Thinking Sideways: The Disappearance of Alfred Loewenstein

everywhere else. But I wanted to say this. We were messing around with some different audio gear for this one and the sound quality isn't quite the best, but rest assured in the future episodes will sound a lot better. So enjoy from Thinking Sideways podcast. I'm yes, that is correct, Joe. I'm here on the banks the fugeit sound where a mystery is unfolding tonight after numer Agency each Side landing software air presario and Microsoft co founder Bill Gates has

been reported missing, and things only get stranger from there. Apparently, Mr Gates was aboard his lear Jet returning from a conference in British Columbia, surrounded by business associates, when he excused himself to use the plane's restaurant. A few minutes later, his personal assistant went to check on him and found that he was not in the washroom at the back of the airplane, nor was he anywhere aboard the craft.

A massive search is underway at this time, but as speculations and rumors swirl, authorities admit they are no closer to locating the billionaires whereabouts. So imagine that one day you pick up the paper and it tells you that somebody really rich and famous has just disappeared, say Bill Gates. And by the way, Bill Gates didn't just disappear while he was on his way to the quickie marter for

a pack of smokes like most people do now. He actually vanished, as you heard, from his corporate lear jet in mid flight, and nobody else in the plane even saw it or heard it happened. I mean, that sounds impossible, it sure does, But something like this actually did happen. Somebody vanished from his corporate jet about ninety years ago. Alfred Lowenstein was one of the richest guys in the world at this time, and he had to relieve himself.

And this is he rises from his seat and he walked back to the back of the plane where the restroom was housed, and he passes his business associate Arthur Hodges. He saw him lumber towards the back to the rear of the craft the English Channel, shooting by underneath him. His secretaries and his loyal valet back, Fred Baxter, they

all see him, they all see him go. But just like that, Alfred Lowenstein, financier, innovader, philanthropist and one very rich fellow, was gone, just like that bombast And this was on a warm July night over the English Channel. Well, he didn't return. After ten or fifteen minutes, Mr Baxter, the valet, wants to check on his employer, Mr Lowenstein. He found that the head was empty. There was quite literally not any sign of Lowenstein aboard this plane, which

was a focused seven tri motor, not a very huge plane. Frankly, Baxter made his way to the cockpit and handed a note to the pilot telling him that Mr Lowenstein had disappeared. That's the impossible had happened. He had vanished somehow off of a plane. So let's back up, who vanished? Who was Alfred Lollenstein? What in his biography could have left so many theories in the wake of his vanishing. Well.

Mr Lowenstein was born in Brussels, in eighteen seventy seven, but nineteen fourteen he established a successful bank and made extensive investments in electric power and artificial silk, which were two new and very growing industries at that time. In nineteen six he founded International Holdings and Investments Limited, which

was kind of almost a venture capital company. Raised large amounts of money from investors who wanted to climb on board the Lowenstein money making train, so at the time of his death, lonstein And was one of the richest men in the world. In nineteen eight he married Madeline the Zone was from a prominent Belgian family. She was beautiful, elegant, sophisticated,

but reportedly not very warm. We're emotional. The marriage wasn't passionate, but Alfred and Madeleine made the most of their arrangement. For Alfred a trophy wife and a male heir, and for Madeline stability and you know, more money than she could have never dreamed. Lots and lots of money doesn't hurt. May not have been the stuff of romance novels, but I don't think either had much to complain about. Reportedly

actually got along quite well. But back to our plane ride when Mr Baxter, the valet looked in the head. As I said, lon Stein wasn't there, which was strange. There's nowhere else he could have been. The plane is essentially divided into four sections, a cockpit, passenger compartment, the head, which is also where the entrance to the plane is the entry door, and beyond that the cargo area, which cannot be accessed from inside the plane. So there was

literally nowhere he could have gone. And so when Baxter found the empty head, he went forward, as I said, and handed a note to the pilot, Donald Drew, saying he had disappeared. Now at this point, the aircraft is still over the English Channel, about five miles north of Dunkirk, France. There remains speculation as to exactly why Drew chose to land the plane on a beach versus putting it down at the nearest airfield. If he explained himself when it happened,

that explanation has been lost to time now. The beach at this time was under the control of the French military, and they, of course, when they noticed a strange airplane sitting down on their beach, they went out there with some questions. The when they were apprized of what had happened. They instructed the crew too fly to the nearest airfield and phoned the police. Uh And when they did this, they offered a fairly simple explanation for what they thought

had happened. The pilot and the co pilot both sold the police that the exit door of the air plan open fairly easily, and that they believed that perhaps Alfred Lowenstein had bumped against the door. The door flew open and loen Stein fell out of the plane. They eventually recovered the body after about three weeks, and it only led to more questions than answers, and it was an

unrecognizable corpse, badly decomposed. Fisherman found it, and when they found him, he was wearing Lonstein's watch, lowen Stein's gets me to his silk underwear, his socks and his shoes and the rest of his clothes he was wearing were never found. Lowenstein was wearing shoes, but then somehow his pants came off. That's an odd one. I don't quite get that one. And maybe the fisherman took the pants. I don't know. But a private autopsy was done at

the request of Lonstein's wife, Madeline. He was found to have a crack skull and several broken bones, which is not a consistent with a long four thousand foot fall into the English Channel from an airplane. Doctors concluded that he had died from the fall and nowise. They found nothing abnormal. There was no poison in his system, he had no big medical issues, there was no indication of foul play, no defensive wounds Madeleine had Alfred buried in

her family's cemetery in an unmarked grave. She also declined to attend his funeral, but the case it wound down eventually in the press. Eventually, curiosity about his death was minimal from officials to say the least part of which being that he died outside of any official jurisdiction. That's right, he was over the English Channel and with that he was gone again. So another mystery for us to solve.

But we have. There's various series. Could have been suicide, could have been an accidental death, as a pilot and co pilot thought, and some people even thought perhaps murder, And there was even some discussion of perhaps an or express sort of murder scenario where everybody on the plane took part in the killing. I like the theory that maybe he tried to disappear. It could be that, And maybe he faked his own debt. It's that so he could skip town. Yeah, that's that's a viable theory. Onso,

But go back to the beginning here. Let's go bring him out a few more details here. July four, Lowenstein and his entourage left the Croydon Airfield in the south of London. It was apparently the number one aerodrome in England at the time. Yeah, So they take off about six pm and the plane was to The plan was to fly to Brussels, about two hundred miles east on Lowenstein's private airplane. As you informed us, that's a Belgian

made Folker seven trimotor. Yeah, a fun little plane. It was capable of cruising out of breath ticking one six miles an hour. So they should have been about a two hour flight, assuming the headwinds or anything like that. The weather was good. Sunset at Dunkirk was about nine oh seven pm, so it was a daylight flight. So it's also talking about who's on there. Yeah, the suspects that, yeah, our possible murder suspect, witnesses or what there are some

people on the plane. There was Donald Drew who was the pilot, Robert Little who was a co pilot, and mechanic, Fred Baxter that was Lowenstein's valet, Arthur Hodgson who was a secretary and business associate, Eileen Clark who was a stenographer,

and Paula Biddellon who was also a stenographer. Correct. Yeah, Also he actually Lowenstein liked to travel with a couple of stenographers because he was a very very energetic, busy guy, and he was constantly dictating memos and letters, and so having two stenographers there to bounce back and forth between apparently was his just standard way of doing business. Yeah, it's one of the reasons he got so rich. It's

the guy was just so energetic. But it should be noted that by this point in his life he had developed a few health problems. He was a workaholic and a stressful job. He had apparently a very high blood pressure and yes, it had some recent lapses which may have been related to the stress and perhaps the high blood pressure. He had some absent mindedness, which included one incident where he nearly walked into the propeller of his plane.

That's that would be the Fockers seven trimotor nearly walked into it. So I mean that would maybe lead to the theoretical explanation that it could be an accident that he just sort of missr mcgout out the back of the plane. Yeah, he could have like mistaken the door of the head for the for the door of the exit door of the plane. And it would have been

dark at this time. No, it would have been light still, but I don't know how light it was inside that airplane, of course, And that has been that has been proposed as a as a theorious that perhaps he mistook one door for the other. But I have a problem with that, which is this um the way it worked is is

to say, wait, they didn't have a separate door. There was a door between the passenger compartment and the little compartment of the back that had the entry fourier and that had the head, and there was a door between that and that door doubled as the door to the head. So when that door was on, that door was open, that the head was closed. And when that door and now and people are boarding and deboarding the plane and in flight, if you needed to use the head, then

you just went back and shut that door. Between the main cabin and that little fourier and use the head. The head at that point has no door on it. It's open. So if you walk back into that little foyer and close the door between it and the main passenger cabin, then then there was no chance of mistaking the head door for the exit door, because the head would have no door on it. He could look in there and see a toilet. Yeah. Well, and then also the police attempted to open the door mid flight on

a similar aircraft. Well, yeah, this is doing. Yeah. They tried at cruising speed, which I said was about a hundred and six miles an hour, and they tried to force the door open and they found that well, it didn't want to open. I mean, just try opening your car door. It's on the freeway sixty miles an hour and see what you know, it's not easy, right, makes sense and its perfectly imagine that really double the speed. So so the whole idea that he fell out of

the plane seems a little silly to me. Refresh my memory. When the plane landed, did they find this door open or closed? Closed? It was closed? Yeah, shut, Yeah, it's

nothing nothing seriously wrong. There There was one theory that one person put out is that is that perhaps the pilot and the co pilot that inspired to murder Lewinstein, and they placed the door that was faulty, that didn't latch correctly on the in the entry to the plane landed on the beach, so that one of them could hop hop out of the plane and pull that door off the plane and the swap it with the door to the luggage compartment, which was an identical sized door

which worked correctly. And that's one ding I find that a little hard to believe because even if the door didn't latch correctly, it still would not have come open easily. Okay, So now we're getting into murder. If these guys wanted to kill him, what why would they do that? Why would the pilot kill him? Well, I know, and well for one thing for it of course, you know, being a highly successful millionaire, he's obviously screwed some people in the past, and so he had a few enemies in

that respect. It could have been a hit as somebody paid the pilot in the co pilot to murder him as a possibility, and uh, and and the possibilities of suicide and murder kind of mixed together here because in spring and summer an anonymous document was being circulated financial circles in Europe which accused Lowenstein of quite a few financial crimes in the course of building his little empire. And this actually caused a big hit on his holding

company's stock. It did plummet, and so on paper at least his fortune did did actually go down quite a bit, and people involved in business dealings with Lowenstein began to see him as a liability. Papers reported he'd been turned down for a million dollar loan, so apparently it was maybe a little hard up for for walking around cash and uh and so is it possible that his financial part was about to fall apart and the pressure got to be too mus just would explain the suicide thing.

But also he had business partners and is holding company. This is where murder comes in. If they saw him as more of a liability than an asset at this point in time, then perhaps they thought they should just get him out of the way, and then they could just say, well, he's gone, no harm, no foul, let's go back to business as usual. I mean, I think from part of the bad puneet that that looks good, But Yeah, when you really start thinking about it, I don't.

I don't know that that holds up murder. If it's suicide, how's he get out of the plane? Which I had to open the door and couldn't do it, that's it. Yeah, he was in his fifties. I'm not sure what kind of shape he was in, but it would have been pretty difficult to force the door open far enough to to get out of the plane. I mean maybe he could have somehow forced it and squeezed through it. And

I don't know, maybe maybe. And then in terms of murder, there has to be I mean, Joe, there has to be an easier way to kill a guy then, you know, I mean, tiny space with six witnesses, are four other witnesses whoever was involved. Yeah, well there's got to be I mean I would think there's poisoning or maybe run him over with the car. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to kill somebody, and it looked like a random mugging on the streets of London. Yeah, and it's

just not a very elegant way to go to that murder. Oh, I know, I know. And but there's a there's one guy who was actually probably more than anybody else researched this case. And that the guy's name is William Norris, and he wrote a book called The Man Who Felt from the Sky, which was published in seven and he is the foremost proponent of the murder theory. He believes that Pilot Drew and Copilot Little were hired by Lowenstein's business partners to kill him. Uh. Some other possible suspects

might include his wife or some of his enemies. As I said, I don't think that his wife really is a viable suspect personally. So why his partners wanted to kill him? As I already mentioned, there was that anonymous document that was the rounds, So they wanted to They wanted to perhaps avoid being drug under by him if he did wind up going down for a bunch of financial crimes, which seems like a reasonable mode of Again,

it would be there's easier ways to do this. Yeah, and and and of course you know, in a sense, the other problem I have with this theory is that when he when the word came that Lowes Stein had disappeared, when I hit the news, stocks and his company dropped quite a bit. So these guys, actually, these guys actually lost money, his partners lost money when he disappeared. And then when you know, if you were if you were

to kill Ellen Musk, yeah, what happens to SpaceX? Yeah, stock would probably follow great money making friends indubably would fall. Did I just say indubitably? Oh my god? Yeah. I think they really would have done more damage to themselves by killing him. But again, I don't know how strong the case for financial malfeasance was against Lonstein. Either you have any idea who distributed this document, this anonymous document. I think the name eventually did come out, and I

think I was. I think I messed up and didn't note it in my notes share damn it. But it doesn't matter, doesn't I think we know who it was, and it was maybe considered a suspect um. I don't think so. I mean I don't. I don't think so.

And I think that if you if you really want to murder him, if you got that big of a grudge against him, maybe this is just me in my mindset, I would I would be thinking I wouldn't telegraph my motive to everybody by by you know, panning this anonymous letter and then killing him when by the way, when when eventually your name is going to be linked to

the letter and he'll be a prime suspect. Maybe the idea was to knock him out of his position of power with the letter, and when that failed, date crafted that could have been. That could have been, I suppose so. Or maybe the idea was to just like black in his name enough so that when he disappeared, people instead of being shocked and just made it just be kind of relieved. Maybe that was the idea. I don't know. All these plans are yeah there then it is rather elaborate.

But but William Norris, the author did some extensive research. As I said, he did find that both Drew the pilot and Little the co pilot, after that flight lived well beyond their means for quite a long time. And as for the valet, the secretary of the stenographer as well, if they didn't participate in the murder, they must have been at least paid off in under this theory, or

maybe made to disappear. And actually Arthur Hodged and the secretary and the Tustonographers actually do vanish from history after this point, so maybe they were murdered, done away with Baxter. But Mr Baxter The Valet, on the other hand, did not vanished. He was hired by lowen Stein's son, Bobby Lowenstein, but he did die several years later, about four years later, I think, from an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound well

made with Bobby Lowenstein's revolver. By the way, all the sketchy this is so, it's so weird, how like there's there's people disappearing and suicides. Once it seems like there's some there's something to it, there's something sketchy about this. Somebody vanishes and the suicide. Of course, suppose years later.

One of the theories that I have, and I'm maybe jumping ahead of myself here, is that if you're thinking that perhaps backs through the Valet was murdered and made to look like a suicide, maybe he found out something he wasn't supposed to know. Maybe he found out that Lowenstein had disappeared, was living somewhere else under a different name, and once that, once that, once he found that out, he had to be gotten rid of. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, so, if we're gonna get onto that theory, I favor in general, much more pedestrian explanations of things like this, Yeah, I mean to you. But in this case, the thing that kind of makes the sense, in most sense, is that he pays off the people on the airplane, lands the airplane in France, as you would say, beats feet out of there. Yeah. The least comment they said, we lost him. Yeah, and he fell out of the plane. Yeah, he's like he's in a car headed for Belgium, headed

for Russia, heading for wherever he wants to go. He could have even actually he could have even not told most of the people on the plane. He could have just told the pilot say here's what i'm gonna do, and I'm gonna pay, or maybe he told both pilot and co pilot and paid them off handsomely and said, look, you know, I'm going to go into back and and well,

actually thinking about it, let me think here. So I have had this thought that perhaps he hadn't had that plane that long, perhaps he bought it for a reason, and that and that is that from the from the head or or from the four eight compartment, perhaps he could have installed a hidden door. So if he wants to fake his own disappearance and death, so he's got

his plan all prepped and everything he goes back. He's already he's already cleared the pilot, and he said landing on the speech, and and so then he goes to the head, but goes and heights with the luggage instead. And as soon as he touches down the beach, then he gets out the luggist compartment door and lace flat and the pilot of course under instructions. You know, mosy's down the beach. Aways taxis down the beach, and then lon Stein picks himself up and walks across the beach.

At this point, he's far enough in the rear view mirror he just looks like some random dude walking down the beach. So he walks across the beach and there's a road right there off the beach where he's got perhaps hypothetically somebody weighing in a car to pick him up. I think, what's I think. What's challenging about the disappearance, all the disappearance theories for me, is that we don't know enough about lon Stein's finances. We don't you know,

did he have some money scrolled away? Did you have a million bucks in a Swiss bank account that we don't know about? Well, you know this is again me and my mindset. If I were saying anybody stinking rich, I see, if I were Bill Gates or anybody, I would have say five ten million bucks in just cash, you know, just scrolled away in various hiding places. I would have some gold, I would have all kinds of stuff. I wouldn't have all my money just in in stocks

and bonds and things like that. I'd want to have some cold, hardcats. And in the nineteen twenties is the era of barre bonds of extremely large currencies. He could be and we we know that he was invested in a lot of different businesses. So I mean that's that's the one of all the ones that that we've come across. And that's why I think there's actually an entertaining case for me, is that I would say, oh, it probably was just an accident, but it kind of is the

one that makes the best sense. Especially they didn't land on an airfield. That's really would keep me in on it. We're talking about this, they land on the beach. Why do they land on the beach. Well, yeah, there's there's a few things about that that was to take a look at, take into the beach, because that kind of flipped my whole thinking on it. Pilot the copios told the police that the door opened easily. Yeah, they should know that when that air steam is pushing on the door,

it's never going to open easily. Their pilots, So let's it. So let's let's look at all the evidence. Consider this, the pilot, Donald Drew, puts the plane down on a deserted beach. Drew and Little both told the police that the door on the airplane opened easily, and that was not true exactly, and both there a little appeared to have lived beyond their means after the disappearance. The incident took place over the English Channel, outside of the jurisdiction

of any estate. Yeah. And of course, as I said, the Fokker trimotor belonged to lowin Stein, so he had control over and he could have modified it compartment to hide in a hatch to escape from Yeah, exactly. So, considering all those things, I say, we've got a little the suicide, the murder, and the murder again, I just think I just find that too hard to believe. And I typically in cases like this, I usually decide I usually go for something other than he arranged his own disappearance.

But in this case, I don't know. I gotta say, I kind of like the disappearing theory, like you said

the same page. And there's another possibility, which is that maybe he didn't even get on the plane to begin with, and while everybody's everybody's like looking over the English Channel for him, you know, or and if anybody suspected something, Let's say, you know, somebody sharp minded like you and I suspected that he faked the whole thing and he was like he'd actually gotten off at Dunkirk and gone away and they were looking for him there he's actually

already on a plane heading to say America, and he's he was never even over the English Channel to begin with. So that's another possibility. That's I think it's a really interesting possibility. The other thing that really caught my caught my eye was that his wife buried him in an unmarked grain. Yeah, that's interesting, and that I mean because the you know, I know that forensics were probably pretty young back then. Oh you know, the ultimate thing would

be to dig him up. I mean, even today, we could probably get some amount of d n A or dental records or something to see if that body was really his. Putting him in on our grave increases the likelihood that that that corpse gets lost. Yeah, there's that. That's also it was built. It was actually buried in

the Zone family graveyard. It was a private graveyard. So I don't know exactly what the logistics Legally speaking, I assume you can still get a cord order to have something exumed, but if it's private property like that, it might be a little harder. Well, and then you could come up with the thing that if you did get the card order or whatever, it all comes through that the records are incorrect, The records have been lost, records were intentionally offuskated so that it would be harder to

dig that body up. I mean, how many rich men are buried in unmarked grace. Not many? Yeah, I know, it's it's an intriguing thing. And I but if his body could be found, it would be worthwhile, I think to actually do a little rubble d n A against him.

And I assume it's known where his son Bobby, who has to be dead by now, it's I assume it is no more Bobby is buried, So let's, you know, let's dig up the bodies and see if there are match I mean, I'm sure there's still a Low and Stone bloodline out there somewhere they can Oh yeah, probably somebody is still alive. But it might not even have to dig Bobby up right. Yeah, So okay, what what whether any other theories or is this kind of we settled on this because I'm the more we talked about it,

I'm I'm sold on self disappearance. Yeah, I'm kind of sold on that too. I think he decided to, you know, and it may well be you know, the he said when this so called anonymous document came out accusing him of all sorts of crimes, it was it was just all pure liable perhaps, and it might have been enough truth there that perhaps he was concerned about perhaps an indictment or two, and thought, well, maybe it's time to

just get out of town. And that's that's That might be another way of you know, I don't know what financial regulation was like in Terrible Yeah, it might that much. Yeah, But and it might well be that that he sort of knew that if he left then the FED would not step in and dismantle his companies or penalize his partners or his family or any of that stuff. Of if he just died, they would just drop the whole matter. Yeah,

and that's what happened. And so essentially by disappearing and quote unquote dying, then perhaps he escapes not just indicting himself and maybe imprisonment, but also the destruction of his companies, which were kind of key to his partner's well being

and his family's well being. So perhaps he just thought, I'll just go off and live on a little island somewhere on the several million bucks that I've got scrolled away in this Swiss bank account, you know, which then means, you know, somewhere out there there's a there's a grave from five of a of a man living under an assumed name. Yeah, someplace. Yeah, he lived under an assumed name. Probably probably got himself a new girl and then fathered

another kid, you know. You know, it's something. Yeah. So if you're out there and you are the you know, the I think Dolly's descendant of Mr Lowenstown, we want to hear from you. Yeah, we'll put you in the podcast. Yeah, we totally what we'll do. We'll do a little follow up episode here And if you're out there, Mr Lowenstein, and it happened to still be alive for some reason. Yeah, welcome to use the podcast, would so else? I think

that probably reps it up. If you'd like to get ahold of us, you can send us an email at The Shocking Details Podcast at gmail dot com. You can also check out our website that's dub dub dub the Shocking Details dot com. We're on Twitter that would be at Shocking Details and of course we're also on Facebook. Go to Facebook dot com, slash groups Slash Shocking Details Podcast until next week to the loop