Thinking Sideways: GEC-Marconi deaths

I got to do it for him. You got to do everything. I am helpless. You are Den does everything around here. It's true, I do, I do everything. Um, this week we're going to talk about a mystery, or maybe a lot of mysteries, or maybe just one mystery. Conspiracy could be a couple of dozen mysteries here, could be could be a lot of spiracy. Yeah, show Steve keeps trying to say a word conspiracy. Yeah, he thinks that's the right word. It's yeah, it's pronounced bilthy. Controversy, Yeah,

that one. That one. That one's actually pretty accurate. And before we get too terribly far into this or inmate at all, it was a listeners suggestion. Um, by Rob about a million years ago or like a year in February of two. Well, if you're a bacteria, that just about a million years, it's true. Yeah, Or if you live on Pluto. Wait, no, opposite, if you live on Pluto, it's about half a day. Sorry, sorry everyone. Okay, So

thanks Rob, Okay. So let's do a quick overview of this case, real quick quick click, quick quick click between nineteen two and nineteen eighty eight, or maybe nineteen depending on how you look at it, five or twenty six depending sign tists slash humans or who were employed by G e C. Marconi or its affiliates or closely related to G e C. Marconi, which, by the way, it was a very large British defense contract. Um, they died, especially especially they really the big die off was really

the first for mus Yeah. And now you may be saying, Devin, it's not weird for people to die. What's going on? This was a huge company. Well, listener, you're right, it's not weird for people to die. But these people were all involved in a lot of stuff like you know the development of the Stingray torpedo, or like Star Wars, the Lucasfilms thing well, actually it was named after lucasfilm thing.

Literally it was. But that's actually what the media dubbed a project that was going on with the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization in the United States, primarily our allies were helping us. Yeah, roll Reagan um. But the media called it star Wars, so we're calling it star Wars. Damn it. We'll talk more about Star Wars in a second. Mostly the thing you should be paying hinged to is the Stingray torpedo, but also Star Wars. I thought it was

the Jedi Knights. No, shut up. You can't make jokes about that all the time. I can't do. Okay, These slash twenty six scientists slash people all died in different ways, well, most of them died in different ways. A lot of them actually died in the same way. Again, we'll get to that. Some of the circumstances were a little hanky and some of them not. In all of them, it was a kind of tight timeline for all these people to have died in these like kind of mysterious ways.

Some of them are definitely suspects, some of them are definitely not. But it's a Cold war plot. Well, it might be right. I mean, that's the whole alleged conspiracy is that actually these people were all in on some really highly classified information and that's kind of weird. It's kind of weird that they all started to die off. I can I can see how we'd raised his eyebrows. Yeah.

So I think the way we're going to approach this case is it's going to be another Devin lists and talks for a long time case because I like those right now apparently, but we're going to talk about uh, star Wars and the Stingray Torpedo, just like really basic overview, and then we're going to talk about the deaths, and then we'll talk about theories. Okay, so we're gonna talk

about star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. I'm just going to call it the s d I oh and the Stingray Torpedo, and most people just call it sd I. No. I like sd I. Oh, it's more comprehensive that. Ok. Yeah, we don't don't do that. I'm just gonna abbreviate everything. People hate it when we do that. We do so. In the nineties sixties, the Royal Navy started to think that maybe they should start developing their own torpedoes because

they were buying them from the US. They were, And not that there's anything wrong with the U S. Torpedoes, but the Britain, Britain's, Britain's British British thought they could maybe do better and they didn't want to be dependent upon somebody else for their armament. Right. That's yes, that's the way we should be saying that. Not we're better than them, but they thought they were better than us. Good point. That tendency is a very very bad thing to do. It really ever get into a large scale

armed conflict, it really is. And you know what was happening around that time is the Cold War or was about to happen, and uh well that was kind of like a huge armament thing. So well, you know, they they just had ideas of their own too. I mean, you know, the U. S. Navy is a little high bound sometimes and they're thinking and and the risk though. You know, they came up with the Spearfish, which was just a what's the word I'm thinking of just clever, No,

not clever efficient, it was just it was just freaking fast. Yeah, you know, they just actually would by by Mark forty from the U. S. Navy. Let's build something around this is better. Yeah, well, so the sting I'm sorry giving is that, Joe? Is that what the m K stands for? Mark? Yeah? Okay, I could never find that listed anywhere, so it always frustrated me when I was doing the research. Why is

it an MK something? Yeah? Stupid US Navy and their abbreviations. Yeah, so Joe may be able to like continue to shed some light on some of this stuff. But the stingray torpedo, or at least the very beginning concepts of it, we're starting to be born in the nineteen sixties and obviously they needed some help developing said stingray torpedo, So the Royal Navy turned to what was at that point called g E C. Marconi or just Marconi. It's gone through

a lot of different iterations. We're just going to call it Marconi for the rest because it's just easier. Yeah. I don't think. I think they got gobbled up by somebody else. They're not even Marconi anymore. True, they were originally Marconi and then they became g CE Marconi. G CE was a company that owned them, and they bought them out like in the late eighties, and then they got bought out by somebody else. It's been this huge thing. So we're just gonna call Marconi, Okay, cool, Yeah, the

listeners cool, send me an email. If you're not cool, cool, it isn't I Well, I personally don't think it's very important to know what makes this torpedo important for this for this story. I mean, people may be interested, in which case, the internet's a thing, so look it up. Actually it's I will say that it is very interesting in the way that it operates. And yeah, and it is the multi purpose approach that they took, you know, from shooting it out of a submarine to dropping it

from a plane is pretty phenomenal. Absolutely, No, I think it's as much as an instrument of war can be. Cool. It's cool. Yeah, this is a cool Yeah, this is This is kind of the equivalent of the Mark forty six US. It's like an air more meant to be dropped out of airplanes and helicopters rather than shot out of submarines. But yeah, it's a nifty little, nifty little thing. And I especially like the whole idea of fines it's

been tried on other things. We Russian supposedly are trying to send submarines, which is sort of paying out like lubricant on the on the no, from the nose of the of the torpedo to basically reduced drag and make it more efficient faster. Yeah, it's kind of and it's a cool idea, although probably leaves a nasty, sticky trail.

But yeah. Yeah. But the really important part to know as it pertains to this case is that most of the people who are involved in this case were involved in the development or implementation of the Stingray torpedo, which was top secret, relatively decent security clear I would say totally top secret, but yeah, really high clearance. UM. So they were either involved in that development it or in um the Star Wars project, which came a little later.

Star Wars program was to basically to develop a missile defense system to protect America from any kind of nuclear attack. Yes, this is the way dumbed down version. We don't need experts to explain to us this dumbed down version. We're going to just say this dumb down version. Basically, the idea was to shoot down incoming Soviet ballistic missiles from every angle not even necessarily so so Star Wars was very controversial and it was actually like very ambitious. It

included surface to air interception, orbital intervention. And this is true. Uh an X ray laser called projects called Project Excalibur yea or laser is a cool idea. It's really cool too. Yeah, we should start a kickstarter to buy our own laser extra laser. And and I've got to say, directed energy weapons have really come a long way. They had thanks

the sd I, I think more than anything else. Now were and now we're fielding, we're actually getting that fielding necessarily getting ready to field really high powered lasers that actually can't shoot down. So this was early development of that. It was super topsy. We're still talking Star Wars, as you say, at this point, we're still the eighties, so

we're still decades away from where we are. Absolutely. Yeah, So all of the projects that these or twenty six people, well the twenty people they person is a little different. But the people that we're going to talk about, we're all working very closely on these heavily classified projects. And by closely, you don't mean together as a group, because they were they were you know, rubbing elbows all know, most of them. Some of them did work together, but

most of them didn't actually ever interact. They just were working on the same project. And these projects were large. Obviously, you don't develop an extreme laser without you know, having a couple hundred people working. You know, that's not a thing. Yeah, And I guess As a side note, I just want to say that sometimes when I was watching Fringe, UM, I started to really doubt the whole like, this reminds me of the project Belly and I worked right for

multipleship and then you should, you should. But like, the further I delved into the history of the Star Wars project, the more I was like, oh crap, they literally just pulled this from history. This is like, this is exactly what we were doing. Oh god wow. So, like I said, while there's some connections to Star Wars and to the development of the Stingright torpedo, this episode is not about that. So let's get going. Let's talk about some death. First, death,

We're talking about death now. Professor Keith Bowden. Professor Bowden was a computer programmer at Essex University. He was an expert on supercomputers and pretty well renowned for his work with computer controlled aircraft, which is like totally ubiquitous now but in the whole different, totally different. Yeah, I mean Pong was major at that time. UM. On an evening in March of nine two, he died in a car

accident after um reportedly drinking at a social function. His friends and families say he wasn't drinking, UM, but he lost control of his car and crashed it into a rail line that wasn't being used anymore, so there were no trains using it or anything like that. Crashed into a rail line as and he crashed into a train tracks. How would you know? He went down an embankment. Yeah, at the bottom was a set of training. Um. The impact would have killed him. So he died. He died.

It did kill Hiyeah, it did kill him. But it was apparently the impact right because there was no, like I said, no trains or anything like that. And something I'm gonna say a lot here. You're gonna hear like, oh, he ran his car into this thing and it wasn't in use. How lucky, right. I don't know if he did it deliberately, somebody else did it. Yeah. Next up

is Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Godly. Um. Godly was the head of the work study unit at the Royal College of Military Science, which you're going to hear a lot about the Royal College of Military Science. Um. Not clear what projects he worked on, but I think he probably did work on a lot of the projects, which honestly might be more of an indication than not not knowing what projects he worked on might be more of an indication than like if they had said, what don't these guys

were working because it was secret. It was it was really secret. And in fairness, Godly may or may not be dead. He just mysteriously disappeared in April of two. He has presumed dead. And the reason that people presume that he's dead is that his father died in ninety seven and left him like a ton of money, not a ton quiet but you know the modern equivalent of over grandly, like a hundred and thirty grand um. And he never named it, yeah, in today's money, and he

never claimed it. It doesn't He might be like Patrick McGowan in The Prisoner and he's just being held in a little little point village on the coast somewhere held the operative word there. Yeah, it's reasonable to assume that he is not under his own personage. I mean that he's not really operating of his own free will. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, but he disappeared, he did.

Next up is Roger Hill. Hill was a radar designer and a drafter from mar cony Um and he shot himself with a shotgun in March of presumably on purpose. A corner report says it was a suicide. So this I'm gonna bring this up because this is We're only three in, but we're gonna see this a number of times.

Things that seem very easily defined from the outside as a suicide or or and we're going to see things that are seemed very simply as just plain old accidents or intentional loss of life are going to be wrapped in. So this is gonna come up again and again. So I'm gonna warrant people because I know people are gonna be like, oh, are you kidding me? How is that on the list? This is how the list is. This

let's just been I always use the phrase curated. Yeah, I feel like this list has been very tailored because I've found some alternate versions of it out there that have more info. But it always gets trimmed more and more as I read people that we're not on the list, that we who were scientists and they were not on the official list because they were outside of Marconi. Yeah, well there are some people on this list that were

outside of Marconi as well. But we'll keep talking about this, and I agree that there are some that have I mean, it's definitely created. I think is like a really nice number, perfect list size. It's a good number. It's always perfect cla the top ten, the top twelve, the top twenty, the top like this is the way those things always run. So it's you know, sometimes you gotta pad that out. Yeah,

evidently they did. Next up is Jonathan wolsh Um. He was a communications expert who had worked on a number of classified projects from our Coni. On November nine, wolsh fell out of his hotel room window in Abbot John West Africa. That's not suspicious at all, not at all. Actually they don't have hotel room window in Africa, that's true. Yeah,

so it's really easy to fall out, of course. Yeah. Um. Walsh had actually expressed to some ends that he was that he feared that his life was in danger prior to leaving for his trip for West Africa. So that's cool. This is when things start to kind of ramp up after after Wolsh, which is pretty suspicious, but yeah, I managed to get along for many years without falling out right. Yeah, and he was only twenty nine, so like, come on.

Next up is vim Al dodgy By. He was a computer software engineer with Marconi who ran most of the testing on the torpedo development projects, so that would have included the stay right torpedo and then the iterations thereafter. On August fifth, night six he told his wife that he would be working late and then drove about a hundred miles to Bristol and then mysteriously fell two hundred and sixty feet, which is eighty years from a suspension bridge.

And he had no connection to Bristol. He didn't know. There was no reason for him to be there except there was a nice high bridge. Except for there was a nice high bridge. But I don't know why you would drive a hundred miles for a nice high bridge. I bet they're nice high bridges somewhere within that hundred mile radius. Not necessarily, there's there's buildings to throw yourself off trains to throw yourself in front of you. There's

other ways to kill yourself. Um. The police report initially included a mention of a needle sized puncture on his left butt cheek. Um. But then later they said, oh, actually that that needle size puncture wound is actually that that actually came from his fall of course. Um. And I also heard that he when they found his body, his pants were down around his ankles. I've heard varying accounts of that. Yes, it depends on he did fall into a river that Yeah, so he'd been looking forward

to starting. He had actually just been offered a job in the city of London. His friends confirmed, as did his wife, that he had no reason for committing suicide. Granted, we know from our couple of years of doing the show that there's not always a reason. There's not always outward signs signs to friends and family. Now, one of the things I want to know is did he jump during the day or at night? I believe it was at night, Okay, anybody driving by, some some big Russian

looking guys, maybe throwing him off the bridge, I don't believe. So. No, the when his when he died, um, he was with the he was within a week of his last day at Marconi. UM, so that's a little yeah, Yeah, that's cool, new job in London. Yeah, although you know, like I said, there's no reason, but when you start to couple it with a lot of other stuff, it's kind of like, wow, this is this is a Domino story. This is as

That's what I always refer to these as is. It's you know, the first one is fine, the second one. By the sixth, seventh, and eighth, you're like, whoa, there's something going on. That's what That's how the story gets so much. Yeah. I think I'm probably a combination of actual accidents and natural causes mixed in with some murders. Possibly it's a perfect cover. Next up is our Shads Sharif. Shariff was working on a system to allow detection of

submarines by satellites. So that's that's cool technology, important technology. Synthetic aperture radar is one of the ones that the technologies they used to take waves on the surface of the ocean. Yeah. In October six um Shariff placed a rope around his neck, tied the other end of the rope to a tree, and then drove off in his Audi with the accelerated pedal, jammed down Um and effectively decapitated himself. The coroner did decide that this was a

suicide because I don't know why. I think his his brother Um actually went to retreat the car. He said there was a metal rod on the floor of the car next to the gas pedal. This was retrieved after it had been in custody. You know, of course the police take the car and say we're gonna check it out, figure it out. So I always I saw that too, and I was really suspicious of that because it means it would have been in a wrecking yard and things.

You know, as I get in there, I've got a thing in my hand from working on another car, and I set it down and I moved this car, and then I leave it. Like it's never described. Is it a rod that it was of the proper length? This is again, this is one of those things about the stories. It's just there was a raw metal rod on the floorboard, but we don't actually get any description to say if it could or could not have been used in a

nefarious way too, as is inferred hold down the gas pedal. Well, the thing about it is too is you would have thought that there had actually been a rod there, that the police would have actually you know, taken it into evidence. Well, according to all of the folks that really believe that this is a genet conspiracy, this is examples of police ineptitude, right that happens, or a willful cover up that too,

or maybe a little both. I guess. The couple of things that add to Shrief's story, Um, Sharif didn't really live anywhere near Bristol, which is where he committed suicide. And he had actually spent the last night of his life renting in what they call a rooming house, which I think is just like a hostel. There's no good

reason for this. He had a nice apartment and life Bristol. Yeah, And he had apparently paid for that room in cash and apparently was seen to have had a bundle of high denomination notes, right bank notes, whichever, you know whatever. Apparently the police were told about these this money cash basically, and they they didn't make any mention of it when there was an ins into the death. Um, and it's

basically just been scrubbed out of the record. I imagine the guys who drove the ambulances and picked his body up at the scene, probably found a new home for it, Yeah, if it was on him. Yeah, that's true. This is a messy scene. Tax is that what that is? That he's going to pay for this? Yeah? If I gotta, if I gotta put up with all this gross in the second of his head and put it in a paper bag. Yeah, Um wouldn't have stayed in a paper bag.

Most of the other guests that were um staying in the same hostile rooming housing were all employed at the British Aerospace which is actually where Sharif worked prior to working at Marconi, and he had worked in Yeah, they were doing guided weapons. Yeah, just say they were doing similar stuff what he was doing for Marconi. Yeah, And it sounds like he had been doing that prior and then Marconi was like, hey, you work over here, and

he was like, yeah, totally, no problem. While that in and of itself isn't really suspicious, it could have just been like a reunion or something like that, it is. I guess it seems a little weird because his friends didn't seem to know about that. But it's just a bizarre way to kill yourself, you know. It's a really weird way to kill yourself. I have heard of it

on It's actually more common than you would think. I have heard of several instances where people with a convertible or like, you know what, I'm doing this, and so it's it's not uncommon. But what I want to know is I've never actually seen anything that's listed. Do we know how much booze he had in him or if any there's no mention of it. So in all of the other ones, there's a mention that they were drunk or you know, and he rereated in some way. There's

no mention of that in this one. So I can only assume that he wasn't okay because they would have mentioned it. I mean, the police would have been like, also, he was super drunk, so of course he did this well, And then that's why I'm asking. I mean, there's um there.

There is in one of the things that I read talk about the fact that how is it described he had to use four lengths of rope to commit the that he committed, but when they searched his car, they only found a receipt for one length of rope, and so that is pointed at as signs of foul play by by conspiracies is you know, well, obviously he had somebody had bought it because he realized they didn't have enough to get the job done, because he couldn't have

gone fast enough to pop his knogging off. That's some serious premeditation of suicide though. Well, but it could also be that he happened to have a bunch of rope in his car and went, yeah, I'm kind of done and I think I need a little more rope, and so he bought more rope. I guess I just think like you. Okay, So what he like drove past the particular tree and bought Oh that's a good tree. Oh, let me do some calculations to see how fast I'm gonna have to be going how fast? He's an essentially

smart guy. But you know what, you like in the instances that I have heard about where people have done this before, there's a bit of revenge in that. It's a jilted marriage situation. I think about that I'm gonna get I'm gonna get divorced, and I'm gonna lose this nice convertible car I have. Let me go ahead and coated in my own bodily fluids before she gets it. Okay, Well we'll we'll talk a little bit more about this than okay, because I think we're verging one. That's okay.

Next up is Richard Pugh. Pugh worked as a computer consultant and digital communications expert for the Ministry of Defense. His death was ruled an accident, which I think is insane. Um. He was found in his flat in January of seven. His feet were bound, there was a plastic bag over his head and a rope tied around his body, which was then wrapped around his neck four times. Sure, yeah, he did that himself. It was ruled a sexual misadventure. I don't know, it was ruled suicide. It wasn't even

ruled misadventure. I read in one place it was ruled a sexual misadventure. It was ruled an accident. Oh okay, alright, that's fair. Yeah, there's twenty five of these, so I may be getting a few of them confused, because it turns out this is not the only one that sounds like this that happens in this So there is another one. Okay, So that one was an accident, all right, okay. Next up is Avtar Singhy don He was a researcher at the Ministry of Defense and he had worked conducting tests

on submarine warfare equipment, which would have included the stamary torpedo. Uh. He's another one that just disappeared on a weird circumstances. On January seven, he was three weeks away from successfully defending his doctoral thesis. So he would have been a doctor basically, I mean, he would have had his doctor, his degree, he would have achieved his UM, but he disappeared instead. Um and then he actually reappeared four months on the job. He did. He just kind of like

walked away from his life with no explanation. He was He's still alive, right, he is. Yeah. He had actually finally been traced to a red light district of Paris, and it was confirmed that he didn't really know how he got there or why he was there weekend well four months, four months and actually when he was found, he was working under an assumed name and he was working in a sweat shop with illegal immigrants. And he's

a bright guy obviously, I mean he's defending his dissertation. Like, this is a guy who's really ambitious and educated and well read. And you know, he's working for the Ministry of Defense, and what he decided to do I guess is work, like really just walked away from it all. Is really really walked away from it all, like in the biggest way possible. So that is kind of odd. And I wonder if he retained his security clearance after that.

I'm I presume so he came back to work. I mean, he continued to work at Marconi UM, which is again kind of suspicious. It seems like they would maybe think, you know, oh, this guy just walked away from his life, we should revoke his clearance. But no, they said, okay, yeah, yeah, come down back, that's fine. Well it's either he was not working at stuff that was to to top top, top secret, or or maybe they knew he disappeared for

a reason. Well maybe again, maybe they sat him down to had talk and he told them he just won't tell reporters or anybody else. It's possible, yeah, he um, he was actually very good friends with Mr Dodgy By that the one who from the bridge, Yeah, the one who fell I'm using air quotes here, fell from the bridge Um. And he when he returned, you know, he said, I don't want to talk about that, and I don't want to talk about disappearance. I just want to get

back to work. And Marconi said cool. By the way, he didn't fall from the bridge. He was tossed over the railing by a couple of big Russian guys. Maybe we don't corn to jop. Next up, Dr John Britton. Dr. Britton worked on top secret projects for the Royal College of Military Science, then later for the Ministry of Defense. He died on January seventeenth, nine seven, by way of

carbon monoxide poisoning from his car in his garage. He had literally just returned from a top secret trip to the United States related to his work with the Ministry Ministry of Defense, and he probably thought would be Ministry of Magic, weren't you. He probably would be a great idea to just sit in his car with an Asian running listening to the radio. Yeah, totally wanted to hear that last story on NPR. Yeah exactly. So NPR killed him, Yeah, NBR kills yeah, yeah, or BBC, it's true. Next up

is David Skeels. He worked as an engineer for Mark Coni and then he died the exact same way, the same to the BBC. Yeah, listening to BBC. Um he's the same way as Dr Britton did, but in February of seven. The difference between the two is that Brittain didn't have the uh the TV trope hoose going from the window from the exhaust pipe to his into his window, whereas Skials and everybody that follows does. Yeah. So that's which I didn't realize. I totally thought that was a

nineteen seventies like TV thing. I didn't think that actually happened. Apparently it's just a quicker way to do it, you know, instead of having to fill up the entire room, you just to fill up your car. I didn't know people sat in rooms with their cars running as a way to take their own lives. Just when I'm getting it's actually not that uncommon, I didn't know that. It's also not that uncomfortable. Yeah's kind of go to sleep. Next is Victor Moore. Mr. Moore was a design engineer for Marconi.

He died also in February of seven, but from a drug overdose. He had just finished his work on infrared satellites and then he was found dead. His death apparently instigated an m I five investigation UM, the results of which obviously still remain a secret. There's also a report that the Ministry of Defense Serious Crime Squad like the name right UM, did in a separate investigation into Marconi

that was started because of this death. I really just want to be on the Ministry of Defense not Serious Crime Squad, not as serious, right right, that's I think that's the name of it. I think that's how it goes. Serious Crime Squad, not as serious crime Squad. Well, no, I want to be on the not serious as in nothing is serious, because it's kind of sometimes what I think we are. Yeah, we are actually actually want to work for the Ministry of bad haircuts. You're halfway there, Joe, welcome.

Next up is um Peter Pepel. He was a scientist working for the Royal College of Military Science. He died on February seven. Yes, there's now three deaths in February of this one was especially hanky, though he did also die in the same way as Dr Britton and Mr Skeels. His wife found him on his back, with his head parallel to the rear of the car bumper and his mouth in line with the exhaust pipe of his car.

He was laying under the exhaust pipe, essentially like literally drinking in exactly what I what I heard is he attacked. His body was actually jammed underneath the car. Yeah. Yeah, So police apparently were pretty confused about how he could have gotten into that position. It sounds like his wife initially thought they were driving home from a function, and

then she went inside and he stayed out. No, there was apparently like a weird noise coming from a yeah, and so she thought maybe he had been trying to investigate that and gotten stuck. I'm not sure why she's an engine running when you're doing someone like that, okay, because that's the only way that you can hear the engine making the noise. I guess I think he would like turn it off and look for something loose first.

And I I think about it is is especially if it sounds like there was a little clearance und of the car, and if it's been running you just arrived home, it's gonna be hot. Your your muffler especially, it's going to

be you know, well, it will burn you. Actually at one time touched the muffler one time and when it was when the angel was running, and well, I was sorry that I did that, and well, well I will save it for later to say, because that actually gives me what I have thought about is a potential explanation of how he ended up in the position that he was in. Okay, well, we'll talk about that in a minute.

He apparently, you know, reportedly friends and family, wife blah blah, all say there were no signs of stress in his life, so there was no reason for him to have committed suicide. UM he didn't work for the Royal College of Military Science anymore. UM he was in the research and development

arm of the Ministry of Defense. But UM People and Brittain apparently worked together at the Royal College of Military Science, and um People was on that same trip to the United States as Dr Brittain was UM and he had also recently just gotten back from the United States on their top secret whatever. That is a coincidence. By the way, have we did we say anything about the fact that these guys are not all in the same town, they're all over Britain. Yeah, I don't know that we've actually

said that. Those that of the I don't know half dozen or dozen people that we've talked about so far. It's not as if they were all you know in one town or one city. They are all over, really spread all over the country, all over the Country's important to keep in mind, but yeah, it is important to keep in mind. Next is David Sands. He was a senior scientist working at a sister company of Marconi, and he had worked closely with Dr Britton. He died on

March seven in a fatal car accident. He made a sudden you turn on UH two, a lane highway on his way to work who know who knows why, and then crushed at high speeds into an abandoned cafeteria that was out of use cafe whichever, the British calm cafeterias, I've heard a restaurant. But it was down. It wasn't like it was right on the edge of the road. It was like down a little side inlet road that he managed to go careening down. Yeah, he managed to hit the one spot in that area that was abandoned

because lucky. Yeah, he loaded up his car with gasoline can he had. Yeah, he had two additional five gallon cans full of gas hanging out in his car and they sort of ruptured and blew up and turned into a fireball. It's weird. Yeah, it's like they were trying to destroy evidence. Yeah. I think they identified him by dental records. I believe so. Yeah. You know again, no signs, no outward signs of a reason to suicide. Also a weird way to commit suicide. But okay, that's actually kind

of very male. Men tend to go out in violent ways. Yeah we've said that before. But like by pulling a you turn and losing control of your car, that's the things control. He lost control. Well, I don't. I don't understand the you turn thing. I mean I would I would think just you know, get on the get on the freeway and just massed down the accelerator until you're maxed out in speed and then crash into like a bridge about or something like that. You turn out. Doesn't

really make sense to me. That's weird. He have missed his turn. He may have said I'm going to hit that building and then I knows nobody's in and it's it's solid and my car is gonna go boom and a hell I missed it. He flipped. But we'll talk about that more later. Uh. Stewart Gooding was a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Military Sciences. He died on April tenth. Um. He was in a fatal car crash in Cyprus. He died instantly when his hired car,

which I believe is a rental car. Yeah, I believe. Yeah, he was driving it though like you'll see hired car. It's not like he wasn't he hadn't hired someone. It was an at taxi or anything. He was driving. Um, he collided with head on with a truck, a semi a semi truck, yeah, or a lory as you might call it in the British aisles. The truck driver was said to be totally unhurt, as were all the passengers. Yeah.

The truck is a lot bigger than the car. So well, I thought, I thought the isn't he the one that the passengers in the car were also unhurt? I don't think there were any passengers. Yeah, no, Actually I think you're right. I don't think there was passengers. That there's somebody else that had passengers in the car. Again, in one of it's hard to keep track of it. It's really hard, which is why I'm appreciating this fact checking. Actually, usually i'd just be like Steve showed up. But now

I'm like, no, I think you keep coming. Um, so it's kind of weird. I mean, that's another failed car accident. But okay, this is one of the ones that I'm going to call BS on for getting tacked. I consider this attack in this is this is getting got pinned into the list because we had to pad out to a big number because he's not anywhere remotely involved in anything else. He's on a vacation. Well actually he wasn't

on vacation. He was in Cyprus because um there was the But but still it's they're carrying out quote unquote exercise. That could have been an accident. It could have been as a big truck driven by a couple of the big burly Russian guys. Could have been either way. You gotta stop blaming the Russians. It could have been the Cubans, I don't know, and not part of the world's probably Russians. Next up is definitely wasn't the French David A k A. Robert green Hall Uh. He was the contracts manager at

Israel Chemicals Limited. He died from complications after he quote unquote mysteriously leapt from a forty foot or twelve meter high railway bridge. He was apparently on his way to work and decided to pull over and jump to his death four hours after he had left home to go to work. By the way, Yeah uh. This happened on April tenth of seven, same day as Stewart Gooding had his little car accident in Cyprus. In Cyprus, in another country,

totally different country. UM. The I c L which is is really chemical as Limited later revealed that UM he had actually been positively vetted for Clarence and had probably had access to secret UK and NATO data because of some of the contracts he was managing for them, which

would have been connected to Star Wars and Stingray torpedo stuff. UM. And he was working on the same defense project as David Sands UM, who you will remember from the U Turn incident the fireball with He actually didn't die immediately from his fall. He survived UM. And the emergency people came and took him way and took him to the hospital and they said, okay, you fell what happened there? And he said, I don't really know how or why I fell from that bridge. And then he died a

couple of days later in the hospital. I have heard different accounts on him. I have actually heard that though he has no memory of what happened that day, he did recover and survived. Yeah, you know, saying it's it's one of the sources that I found. I was like, wow, this is one of the ones that was a red

flag for me because I actually didn't see that anywhere. Yeah, I didn't either, but uh, but you know, it is possible, Like I sometimes you can get a massive injury, like and you can get I knew a guy that was a paratrooper and there was a guy in his battalion or whatever, Yeah he was, and they jumped one day and this guy's shoot didn't open and he augured in and he walked away from it and then and and he said, oh cool, and then he died later that night.

If he had massive internal injuries, nobody even knew, which is, by the way, incredibly negligence on the part of the army. I mean, I should have had the guy in the hospital. Yeah, every every major organ was ruptured. But it is possible also to fall and sustain massive injuries. But it's it's not going to kill you if you get treatment and you get long term treatment for the time that it takes two to be healed and corrected. Yeah, this guy is and the things that I found was reported to live.

So it's possible. But but I could see a situation where you would have so many ruptures in your body that they just couldn't get into that sucker hose that you have in your yards, just leaking everywhere. There's the way you can plug it all. Not a Dutch boy in the damn Okay, Yeah, well, I mean it's I guess we can just chalk that up to I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's weird. I mean, it's weird that

he wouldn't remember ever why he felt. But there's also such a thing as like head trauma related to I'm not surprised at all either way. And it's kind of weird though, like four hours later suddenly or just on a railroad bridge jump in or falling or falling, you know, it's usually pretty easy to stay on those things, although I don't know, I mean, if you're on a railroad bridge, although what the hell was he doing on a railroad bridge.

Often railroad bridges don't have guardrails on because because trains don't tend to fall off of them usually, so there's no need to put a Actually do tend to fall off of them occasionally. But you know what, what guard rail is going to stop? You need to build a tunnel to pretty massive guard rail baxed up. It's going to be George Countess. He was a system analyst at Bristol Polytech and on April seventeenth seven he was drowned

as a result of a car accident into river. His car was found upside down in a river in Liverpool. I presume he was inside it, yes, which I'm going to say right now again, I feel like that one is tacked in. I agree, especially because like systems analysts of personal Polytech, like I didn't really find a good connection to the rest of these is that we're in this industry at this point, we we This story is one of the ones that starts expanding, occasionally reaches out

and grabs a guy that's in the biz. Well it is, I mean, it's it's in the biz. Died under what could be kind of interpreted as questionable circumstances in the like midst of literally within like there's a two or three month period here where suddenly a bunch of people are dying, So I can understand why it would be looped in. I don't know that it necessarily is right for it to be looped in, but I totally understand why people see this one as as connected to the case.

Next up is um Shawny Warren. And this is the only woman on this list, and is also that one that we've put the question mark around to be the twenty six. I mean, you keep saying they were involved in the biz, but Shawnny, she's not the one that I put the question Okay, is a journalist? Okay, okay? Because I don't I I don't think Shanny is again a good one to be put into this. I say

they're suspicion around her death. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think that her employment had any connection. I'm not sure we'll find out the game. I apologize, Please den tell us what happened. Ms. Warren was a personal assistant at a company called micro Scope. Yes, just like a microscope but two words. And this company was purchased by Marconi about a month after her death. Within a month of her death, she was found drowned in

eighteen whole inches of water. It's actually kind of deep based on the situation, well, based on the situation um, and was actually pretty close to where Ms David ak Robert was found having jumped off the bridge. Um. She was found gagged with a noose around her neck, her feet were bound, her hands were tied behind her back.

She was wearing stiletto shoes and business formal attire. The Corner lists her death as like open slash under investigation, but apparently speculated publicly that she had quote gagged herself, tied her feet with a rope, then tied her hands behind her back, and hobbled to the lake on stiletto heels to drown herself. Maybe he was being like Flip.

But the hard part about this is there's there. Her footprints were in the river bed, but there were no other footprints taking her out to the point at which she her footprints stopped happening. So you're saying, basically, aliens, yes, that's exactly right now. I I this has the stink

of murder all over it. I call huge bs on this, like I wear stiletto shoes every once in a while, and I swear to you you try you like we'll get you a size whatever, so as you are siletto shoe, and we will go down to the river bank and you try to walk more than two steps without your feet being tied in that mud. And you tell me that it's possible that I don't know. I've seen women in some pretty pretty snug little skirts that have to do the two inch little jitter to move forward in

mushy mud on a river bank. Yeah, that the shoes are going to come off your feet. Well, you know, if she moves fast enough, as I saw it, and Scooby doo, you can. You can run across the surface of the water. Before you start saying you can, that's true. It's really easy to do that when your feet are tied together. Yeah, and there is there is all kinds of hink nous with her death. I am. I'm totally

on board with that. And by the way, I tried to pull the Corners report, also ended up trying to pull the police report on her death, and then that led me to trying to find them all. It turns out, whereas here we can get a lot of that stuff depending on where it happened online, Yeah, you can only get it in person. In Britain. Well, we have a lot of listeners in Britain. We should have called one of them. Yeah, well, you know you also got to

pay for it. Well, they'll pay for it. I thought we could find at least one listener in that every every district that this was happening should have done that. My bad. Well, and I don't. I guess I don't necessarily think, you know, I go either way on her

actual involvement. I mean, if Microscope was purchased by Mark Coni and she was a high level executive assistant, she would have likely seen most of the correspondence coming in and out from the highest levels, which means she would have likely had her own clearance, which means she would have been privy to some details. But Steve Shaking said, because I also think like that could be total b

s and like that's not accurate at all. You're presuming that Microscope was involved in what Marconi was working on. They may they may not have been brought in because of their Star Wars and um, what was the torpedo name? Thank you, I suddenly forgot the name of the torpedo. There's, you know, something that was related to it. They may have just been a company who had, as we see all the time, a great idea and a great start somewhere, and Marconi went, we're buying that all we're taking it.

It could have been you know, it could have been a completely they could have actually manufacturing or you know, uh, some completely non classified stuff. Maybe just manufacturing equipment that Marconi wanted to I mean, I don't know, I had no idea what. Well, so I guess we can all agree that at least in her case, she was murdered. But whether that has something to pertain to the rest of these or not, who knows. Little case. So yeah, next up Mark Wisner. He was a software engineer at

the Ministry of Defense. He was found dead in on April nine, in the house that he shared with two colleagues. He had a plastic sack around his head and several feet of cling wrap Saran wrap wrap wrapped around his face. May sound similar because that's how Mr Pugh died. This death was also ruled an accident against sexual auto erotic asphixiation. It wasn't just it is always classified. This is Britain, so they just call it an accident. Whereas we have

this weird descriptive phrase for it. Yeah, but you know, Wisener was no into I think this might not have been his only time of exploring the kink because there are reports of some things. Apparently he had some articles of women's attire so they was on him, So it may not. This one may actually just be purely an accident misadventure of this sexual kind. Fair. Yeah. Um. Michael Baker was a digital communications expert who died on May three, seven in a fatal car accident. He's the one that

we were trying to think of earlier. He's the one who the other thing. Two other people were in the car. They were well, they were unhurt, Thessian guys. I don't think they were just two other normal British people who were in the car that were not severely injured or killed inside accident. Well suspicious, probably not as suspicious, but alone. Yeah. Frank Jennings was an electronic weapons engineer and he died

of a heart attack in June of nine seven. I think that's the dumbest thing ever, and just this is another pin Yeah, absolutely, that's what I mean by the dumbest thing ever. I should clarify. I don't think it's done that he died of a heart attack. That's really sad Sully that he's included, But I'm gonna includehi anyway, because he's on every list you'll see ever, because at this point the dominoes are just like right or just

randomly being yeah. Next up is Russell Smith. He was a lab tech at Atomic Energy Research Establishment, which is the name of a company. January, he fell off a cliff in and died, which was ruled a suicide, even though half Yeah, it's kind of weird because they always say it was a suicide. He fell, like those are the two phrases they use. They're never like he jumped. Yeah,

I think that's that's an odd attempt to preserve um. God, I can't think of the word that I want to say for for their their dignity, the year, their honor. But you know it's like, he fell, that's what happened, and must he must have accidentally fell? He fell on purpose? Yeah, he fell on purpose. Yeah. Next up is Trevor Knight. He was a computer engineer with Marconi Space and Defense Systems, which is Marconi. On March, Mr Knight was found dead in his home at the wheel of his car with

a hose pipe connected to the exhaust. I know this song. Uh. Fellow female employee at Marconi claimed that she had found three different suicide notes left by him, which made clear his intentions of suicide. This female friend also mentioned that Mr Knight disliked his work, but she didn't think that he was depressed or had any kind of signs of suicide or anything like that. Yeah, the next one had chosen more interesting. Suicide method is the right word for it.

Alistair Beckham was a software engineer for Marconi. He was found dead in August of eight after being electrocuted in his garden shed with wires that connected to his body I think via his mouth and then oh no, no, you're right, sorry, I'm getting too switched. Um. They were in his armpits he wrapped. I think he attached him to his body body somehow. Actually it was like kind of an improvised de Faber latter, and he had a

handkerchief stuffed in his mouth. His death is for obvious reasons, still under investigation, because that doesn't really seem like a suicide thing. Well, that's not how I would choose to do it. But yeah, he taped them to both sides of his chest, I guess, and I plugged in and

plugged the cord into the wall. That's the speculation if he killed himself, right, I mean, it's because for all accounts, he'd come home, he had walked the dog, he had gone and gotten the paper, like he had done all these very normal routine like things that day, and it just randomly walked into the garden shed and wired himself up. Yeah, which seems a little weird. It does, And actually to follow a trend seems kind of like a Russian thing to do, But I mean it does. You're laughing, But

like they like us, car batteries. Car batteries hurt but don't kill you. Yeah, well, maybe they were actually aiming to kill this time. And actually one of the reasons that this might be even more suspicious is that also in August of um they think probably auguste. I've seen both dates. Perry Ferry, what kind of a name is that? British? Was it? Retired army Brigdier and the ass marketing director

at Marconi. He was also electrocuted. He was electrocuted in his company flat, his Marconi company flat with electrical leads in his mouth. Apparently he spliced him like between his teeth or attached them to his fillings and then just plugged into the wall and uncomfortable. It just sounds bad. Yeah, again, I think suicide in this case because his parents said named him Perry Ferry. I mean, it's weird. It's weird that like within a month, two people related to Marconi

died from cell phone administered electrocution in the same month. Yeah, but he's weird. But he's the one that had had not too long before that some near fatal something in a car. He was in a car accident, he was trapped in the car, and so he kind of had this thing going on, according to people who are around him. Panic. I don't know. I still think it's super Russian. I like that idea. Joe is biased you. But also like in a month, really to Doues electrocuting themselves, it's like

they hired a new hit man. I mean, I mean, like, there are these clusters and we'll talk about those in theories. But well there's yeah, there are like several different suicides in this one that were rules suicides that are rather bizarre. Yeah, we'll talk about them later. We will in just a minute, actually, because we're very close here. Andrew Hall was an engineering

manager with British Aerospace. He was found dead in September by carbon monoxide poisoning in his car with a host pipe connected to the exhaust, which was ruled a suicide. On board of that story, I really think we need to We need to find out who manufactured those hoses and sue him probably obviously there was a problem with their houses because they were they were putting carbon monoxide in people's cars. And then the twenty six one is

a guy by the name of Johnathon Moyle. He was a British defense journalist and he was found hanged in his hotel room in Santiago, Chile on April one, and it was the rule the suicide officially, but apparently he did a lot of the reporting initially on the Stingray torpedo. There's that. Do you know who else is loosely connected to this story? Reagan Danny Cassilero remember him from the Octopus because he worked for what was the magazine Computer World.

He worked for it owner. I can't remember now, it's been so long since we talked about, but they did, they did some of the early reporting that was compiling this stuff. And I don't know if he was involved with it or not, but it's a weird link. We always find the strange links between these stories. Conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy Danny. Danny thought everything was kind of interconnected, you know, as it is all different tentacles of the octopus. Theories, theories, theories,

all your theories. While either it's murder, it's not, it's some combination of both. I think a combination. I think some of these things that hinky enough. So they were all murdered. Let's do that as a theory. They were all murdered, every single one of them except for the suicide. But as you know, like heart attacks can be induced by chemicals, poisons, they can. True. But he was a six year old dude. There's that too in the eighties, in the eighties, which in Britain was nothing but pork,

fat and beans every night. Yeah, I believe that's true. Right to healthy lifestyle. Yeah, because my culinary experience with Britain is completely accurate. I agree. Okay, so we can all agree that it's not all murders. Can we also all agree that none of these that the theory that none of these deaths are suspicious at all. Is silly that there's no actual link between any of them? Oh yeah, that's silly. That's silly. Yeah, some of them are. And

you know, and there's also some of them. I mean, they could have been murders, but they're not related to the defense industry. Also possible. So I have a question. Yeah, it was a smiley face ever found spray painted near the bodies? Actually there was. There was a smiley face with at a certain distance of everybody. That's true. So we are going to go ahead and say that our favorite theory is that some of these are questionable and some of them are not, right, some of them shouldn't

be included, right, I agree, Yeah, definitely not. But there were four of them, the foremost spectacular suicides, which would be Sharif and Sans and Beckham and Ferry at the very least. Yeah, those ones that we're talking Sharif, the deccapitation by Rope in the car. Well, hang on, Joe, let's let's take these in order, because you're you've you've actually ignored some that people have pointed out as being completely question really suspicious. Yeah, so actually let's just go

ahead and start. We're gonna we're gonna walk through everyone of these again in order. No, we're not, We're not doing that. But let's let's start with um. Dr Bowden's car accident. He was the very first victim, the very first one, way back when before Little Devon ever existed in this whole world, Dr Bowden had a car accident.

The story goes right that Dr Bowden's immaculately maintained land rover creamed across a four lane highway and plunged off a bridge, down an embankment onto an abandoned rail yard. Boden was found on the scene, and nobody else got hurt. Nobody else got hurt, nobody else even saw it. Pretty lucky, right. There was obviously an inquest in to this, UH and the police testified that Boden's blood alcohol level had exceeded the legal limit and he had been driving way too fast,

so he was drunk. He's driving real fast and reckless. He accidentally careened off the highway. His wife. Dr Boden's wife, her name is Hilary, and her lawyer think that's silly. Not silly, it's a cover up, is what they think. UM, and actually friends that were with Bowden at the social event that he was at prior to his death agree he was not drunk. He um had been drinking, but he wasn't drunk. They also, well, the friends don't mention,

but the wife mentions the condition of the car. They apparently had a specialist quote unquote specialist examined the car um and that specialist told them that somebody had taken the wheels off and put old, worn out wheels onto his land Rover, which I don't know. I go either way, Like all reports are from many different aspects in his life, that he loved this car, he maintained it as best as he possibly could, and he was a man of well, I mean he he didn't. He was a man of means,

you know. So he would have had tires that had the appropriate tread on them. Presumably he would have had a car that was in good condition. Um. But apparently the police said no, no, that the wheels were worn that was part of it. He you know, just took off. It could have been that, you know. Of course, being a man of means, I mean, this is something they

look for. Somebody told his rex their cars. They looked to see you know, did did did he like replace his tires with old, you know, use crappy tires before he deliberately wrecked his car to collect you know, an insurance payout could have been Maybe he was trying to

do that well, but he was wealthy enough. I don't think he needed he's I mean, tires have a lifetime, and there is a point when you come to the end of that tires lifetime where the tread is no longer safe to drive upon and it is time to replace it. And he could have very well been near that at the point at which he had his accident. And you know what happens when you take a severe turn and go across the highway and then down an embankment.

Everything gets thrash. So it's entirely possible that his tires got the torn up. It's it's also possible that somebody at the wrecking yard went, you know, that's a nice set of tires, and they said he did it well, and they they switch him out, at which point then this examiner comes it's these are old. This is weird. I know, that's that's what I was thinking to let it sounds like the guy probably had a really nice

set of tires on there. The other thing about his not being drunk is that if he's at an event. I don't know if you guys have ever been an event where somebody says, wait, have one for the road, and you suddenly have two for the road, and three for the road and four for the road, and then you hit the road and you're fine when you walk out of said location, but then you're five minutes away and it starts to hit you. Yeah, it's my understanding. It was like a work social function. So one, well,

that's even more indicative of getting drunk. It's maybe. I mean, I think it can go either way. Either it is totally indicative of him getting drunk, or it's totally indicative of him not being drunk, which is kind of a bummer because it depends on the kind of person he was, and you can only take that from you know, what his family says, and his family says he was not

that kind of guy, But I don't know. Yeah. Next up is Walsh, who you may or may not remember, was in West Africa and quote unquote tell out of a window. They he did have a flight the next day, so presumably it's not a suicide, although maybe it is. I mean, he was there for a work presumably they booked his flights there and back, so hard to tell. Our conspiracist friends would say that that is indication that he was not intending to take his life while he

was there. Could have been an accident. Well, but I mean, it's also true that it is. It's totally possible it was an accident a fall. Next up, while we're talking about weirdness, is um dodgy by police say that he was depressed? His friends say no, So I'm not sure how the police would know and his friends didn't. But okay, you can look at a corpse and see like kind of bad. Police say he was drunk. Um friends say he had never had any alcohol ever. And I think

that's a religion thing. He was Pakistani, he was likely a Muslim, and if he was, you know, that's that's a that's a tenant of a lot of different parts of But I want to be careful here, because his friends didn't say he did drink. They said he rarely drank. I've heard that some of his friends said he never drank. Okay, But well, the reason I say that is because, in the same reporting it is reported that bottles of wine

were found in his car. Um and you know, and that's where I also get that it was the people said, well, he never drank while driving, but he would occasionally drink. Okay. So the reporting I heard on this, and this is one of those things where it's like who knows right. The reporting I heard on this is that the police um initially said, oh, he was drunk, and his friend said no, no, he didn't drink at all, and they said, no, no,

he was drunk. They we found two paper cups and a bottle of an empty bottle of wine in his car. He was drinking with a friend and then the friend. I don't know where the friend went, but suddenly, you know, he was jumping off a bridge. That's what the police said. And by the way, that bridge was a location that was known for people to go to commit suicide. Yeah

it was, Yeah, it was convenient high spot. Yeah, no, absolutely, I agree, but it's still kind of wonky that, you know, his friends would say no, he didn't drink, and the police would say, okay, okay, but we found this thing, we don't and they just totally disregard the friend. You know, they say he was drinking with a friend and then suddenly he was committing suicide, and nobody ever says like, where was the friend, what was the time frame, what's

the story there? So I think that's a little odd. And then also the whole like injection mark on his puncture yeah, ankle, Yeah, I mean it seems weird, right, you can't. I don't think that's the sort of thing that usually comes from. For two hundred and forty ft. Drop a couple of things here. One, let's let's talk about his pants being around his ankles. Let's say that he went in semi head first, that's one possible account.

I mean, if anybody has jumped into a dove, into a body of water with their shorts not exactly cinched up, has experienced having their their pants ripped off of them, which is a little embarrassing. Sadly, I've done it in public. But the other thing is that if he is falling into a moving body of water, and when did he um.

This was in November, so I don't know what. I don't know what the river level was at that time, but if a body is tumbling in a moving body of water, it is entirely possible that he could have been driven into something as simple as a stick or a piece of metal and then pulled away. And that's like, you are much larger puncture mark than the one they were initially speaking about. You're talking about the pants being pulled off. Well, no, I'm talking about the puncture wound

in I mean, think about fencing. Okay, if you've seen rigid fencing before, and if people you that at the edges of river. Again, I don't know what the area is. So I'm guess as they're saying right there, saying it's a it's a puncture wound. That's like the size of a needle, is what they're talking about. Where is it going to come from? But you know what, it may not have been the side. It may have been the

size of a needle when they examined it. But I mean, you've seen wounds where something larger in diameter has punctured through and torn the flesh and then everything has filled back in the void after the fact is that is removed. Usually that happens with someone's alive. Though, I mean, it couldn't have it right away. I mean, I'm just saying I don't think it is as suspicious as it has pointed out. I hate conspiracies and I am going to rail on this a lot, and I apologize. I can't

help it. Yeah, So do we want to move on since it is an immovable object? I think Mr Sharif's wild ride. Yes. Yeah. Mark Cooney initially said that Sharif Mr Shariff was just a junior employee and he didn't really have anything to do with Star Wars, and he didn't really know what was going on. Uh not so say the coworkers. Apparently, at the time of his death, Mr Shariff was apparently about to be promoted. Also, apparently Mr Sharif worked in Mr Dodgy Buys the hardest name

average pronounced yeah in his department with him. That's he. I mean, for both of them to have died in relative succession of like kind of questionableness, that seems kind of weird. Police also said that Mr Shriff the reason that he committed suicide is because he was upset, oh for the breakup break up with a woman. It turns out that that woman that they initially identified was actually

his landlady, not his lover. And then the media said, actually, hey, um, that woman police that you guys said was his lover, that's his landlady. They said, oh, no, no, no, Actually the woman was a coworker who was married with children, so we didn't want to release her name. And then his friends came forward and said, no, he had a fiance in Pakistan and he was trying to get her into the country, right, and apparently, by like the reports that I've read, that was going fine. M over right, Yeah,

I mean it sounded like things were going fine. I mean, he had obviously been deemed respectable enough, um that he had been given clearance. I mean he worked on top secret projects for Marconi under contract from the Crown. I mean, you know, for him to say, hey, my fiance wants to come here, it seems reasonable that that process would have been fairly smooth. They, by no accounts were breaking up. So I don't really know where the police we're getting

this information. Well, the suicide angle is from the fact that he left a tape, if not more than one tape in his car that they there was of himself. The police did say that they say that they found tapes of his voice that were indicative of a suicide. Note, the police do say that yes, it might. It might be that, I would say, in um Pakistan, where they have a lot of arranged marriages, it might be that

that was a source of his depression. It's in because he might not Yeah, he might have actually not really wanted to go through with this marriage. Now it's looking like it's going to succeed. He's like, you know, this sucks. I'd rather be dead than marry her. Yeah, I mean, there's there's a there's a whole list of of possible reasons that he could have decided to take his own life. And as we talked about before initially, is that you know, like I've seen this method of suicide is usually kind

of it's kind of revenge edge to it. That seems still it seems weird from what I've read from his life at that time. It seems weird. But that but if he was actually, if he'd actually broken up with somebody, I I don't know, we don't do you know, because I don't know if this was actually his car was his car? You know that for sure? I mean I'm like, well, I'm just saying it's like there's that revenge act of Okay, well, screw it. I'm gonna I'm gonna destroy this car with myself.

I think it was his car, Okay, I don't know that it was his Audi that he purchased with his Mark Co money. I mean, then then that is not a that is not a viable angle. That's why I said I didn't know. I kind of like the idea of borrowing somebody's car for that. I know you have two other ones that you want. Well, there's details about two others that that seem weird. So there's Britain. He's the one who was found under the car in an odd angle. Yeah, theory about because you just are an

Asayer tonight. But it's it's it's weird. I see people saying that he was at an odd angle, jammed under there. But Joe had been talking about the fact that, you know, I once touched an exhaust pipe and it was hot, and I have been under a car and done something similar, and your immediately uncontrollable reaction is to involuntarily jerk your body, at which point, if you're underneath the vehicle, you know what you do. You hit the undercarriage of the car

with your head. I have almost knocked myself out under a car before. So I can see a guy who crawls under they say it's a weird angle. But if he crawls under there and he something happens, he touches something it's hot, and he inadvertently jerks and whales his noggin, he's then going to be incapacitated and he may have some kind of convulsion. I don't know, but that may explain how he wedged himself farther under there. I kind of like the idea of two burly Russian guys you

love you know what? That is your explanation for everything. It's amazing we kept that out of the Murrow Murray Eppiside's hard. It's hard with the like domino effect of this though right where you think, okay, well one time of like one guy accidentally weighing in his head and dying. But when you take in fact that you know within a year period five and I know that, so that that that comes up though that's in the final theory. There's there's a stress aspect that is in the final

theory that we'll talk about. But I have one more because I I have a kind of simple explanation for one more, and that is David Sands. He's the guy who drove into the cafe or the cafeteria, and he had gotten all those gas cans several days is ahead of time, and it's to five gallant cans of fuel that he petrol that he had in his car he ted in well, as I remember gas cans in seven they had a plug in one end and a screw cap on the other, and none of that was extremely tight.

So I remember walking into buildings when I was a kid that had one or two gas cans and they weeked of fumes. So it's very possible he had he had he had gone and gotten gassed several days before and then disappeared for a four hour drive, at which point he told his wife he was thinking and he didn't remember much of his drive, and now he gets in his car again, which is full of gas fumes

and is driving around. It is completely possible that this guy was inadvertently hoffing gas and out of his head, or maybe he just lit a cigarette them yeah, actually rupped it into a fireball, and then what happens. That's why he made that weird turn, because he'd be jerked a wheel and just happened to drive into that that little offshoot road. But again, that's super lucky. But it's

it's also it's just people do stupid stuff. I know so many people that used to use the screw top gas cans to store gas and then you would walk over and I would touch the lid and it would fall off, like, oh, I thought I screwed that back on last time I used it. Like, these are very plausible reasons. They are, But then we start talking about like taking as a whole, right, and I grant you.

I mean, I think for me it's like and I don't want to take them as a hole because I think taking that a hole is too simple of an approach. That's why it bothers me conspiracy. But I mean, I think for others it is it's like, really, seriously, you think that two dudes died of electrocution within it, like within you know, ten days of each other. That's insane to me. I'm also going to say though, that the whole running my car in the garage is a trope

and everybody knew about it. Yeah, and there is the phenomena of copycats, so it maybe that he said, oh wow, I heard about this guy at the company you know that might actually be kind of a quick way to do it. I'm going to do that. Are doing it, I'm going to do it. So here are the two

I guess additional addundum theories. Right, is that like there's a hitman, because there are nice little clusters of Oh, hey, for a year, these people died this way, and then for a year, these people died this way, and then for another year, for a year was the Russians, then it was the Chinese, and it was the American. It is a nice cluster, I'll give you that, it is.

It's really clean the delineation between each of those. But then you know there's the other fact of like, yeah, there's a lot of stress involved, right, so we start talking about why, right, why would these deaths be why would they need murders or why would they be suicides? And like why would these things happen? For suicide, It's

probably a pretty easy answer. These people are under a lot of stress, and they're developing essentially weapons of fairly mass destruction, and they can't talk to anybody, and they can't they can't really talk about it. They're not mass destruction, but they are powerful weapons, big destruction. In my world, that's mass destruction. It's not like thousands of people. But you're not torpedo. If you take out a submarineer a ship,

well a lot of people, you're kieople yet. But I also I also remember Joe and I don't know, I know Devin won't because you're you're too young. But for you, if you remember this, my dad was worked for a government organization, and I remember this kind of we're overarching cloud of stress of just like where in the hell the world was and what we were going through in terms of the Cold War, and it weighed on some

people more than others. And while my pop wasn't in any kind of direct secret thing, he dealt with things that to this day, you know, I can't get him to breathe a word of and it's a it's a very clean line of I shut it down. So there's also there is this weird stress level that happened. There's also I mean, there's two other things that play here, right, There's the British stiff upper lip. Also the fact that you can't talk about this stuff. Well yeah, the top

secret nature of that. But I'll also include the harmful aspects of reinforced masculinity at this time, right, I think you're I think that you guys are like trending too hard towards suicide here, I mean some of them. No, I don't think it that. No, I'm just trying to are you ever to say earlier four of them have something in common besides the fact that their desks were ruled suicide. That would be sharif stands, Beckham and Ferry,

and so they were. They were all bizarre suicide things from we got the guy with who decapitated himself with his car in a rope, We got the guy with the gas cans in the car, and then we got the two guys who elextrocuted themselves one of the chests, one of the mouth, So all very strange suicide methods, and then the other. The other thing they have in common is they all had made appointments to meet with their MPs. That's true for and what's the course, never

never happened, and so that's kind of intriguing. No, I agree, And that's why that's where I would go in, and that's why I'm not going with the pure suicide theory. No, no no, no, no, I absolutely agree with you. I am just trying to give a bit of historic framing for some people who may not be thinking in that context. I'm happy to go down. I'm actually happier to go down, because you see, the most of these people were murdered

avenue than I am Steve's avenue. But the whole Cold War thing is that what you have to understand about the Cold War as I looked through part of it, and that is that in the in the late forties and in the fifties, it was a much more paranoid time and bye by this time the late eighties, of course, and nobody knew it. I mean, nobody knew that it was almost the Soviet Union was about to fall just a few years, and we you know, everybody thought it was going to be around for much much, much longer

than that. And it was a big shock and surprise wasn't surprise when it all came tumbling down. But still by by that, by that point in time, things is stabilized to the point that everybody felt like that the actual possibility of warfare or nuclear warfare and all that stuff was remote. Yeah. So, I mean, so the big pressure in the Cold War was was really like the furties and fifties. Well, but you know, and and the other the other way to go. I mean, you've called

out those four as really odd suicides. The other two that are looked at as suicides are the ones that were tied up with the cling wrap around their heads, right, and you know those are suspicious. Well they're suspicious because I didn't know this until I was doing some of the readings that like, that is a great It turns out that's a great way to discredit somebody. How you've labeled them a pervert. According to the general population, what

did that person do? And I never I was like they were trying something, or somebody was over and they had an accident and somebody just left. I was like, oh, oh, it's you know, modern thinking versus eighties thinking. Oh wow,

that really does just destroy all credibility of their person. Well, and there's a there's a lot of stuff about whistleblowing and well, yeah, you're kind of catch twenty two with a lot of people, especially like when things are changing like they were in the like eighties with the Cold War, right, the Soviet Union to come tumbling down. You know, we're kind of things are being revealed like Star Wars was revealed right to the media, and suddenly the regular administration

was like, oh, yeah, we were doing this thing. Cool um. And so I think there was this kind of sense or there's the potential for this kind of sense of if you're working on these projects, right, you had this pressure to either be a whistleblower and reveal what you

knew or what are you what are they revealing? What I mean, if they knew something top secret, if they knew about some project, whatever they knew about, say, you know cost, I mean you know often like you know cost overruns that actually it turns out we're just you know, phony that kind of thing, or any kind of I mean just moral anything like that, sort of bribery, things like that. So that's that's why the whole it's it's kind of interesting, these these four guys that killed themselves

in bizarre ways. I wanted to talk to their MP. Oh by the way, if you're not from Britain, MP is a member of Parliament. I should have probably said that earlier. It's it's like your congressman, yeah, yeah, And so I think there's like that sense of like at that time, right, that's a very pivotal moment of like either you are a whistleblower or you're implicated in an inquest, right, And I think I've seen that thrown around a lot

on the internet. In terms of why that would be that these people are being murdered was because they were They may have known something, they may have thought they known something, they may have known nothing, but they may have been making appointments to meet with people who you would traditionally meet with if you were to be a whistleblower. That could have been I don't know. I mean, I don't know that it's a good theory. Well, actually, so you have connected for me the dots that I had

not been able to connect. In the reading which is there there's writings about you know, going to see their their their MPs, and and then there was writings about the fact that some of these people were complaining about the unscientific nature of the tasks that they were assigned. In other words, they it sounded like they were assigned to do really stupid stuff and they were like, dude,

why am I doing this? And now I understand the implication of that is that it was an excuse to run your time to build for something just to build for something. In other words, saying you came to work all week and building for forty hours, but actually sitting at home and watching the telly the whole time. What could have been Actually, that could have been so much as just being shown aside and into something else. Because

they've gotten somebody that may be upstairs. It kind of gotten the idea that you were maybe going to wrap them out, so they wanted to get you away from the project. That's why they put you out something meaningless and stupid. But but then that that lens now, Okay, that that makes the connection for me of some of the things that I had read about like well, why

is this murder? And I was like, well, that does maybe freaking sense now it makes sense to why now they see, oh they've they've gotten angry enough, they're going to go complain to somebody who was in a position to do something about it. It's possibly that. And also, let's not let's not forget actually it's not that uncommon for scientists to be murdered by the opposition. Yeah, they can't be flipped. Yeah, that's it's not that uncommon. Um,

And so it's it's happened playing you know. That's one of the things that I always I've always been curious there are certain people who did come to this country after World War Two and worked for us, and I wonder how many of them didn't come here because they didn't want to turn a lot. Yeah, I'm sure we could do a lot of episodes on that. Let's not. Yeah,

I think that. I think a lot of Germans came here because in all this face at their country had been flattened oppuch better over, So I I think it's probably there are a few of these that are kind of tossed in here. But I do think it's reasonable to think that a lot of these suicides are suspect and probably not actually suicides. Yeah, I call this a mixed bag. This is a mix for me, really, actually, fifty fifty I'm using rough for me, there's twenty five

of them. I don't want to do that kind of map. For me, it's six of them, twenty five bad, seventy innocent. The other way around, I think of them are probably pretty innocent. I think seventy of them are in nefarious in some way. Whether they're all connected to each other or not, I don't know, But I think seventy of the swarmers. Yeah, you know some of them. I mean, like you know, the guys that made their appointments with

their MP's. Of course. Well, maybe we can maybe leave Sharif out of this because he had made an appointment before his MP to talk about his wife. I don't think I can leave but anyway, it was about her. But I don't think I can leave him out of there because I think that's clever. But yeah, yeah, it's true too. Uh So some of them were maybe murdered by you know, agentes of Marconi, the Defense, and then some of the other ones were maybe murdered by the

Russians or even the US. Oh yeah, you ask, well, who knows? I mean, we're murdered by Kraft. Well, but I mean because it's Macarona, not Marca. It turns out they were stealing the macaroni and cheese, the liquid gold, the secret formula before Velvita got the best. Hey, do you have anything else to add? That's what I'm talking about cheese. No, No, I'm just like you know, I don't think we're likely to sell its mystery time to say. No, I don't think so either, But I think it's interesting

to talk about. Uh So, if you want to see some of the links to our research, you can find that on our website. That's Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We are, of course on iTunes, We're on Google Play, We're streaming pretty much everywhere. UM, so you should subscribe and rate and review if you haven't done that on your respective however you are hearing me right now, UM, preferably a good one, but you know whatever, we'll tell

what we can get. We've got Facebook, We've got a group and a page, so you can join the group and like the page. We have Twitter, which is Thinking Sideways. We do have a subreddit which is Thinking Sideways. It's our thinking sideways. And then you can also email us with just you know, feedback, suggestions, offers of expertise, um, just pretty much. We like those emails the most. That

email addresses Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And then if you'd like to support the show in any way, we've got a couple of ways to do that. We have merchandise, there's a link on our website. Uh We've got PayPal if you want to do a one time donation, or we have Patreon, which is at patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways, which you heard in the beginning there. Um, and that's how you set up a reoccurring donation and that really sustains the show's budget. We don't really have

a budget. We kind of do this on our own dime. And so what that does? Any of those donations help us cover the basic costs of podcast. We're not out to make a profit. We're not collecting well, actually, I'm not wearing this gold watch because of the patre Yeah, we're not, you know, we don't. We're not trying to make income on this or anything like that. We just want to cover our costs, which has been pretty successful

really totally. So thank you so much for that. And if you haven't done that and you want to patreon dot com slash Thinking sideways, um P A t R E O N Yeah, google it, don't try to do it by yourself. Um, all of that having been said, I think we're gonna jet on out of here. Yeah, I think so. To the Loue people, we'll talk to you next week. Everybody