we can do what we do to help families. And if anybody's listening to this they have a case, they can reach out to us at info at United Search Corps dot org.
And is do you have I mean, I know that you don't want the families to pay anything. Is there some kind of donation process there as well?
Yes, so we yeah, we don't charge families. And on our website, United searchcore dot org, we have a donation link. You can go to the donation tab in the menu section, click on donate and that's exactly how we operate. One hundred percent of everything we do is strictly on donations. And it's the one dollar, it's the five dollars, it's every donation counts. Because it's extremely daunting the expenses of
the logistics behind these type of searches. It's it's pretty daunting and we don't you know, we don't have government funding, not yet at least, so you know, if donations are absolutely critical to get for us helping families. It doesn't happen without it, so please consider it.
That's that's so great, awesome, thanks so much again, thank you for listening to Mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologists assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
subjects at the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks