Short: The Casie Nicole

joined as always by Steve and Devin and Um. As some of you know, we've had an intern for a little while, UM, and we are really confident in his abilities as a podcaster at this point, so we decided to invite him to this like very short round table and UM, hopefully it'll work out and we'll see where it goes from here. So do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Justin. How are you doing tonight? St Devon Joe doing quiet? Well, you know, it's like he hasn't before. Yeah,

he's met us before. He's our intern. Yeah, So welcome to Justin. Yeah, so, um, welcome to this round table, Joe. It's your episode. Okay, well, yeah, let's let's talk about this. This is one that's been bouncing around the internet for a while. Um, Curtsey Unsolved Mysteries. Yeah, yeah, Unsolved Mysteries. The TV show did do an episode on this one. Uh, it's the crew of the Casey Nicole. What happened to them?

So our story begins April eleventh, nineteen, or maybe April tence, or maybe April twelve, because I've seen all three dates in different accounts, and I decided to go with April eleventh because the date makes the most sense when you add up the days of the whole year us again. Yeah, I know, I know to four, I can do that. Yeah. So four men boarded the Casey Nicole, which was a

thirty four foot fishing boat. The four where Nathan and Nie Smith, brother, Billy Joe, Ni Smith, his nephew, Keith Wilkes, and Franklin Brantley a k A. Frank, who the Nie Smiths had known for a long time. All then lived in Dairy and Georgia. How old were these guys? Uh? See Nathan thirty two, Billy Joe twenty three, Keith eighteen, and Frank twenty three. So they most of them had been on the sea for a number of years. Yeah, except for Keith. I don't think Keith had spent a

whole lot of time, you know. Yeah, But what they were doing is they were going to go out for a seven day fishing trip. And I assumed this was professional, not not just for pleasure. Abought the same time at a thirty four ft boat. I'm not sure how many fish you can hold on something like that. Uh. Five days later, April sixteenth nine, Nathan n Smith was found floating in a large wooden box about twenty miles east of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The others were missing.

The coast Guard kicked off a massive air and sea search with help from local private boat owners and commercial fishermen. Casey Nicole was found that night I six, about forty five miles off the coast. But all they founded the other three men was a life vest in a sleeping bag about five miles from where Nathan was rescued. Two days later, the search was called off and Billy, Joe, Keith, and Frank have have never been seen since. Alright, So, so justin you did just about all the research on

this one, and the cars. This is your maiden podcast voyage here. Uh so I I've we've been thinking that maybe you should present this mystery. You cool, thought you're ready? Yeah, so all right, going back to the beginning, Um the Casey Nickel left Darien at zero dark thirty on the eleven, almost twenty four hours later. Something went wrong with this boat. According to news reports at the time, it could have capsized.

Some Internet sources say it was taking on water. Between the news and the internet, I'm not sure which one we we can trust here. Flip a coin, it doesn't really matter. But it's a thirty or four footboat, so capsizing a bit unlikely, doesn't you know. Yeah, although it seems like it maybe did. I don't know how the hell that happened. Well, if it took on water, it could have capsized. So maybe they were about sixty five

miles off shore. And Nathan said that he got up around three thirty four am in the morning, started the engine and started driving to somewhere to go fishing. And they that's the thing, right, like, when you go fishing, out said, you just go out early, Right, it's not unusual that somebody would be awake at that time. I don't think so that's that's kind of standard, Okay. I just want to make sure they're like surfers not suspicious

that he was awake at that time. Okay, he noticed the boat was heavy with maneuvering and it wasn't going over the waves. It was kind of plowing through them because it was just not maneuvering as well. That's not great, not when you're sixty out. Yeah. He woke up his brother, Billy Joe, and told him to wake up the others. So Billy Joe went to the bow of the boat where Franklin and Keith were sleeping, and and noticed that there was a foot of water in the cabin and

between the bunks. It's really good. Well, that would explain why it was plowing through the waves instead of going over them. It's not so buoyant anymore. Time at this point to turn on the billage pumps. Yeah, so they turned those on and they don't appear to be working. So they recently the boat had been pulled out of the water for maintenance, some repairs. Maybe those repairs were done by a family member charging I don't know, Uh,

somebody forgot to reconnect the billage pumps. Maybe always plug it back in. Yeah, So they go into panic mode. They start calling out may Day's because well, well, yeah, on the radio or just like yelling. Well, I don't think the radios under water. Okay, so on the radio, got it. This isn't Jaws, you know, they bust the radio. The brothers, Nathan, Keith and Frank, they're they're doing a bucket line trying to get that water out. Billy is not getting any response on the radio. Maybe the radio

wasn't working. Maybe they're too far out and just just nobody around in the warning, so maybe nobody was awake. It's possible. And uh, the engine quits, possibly because it's taken on water and it's flooded. So now they're losing the battle and they go to Plan B, which is their life raft, and the life raft sucks. Yeah, that's what I would say. The life raft is there to save your life, but doesn't seem to be the case. We've talked about this on the show before. My extensive

experience on cruise ships. Um, you know, life draft is like your very last chance, right, I mean, you don't want to do that. And then this one it sounds like was subpar. Yeah, maybe not in the best condition and it only sat to not four. Yeah that's you know, that's like Titanic with well, yeah, it's like the water. It's like you know when you go to the sporting good store and they say they advertise a two man raft and it's big enough for one man, and a

four man is big enough for two. Yeah, I'm sara. They bought this in good faith, thinking, hey it says four man raft. But they're yeah, they're a or like tense, right. Yeah, you get like sleep six people and you're like, I can fit three in here exactly. By two they go to the raft and two of them are in the boat. The other two are kind of hanging on, sitting on the on the rim where. Yeah, but they all got

their desks on. So the sun's coming up now because they've been battling this whole deal and getting darkness, yeah yeah, and uh so now they think, well things are getting better. We're you know, we're going to get to discovered because suns out. But their raft is leaking. Luckily, a hatch cover is drifting by, so they grab it and tie it to the raft, trying to give it extra floatation.

Now that the sun is out, they could see the casey nickel and it hasn't completely sunk, you know, And that's kind of like, what was the other boat thing you guys did where it was like the unsinkable boat. Oh yeah, yeah, it doesn't doesn't sink all the way. It's just sort of submerged. Look creepy. Well, particularly if it did capsize and we don't know, you know there's an air pocket in there. Yeah, definite capsize. That'll help keep it afloat a little bit. Absolutely, I mean part

of it. Obviously. You don't want to be on the deck when it capsizes, but you can maybe climb back on because it will still float. Yeah, they see the capsize half sunken boat off in the distance now open water. Can you tell how far away it is? I don't know. It's it's in accounts of this, it seems to me it seems like some say close by, some say three four miles away. Can you see it if it's three or four miles away? I don't know. I think so, I don't know. I think you have an idea that

it's there. You can see something, but you may not have it exactly. Yeah. That also, it seems like a long way to drift. It really does. Doesn't mean unless the current is really strong, well, unless or if there's a lot of wind. Yeah, I guess maybe if like the tide is going in or out pretty heavily. Well, I think tide effects both obtuslys equally. But if there's a lot of wind, then obviously the life raft is as a higher profile, it's going to be affected a

lot more by the one. You have you seen any of you've seen pictures of the life raft? Do you know what kind of life raft it was? Now, I've seen pictures in the web, but I'm not sure if they're not just screen caps from the v N Solved Mysteries episode, I don't know. I don't think they are. I think they are too, yeah, because you know, there are those life rafts that they have on like bigger ships that are contained in those capsules which you might have on a smaller ship as well, that have the

covering on top of them. They look like big pyramids, right, versus the ones that are just like little dinghies. I don't think that on this fishing boat that's what they were they were springing for. If they were just out of repairs, well, I don't think they're like that much more expensive. You're making a face that makes me think they are Okay, I take it back. Okay, So okay, you're right. Yeah, are somebody's right now? Somebody who's Well, here's what Nathan said. It looks like it maybe it

was maybe three or four miles from us. I said, I don't know what kind of chance we got, but at least maybe one of us can make it to the boat and get some kind of help. Well that's what I've struck out to do. I'm not really sure what kind of sense that makes, but I have a question here. Wait, so he swam. Yeah. Did they not have oars in their life raft? No? You That's why I'm saying. It was this like inflatable thing. These little

life rafts. They come in this like little pod. They're not that big there, you know, maybe like a two ft three ft wide when you just pull a thing and they just inflate out. They don't have oars and stuff in them. They have like emergency rations and like

a little water and of like light. But that's I mean, that's what I imagined was on this ship with something inflatable, likely out of a pod, not something that's like an old like from Titanic, right with the with the wooden oars and yeah, No, I don't think it's like that. They don't have oars usually on on things like that, because if you have oars, it's like a lot of rooms.

That I'm wondering this is that if if something popped up next to the life raft and they're they're tying it to the boat to get extra flotation, it seems like there would be other flotsam that they could have grabbed and used to paddle. It was flots what about jetsam? Yeah, like no, I mean, yeah, maybe, but maybe not. I mean, if they were actually three or four miles away from the wreckage, there wouldn't talk. Probably. I I just don't get it, you know, I mean, I really don't get it.

Some of these sub parts of this story don't make a lot of sense to me. And in the same boat as Joe no pun intended, I'm asking this question pun pun intended. I think it's because they're on a rubber life raft and not a wooden one. So once this thing deflates or takes on water, they're in the water. So go to something that's somewhat floating as opposed to absolutely. Yeah, and yeah, and if you can climb up on the

whole of this boat. You know, then that's a better place to be than immersed in the ocean, right, And and you kind of think the ship might I guess probably there's some thought process of the ship might be salvageable parts of it at least, you know. But but to your guys point, they don't know how far away this thing is. They can't tell. I mean, it's like when you're walking down the strip in Vegas, that casino looks really close and then by time you get there,

you're dead. Exactly. That happens to me all the time. So Nathan sets out and claims that he spent many hours, like seven swimming to know he didn't time. Sorry, I mean I believe he claimed that he did, but I don't believe. I mean, it was probably like thirty minutes. He probably probably took some breaks. I think he was wearing a PFD. And when you d yeah, lifevest okay, Yeah, And have you have a flotation device? Have you ever tried swimming in a in a PFD? Yeah? Backstroke, Yeah,

that's one way to do. They teach you a special stroke. Actually, how did you like this? Yeah? Okay, she's doing things with her hands. Yeah, you know what is. It's like that you lay on your back and then you kind of like because you don't exert very much energy, and you like kind of kick with your feet and then like, I don't know, I don't even know how to describe this motion. It's kind of a who it dance with

your arms. It exerts like almost no energy. And since you're laying on your back, your heads above the water and you get to go, I'm laboring a point. I'm sorry. So, yeah, you're probably right that's what he did. He probably didn't do that. He probably was trying to like swear stroke or something. And I'm sure he took lots of breaks. Yeah, right, an hour seems excessive though, doesn't it. It really does.

We can check his time clock. But yeah, he says that it took him seven hours, But when you're doing something crazy like that might take longer, something stressful like that. He said when he arrived it was just before dark, so it depends on when he set out. That could have been seven normal. But again this is from him, right, Well, no, I mean, why would he lie about that? Well, there's

you know, who knows. So he spends the night, he makes it and he spends the night on the Casey, so he climbs up onto the hall and just spends his spend, drapes himself over it, and spends the night clinging to the hall. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a comfortable sleep Leonardo's style. Yeah, that's when things get a little strange though. Uh. He's hanging on and he sees

a freighter. This is next morning. Yeah, yeah, So he hangs on all night and the next morning he sees a freighter coming by, and it stops three or four times and circles around, and that kind of looks like it might be picking up people in my mind. So, you know, in the vicinity of where he expects the life raft to be exactly that's where he swam from. Where But you know, did the currents take them away? I mean, already this is his own best judgment. He says.

It looks like it made four stops, maybe five, and each time it would stop in circle, and it was in the direction where my mates were, So I figured that maybe it had stopped to pick them up. This one on for three hours and then the freighter sailed off. That seems excessive. You've been on a cruise ship. Right, Yeah, how long does it take to talk that stupid thing? Fifteen minutes? No, no, no, I was on a ship for a long time. It's like fifteen minutes. It's now

think that cruise ship had to circle before. You know. The thing is is ships are much faster than people think they are. They can be. I mean they can be. You're right, And I guess like, if you've got something delicate in the water, you're going to be careful around it. Right. If you've got these people who are kind of floating, you're probably not going to circle them as fast as you possibly can. Yeah, probably not going to do that because you might suck them into your engines, your dolphins.

But you know, maybe what they were actually doing is they weren't rescuing them. Maybe they were actually just statistic and theories. Okay, I'm sorry, they're just trying to suck them into their screws. No, we got to wait for theories. Right. So a large box floated by Nathan and it popped up to the surface, and he thought it was the bait box. We're thinking it's a bait box, like a wooden box, right, Yeah, So other people say it's an engine cover, yeah, you know what it news. He climbed

onto it and this was his new home. This is his life now. Half in the next few days, So a few days, I mean then a few days without food and water and no sunscreen. He's hurting, So I have a question. Actually, So he climbed off of this hole which was still flow. It wasn't thinking still right, it was. It was in its kind of final resting state. It wasn't going, It wasn't going anywhere. So he must have assumed that the box would give him a better

chance of getting to land. You know that people have I'm thinking the Jaws in scene when they can kind of kick and swim with the little flotation thing as opposed to just sitting on Even though he had a flotation device on him, he needed more um one word, sharks was a small bay box going to do more than a flotation. So a wooden box that you're sitting inside of, Okay, okay, I can conceptualize that. Sure, that's what you know. It sounds really uncomfortable to be in

a in this box. And that was a sizeable box, I mean three or four feet long at least, right, But it's got to be more comfortable than clinging to an overturned boat the whole. It's got to be a more comfortable ride. Still, it's regrettable they didn't happen to have like a you know, see, like a a like a line from the boat that he could have tied the box off too, so he wouldn't be separated from

the boat. That would have been nice. Yeah. I just assumed that it was something that he could kind of paddle in and move more maneuverable than the whole of a sunken chip, or easily sit in and take a nap. Yeah, okay, all right, I'm on board. So his ordeal continued and tell Monday until nine am, and he was spotted by a passing boat. He was in really bad shape, dehydrated, sunburnt, and I'm sure you know if you'd taken on any

sea water that makes you a little crazy. Yeah, probably some hypothermia in there too, rag, Yeah, this is seawater. So he went to the hospital and you stayed there for several days. He reported hearing voices while drifting at sea that kept him alive because they were encouraging him. Yeah exactly, I mean, what else are you gonna do? Yeah, Yeah. As for Billy, Joe, Keith, and Frank, they he assumed they were picked up by the freighter, but they disappeared

and he hadn't heard from them. Were never seen again, Yeah, not reported that they were. They were rescued, So that's kind of strange. That's uh, these guys were picked up by a freighter but then never seen again. That's a little weird. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing out, but it turns out that there's more to the story. Justin thanks for your presentation. You did awesome, no problem. Well you're pretty good in gold Stars. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah to star

Yell review. Yeah. So Nathan is back and dry land and there's here's where things get a little hinky. Months after the accident, the Nathan's sister, a Nita, got a phone call from a person speaking Spanish. She couldn't understand anything that he said other than her name and her phone number. Everything else was unintelligible. Here's a quote from her. All this person would keep saying was repeating her phone number and saying our name, and that's all. And you know,

we just kept saying hello, hello, and it just cut off. Unquote. That's from Unsolved mysteries. Uh, and around reliable of course, yes, Steve's favorite thing. Roughly around the same time, the owner of the casey n Cole, whose name was Doug Tyson, got a similar call. And this is something I was trying to find out by the way I was. I was just curious if they had actually towed the casey to cold the sword to shore and salvaged it. And uh, I did a little I did a little side research.

I never got that. I never saw anything that said that they did, But they must have. You don't just leave stuff like that laying out in the ocean where it could be a navigation hazard. Um, well, the Coastguard would go out and scuttle it. They could. They could maybe have scuttled it. I wasn't really sure, so I h that's a low priority for him, probably, I yeah. I called actually called the local Coastguard station and asked them,

and they didn't respond. Well. Yeah, I talked to this ends and he said, well, I can't really tell you. What I'll do is I'll pass it up the chain of commands. And it never called back. And then I called back a couple of weeks later, and I talked to a petty officer who told me that all their logs from that far back would have been sent to the National Archives and really familiar. Yeah, and and of course that was twenty one excuse me, not twenty six

years ago, so nobody around they would remember it. So you know, I'm at luck. Called called a reporter to local paper and she didn't know about it either. So did you google street view? Yeah? Street you for the middle of the ocean? Yeah? I did. Yeah, where we get yeah? Yeah? Okay, back to the owner of the casey to call. Uh So he got a similar phone call from a man speaking Spanish, and again the only thing that Tyson could understand was his own name and

his phone number being spoken to him. It wasn't until about six weeks later that they put two and two together. Doug Tyson was visiting the niece Smiths and Anita mentioned that she's gotten a strange phone call from a guy in Spanish speaking Spanish, and that's when Doug and his wife remembered his strange phone call magically remembered. Yeah. Well, the calls went on. Doug Tyson got two more similar calls,

and Anita got three more. In nineteen uh on March six, Anita received a call in which a man spook one sentences in English quote, I am bringing them home unquote, and that was he did have accented language, by the way, the Spanish accent. That was last phone call. Where'd you find that? I found it at? Uh? Uh? Several different places actually, uh and and there were there was actually

a bit of difference, as always between them. I did find him and I want it was I can't remember the name of the website, but it was a forum and it was hilarious. What one of these one of these guys said, which is after hearing about the phone calls, he says, well, why didn't they learn Spanish? Are you kidding me? Yeah? Why didn't? Yeah? Yeah, you get a

phone call to you from somebody speaking Spanish. Well, I gotta go and roll with local community college and start learning Spanish because I'm going to totally remember what I heard in a language I don't know. Well, now you should learn Spanish because the guy might call back. He might Yeah, yeah, there's Rosetta Stone. Yeah. As Rosetta said, I think that the better thing to do is to put just get a tape recorder and tape record and if the guy calls, tape record the calls and then

go find somebody to speak Spanish, that would make more sense. Sense, Yeah, and learn how to say in Spanish, tell me more and then that's it. That's all you need to know. So what do you guys think of these phone calls? Do you think these were valid or a con artist or prank's or even existed? Do you guys think you know, Actually, I believe that that the calls happened, um, but personally

it's possible that they didn't happen. But I mean, prank calls happened, wrong numbers happened, It could have been all misunderstanding. They could have had nothing to do with the disappearance of the crew of the case in the coal. It seemed they were all a little connected though since they it is, I mean, that's what we talked about this a lot, right with the like that's a lot of coincidences. It would be a coincidence, it's true. So I mean,

I don't know. I I guess I don't put a lot of stock into them, especially since the only real way that we know about them is online forums. That that is a big issue, big issue for me. But I do. I think they're interesting. That's probably the most intriguing part of the whole mystery. Well, it does appear though from the unsolved mysteries saying that that the family did, or at least they say they received these calls. Let me let me try and run with it this way.

Then somebody calls who English is not their first language. So let's say they get the number out of a phone book for unrelated reasons, so they are able to repeat the phone number that they have just dialed in English, and because they're reading it, they can say the name in a very but it's obviously accented. They could be saying, is this you know the the what is the time and the date? What is the time and the date?

Because you know there's that there used to be that phone number that you call and it would say the time and the date is But I'm I'm making a very blatantly stupid point about out the fact that they could have been asking something very generic and innocuous, but only had bits that these people who didn't understand a relatively thick accent were only able to make out. But again,

small bits of information cipher. I mean, it's a huge coincidence right that the people whose family disappeared in this boating accident happened to be the phone number that this person who didn't really speak English called. Okay, what town did what town? Did this thing? Launch? And Georgia not

like exactly a large town. But it's entirely possible that a dozen other people got several phone calls a very similar nature but didn't report it because like somebody can it could have been that's possible, could be somebody to call it up and saying, hey, would you like your gutters cleaned? It's certainly possible. But I also do think that it is it's hard to just write off as

it was the wrong number. I'm not in disagreement, but I'm not willing to give it that much stock just knowing that it's it's it's it's really hard to say, because if they were calling them, they're they're calling them to either you know, extort money from them, say we

want money for the return of your loved ones. But in that case, why would they stop calling because because they died, well, because they died, or because well they realized and they must have realized at some point that there was a language barrier there, you know, and so I need to find myself somebody who can speak English to present our extortion demands. And they never really got around doing that. So maybe they got bored with the

whole project and they decided to just kill them. I also don't have the sense that that family had a whole lot of money. Now, you know, It's not like you could be like, well, they're millionaires. Actually I tracked down Nathan on on Facebook and on the interwebs, and he is he is living uh, you know, he's not living high on the hog. Let's just say that. Well, here's my other question, though, regardless of their status in financial Okay, if if six weeks later he says, hey,

so it's weird I got this phone call? Why and weird? That's weird I got the same phone call. Or hey, let's call the phone company and see if they can tell me where the phone call came from. Did that ever happen? Now? Okay, if you're missing a family member and you're thinking this is connected, you might follow it up. Yeah,

but on the same token, why didn't they call back? Well, does the Nigerian email scammer keep you know, responding to you know, so if it was a if the if the phone call was real and it was a con man, then maybe they just abandoned the con could Yeah like our intern more. Yeah, our interns pretty smart. Yeah, it's like he has experienced with this or whatever. Well, okay, there's a whole mystery in a nutshell. Does anybody have any theory? Of course? Okay, of course all we all

have theories. Are now we all have pets really ready to talk about hit sounds like first, Yeah, I really really like my theory. All right, I don't believe these guys were possibly doing well. The theory is, this is the one I really like, is that they weren't doing what they said they were doing, which was fishing. Instead they were running. If you're out in the middle of the ocean and you've left a port and then you go back home, nobody checked your boat. It's like we

we didn't catch anything because we didn't have any bait. Whoop. See sorry, we've been out here for seven days. But old happens to be filled with cocaine. That episode of Futuruma where they're out international waters and Vender goes, guess what you guys are accessories to? Yeah, exactly. So it's very possible that these guys were running some kind of drug scam and when the when the whole thing went to tear rs, their connection drove up and said, oh, hey,

you're sinking. Uh yeah, it turns out cocaine sinks too, so I gotta go and takes off Like it wasn't any kind of thing that was nefarious. It was just that, like this whole accident actually happens. This happens. But of course their friends show their quote unquote drug friends. It's always your drugs. The drug friends take the other three guys. Um it must I don't know, I mean it could.

It could be that the drug deal win South. So let's say, you know, let's say the eighteen year old kid freaks out and shots are fired or knives are throne, because that's what happens to see, knives are throne, and so somebody, you know, so this happens. Cutlasses are drawn and and somebody's quartered and don't look at me like this. This stuff happens on the ocean, according to Bobie Dick.

But of course, my point is is that either a drug deal win South is this theory, or they started what was the story of we're taking on water, the boat is having problems, it's real, was actually happening, but the boat that could have saved them when uh yeah, no, dude, later, I don't, I don't. I totally believe that people run drugs on boats. So yeah, if this was in the Gulf of Mexico or Baja California, I'm down with that. But over on the Atlantic side, that's a long way down.

I was gonna say, have you been to Miami. Yeah, but that's a good point though, because the drugs are coming from like Columbia and two points north, And it's my only problem with George is not that far north. But I mean it's far enough north that it would be not suspicious. I mean, like the ports in Miami,

like even little fishing boats, they're searched. The customs are because it is Miami, right, because there are so many drugs coming through there, they are way more vigilant than if somebody in like backwaters Georgia go out on a fishing trip and then comes back. They're not They're definitely not going to search that right the long way down

the coast like pretty far. You're right, Yeah, you know, I could I could sort of see a scenario where like that, there's like a small parader that's headed from say Columbia to New York, you know, and they just rendezvous with these this crew of people you know, out in the middle of the ocean on their way and transfer a cargo. Well, now, if you flip the direction that they're going north, I can buy the drug running.

But if they were going south to Miami, I don't really buy it because then they're going to get searched to Miami. Yeah. Yeah, but that's that's kind of what I was thinking about. You know, this is popular on the web, but this particular theory is but you know,

there's of course no evidence. And the other thing about it is if the drug dealing went south, then you would think there'd be some would have been some bullet holes in the case, you would think that I willed But if what if the Cassie Nicole had nothing to do with the drugs. It was the freighter that picked them up and then realized, hoops, we picked some people up and they saw some drugs and we've been like

smuggling drugs, so we have to kill them now. Of course they saw the drugs because they haven't read out the deck. Yeah, bags and bags of cocaine, right, the right. So that's that explains the disappearance on all these people, but also explains the sighting of the freighter exactly right, Yeah,

I mean, yeah, and yeah. The problem with this one of the courses is why why would you even pick people up unless you'd like the idea of rescuing them and watching the expressions on their faces, it's telling you they're about to be horribly murdered. That seems silly. Yeah, okay, yeah, it's speaking of speaking of horrible people. I was thinking about.

I have a theory that Billy, Joe, Keith, and Frank were rescued by a freighter, but the crew of the freighter took them off somewhere and sold them into slavery. So they didn't kill them because they saw the drugs they were slavers. Yeah, they just thought, well, they were necessarily slavers. But maybe they're from a part of the world. They're parts of the world where slavery is still a thing, a lot of parts of the world where white slavery

particularly is a thing. Yeah, and so they might have just thought it how old and how old were they they were young? Yeah, yeah, they were young. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, that's that's that's a key to manual labor. That's so funny. Actually, when you say like slavery, you think strong backs. I think like sexual slavery. That that's all I think about too. Therefore, sex slaves and therefore males are pretty useless, especially well, I don't know, that's not necessarily true. That's not that's

like not even close to true. Males young attractive male sex slaves, and I've seen pictures and they're not like the worst looking guys. There are parts of the world where that's like high demands. Okay, I'm on board with the slavery thing, so they probably work. I'm not pro

slavery the theory. Yeah, yeah. This is the only problem with this is that, you know, if they've been dragged aboard the boat, you know and everything, you would think that they would have said, hey, our friend Nathan is right over there, it's four miles away, can we go get them. They didn't do that unless it was very apparent what was happening to them. Yeah, they would have had to immediately say, hey, good to me, Sure we're gonna take you off. To a slave market, um and

and sell you into slavery. And then then they would think better just keep quiet about Nathan, because if they heard about Nathan, they'd been thinking, hey, cool, another slave. They might not even known their demise. They might have just been held at gunpoint and being treated aggressively. Or they don't bring up Yeah they don't. They don't talk

about Nathan. But that is the thing. That's one of the things that is mysterious about this whole thing is that if a freighter came by, and if a freder picked up those three, why didn't the freighter come for Nathan. I don't believe the freighter was there to pick them up. I think the freighter could have been a research ship or just something totally unrelated and you know, watching the dolphins or you know, whale tour and just half off on group on, and Nathan just had no idea. He

just whom it was picking up his friends. Yeah, that's you know. I had a similar thought, which is that it was more than one freighter. Oh yeah, I was just gonna say that's it is. It's true that that's a suspicious number of like circles for the freighter to I mean, if they're all three in the same location, you just make the one stop. And and the other thing is if they if they have been separated, then what I would think that you would launch your tender and send a tender to go pick them up and

bring them back. You have to be in a certain depth of water tender. And actually there are a lot of um again, cruise ships. Sorry, but the cruise ships don't carry their tenders. They don't know they're where they're in the port, so they go from port to ship to ports. So the only ship they would have to launch would be their life rafts, and you obviously don't do that because there's no way to get those back on board. So but it does seem like a lot

of trips. I mean, you know, five or six circles to make to pick up three guys who are presumably in about the same place. That seems like a lot. That does seem like a lot. But yeah, that's why I was thinking that perhaps you know, Nathan was he was he'd been to a lot and he was exhausted after a swim. He's already I'm sure got dehydration, hypothermia.

So he and he spent a pretty much sleepless night on the on the on the boat, and so he might have just been drifting in and out, you know, so he wakes up, he's a fraider, wakes up, he's another freighter, and that's several miles away, and they're gonna look ill kind of like and I kind of like, you know, a lot like yeah, a lot of like, so, oh, here's a freighter, here's a freighter. So you know that it might have just been several freighters. He wouldn't even

really have to be drifting in and out. I mean, it could just be that it was just far enough on the horizon that you know, he thought it was circling. Yeah, so it's going out of you and back into view. But it was really just like new Ones every time. Right. It's also entirely possible that he's just hallucinating the whole thing. I mean, we know that he was sunburned to hydrated,

and God helped me. If he made the stupid choice of deciding to drink a little sea water headed hard that it's very hard to resist, I understand, but it crazy things to your brain. That is an instant recipe for hallucinations. So he could have just been thinking about his friends and to sigh and and in his little, you know, sun baked brain saw ships in the distance because ships are what you're hoping for. Ye, that's true. There is one more idea I came up with for Nathan.

It's sort of my specialty in its murder murder foul it. Maybe maybe he murdered everybody. I'm not saying he did, just saying that maybe somebody borrowed his fishing lure didn't give it back. Maybe the drug deal went down wrong. I don't think he would have killed his brother and everybody. But when you cover murder, you see people do the most weird things and things that you would ever expect.

So is it that he murdered them all or things went south and that you know, through the commission of the murder the boat suffered damage and then well, I guess for me, the murder idea does help to explain these phone calls to right that it may not be that the phone calls were actually placed, but that people close to Nathan had motivation to say that the phone calls were made because they were trying to cover for him.

I think that if I were in Nathan's position, I would just want to let the matter die rather than keep it alive. But uh yeah, that the problem I have with the murder theory, and there's people who's who've mentioned that, is that it's easy enough to imagine killing people and throwing their bodies overboard, But then how does he capsize the thirty four foot vote? How do you go about doing that? Or why would he because that's his ticket home. Yeah, that's true, that's exactly true too. Yeah,

but he could have very easily reversed billage pump. Let's say, let's say he could have throws him overboard. He's like, I gotta I gotta scuttle this boat. They have se cos you know too. Yeah, next question, Sorry not to interrupt the next question. Why not just say the boat capsized and sunk, and here I am safe on this

happy little vessel that is rubber, right. I mean, like maybe maybe the raft was bad, which would drive him back to the boat, right, Yeah, But the raft would have to actually be bad then, well, yeah, that's the whole thing, wouldn't everybody he says, Nathan says that everybody on the raft the other threek, We're all no, no, Nathan, don't leave us. We gotta stay together. But and he was like, no, I'm going to go get help. But

we don't really know what happened. I mean, he might have said, screw all, y'all, the rats got a leak. I'm leaving. I'm at it. You're based on truth. Yeah, so he could have maybe not a outright murder, but a neglect or abandonment. Yea. Well, and I mean Nathan's favor, you know. I mean the other people also had the option of leaving the leaky raft and going back to the to the hull of the Casey Nicole. Yeah, they

did if it was big enough. Rows. It's hard to decide. Yeah, I mean, maybe there's a big battle and they were all, like you, clawing each other's eyes out. I don't know. I hate and I hate. I shouldn't even say stuff like that because I'm sure it's not true. Yeah, I'm sure Nathan didn't do anything like that, but maybe he did. Our intern seems to think so. Yeah. I think the whole murder thing or whatever thing that you know, probably it's just the internet. Yeah, I mean I think it's bunk.

I think nothing against you justin our intern, But you've been doing this for a less time than we have, so I can understand how you would get, you know, kind of wrapped up in this, uh you know, kind of Internet conspiracy theory stuff. So I I but I really appreciate you bringing it to the table. It's it's good. It's it's good. Don't worry a kid, you're learning. Well. This concludes our investigation. As always, we solved the hell

out of it. Um. So anyway, UM, if you want to, if you want to learn more, go to our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com where you can listen to episodes. We'll have links out there for you guys do to go to, and you can, of course the complimentary comments. We have a bot that filters out nasty comments. Um. And that's about it, you guys. Last thoughts. No, I just wanted to like, thank justin our intern. Um. You know, I think you did a really good job on this episode. Yeah.

And I you know, the reason that we took you on as an intern was because we know you were involved with this like other podcasts that I guess also had something to do with Unsolved Mystery, So we knew that you were going to be good fit. But we're We're really happy to see that you were good fit in this roundtable format and you really did a good

job with the script, so thank you for that. And we're just kind of hoping I guess that, Um, I don't know, I mean, I don't know, like, how are you feeling about this podcast versus like whatever the other project you were doing was before. I'm loving this. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I don't think I was I was able to do all these things before. Yeah. Yeah,

that's good. So that's good. So I guess you can we'll continue with us, and you know, I guess that that other like generational question thing that was happening before. Hopefully you'll just um continue with Team Sideways and we'll be good to go. Excellent, awesome, Thanks, So do you do you want any help writing? Your Dear John Email