Thinking Sideways: The Disappearance of Ben McDaniels

visa problem. Um. So, as always, this week we have another mystery for you. Today we're going to talk about the disappearance of Ben McDaniels. And uh been dispired after he entered a he was diving, and he disappeared after he entered a underwater cave on the eighteenth of August, and he never came back out, and he never came back out, well that we know of, he was never

seen again. Who was never seen again? Now, if you are at all a claustrophobic or be afraid of the water, or worse both, you're gonna get the Bejesus scared out of you with this story to just warn you up ahead of deep water, deep water. Yeah, hopefully none of our listeners have babies. That's so weird that I get it. Yeah, I totally get that weird. We need to stop doing the podcast because you're understanding my logic all of a sudden. It's not good. It's creepy. Yeah, well, how does this

story go? Well, before we get into the story, actually, this is a listeners suggestion, So I do want to say thank you to both Eden and Emily. They are currently the only ones listed as suggesting it. You very much. Anybody else suggested and we forgot to put journalists. Sorry about that, Yeah, because this was a great story, wild right you two. No, I've been working on this for a month or more now, Yeah, good story. So taking it from the beginning, Ben McDaniels was a thirty year

old man. He was originally from Tennessee and the year two thousand nine was a really bad year for Ben. He uh, he got divorced, which I imagine took a lot of his things. His business went under, which I'm sure took a lot of his things as well, and then he lost his home, which would have taken one of his big things. So he had a really bad year. This was also one single year, and he had some

tax problems too. Yeah, the business going under his I think it was a construction business, if I remember correct. And when it failed, he had a tax bill between the state of Tennessee and the Feds of somewhere around fifty thousand, which is a hefty, hefty bill. So he didn't really know what to do. So, doing what a lot of people do, he moved back in with his parents. His mom and dad were very gracious and they took him in and after a while they said, well, listen,

you need to kind of figure your stuff out. You need to get your act together. Tell you what, and as they called it, why don't you take a sabbatical? What a sabbatical from unemployment, from life, from life as Actually it's okay. They have a home in Florida since yeah, their second home. It's in Santa Rosa. It was a condo if I remember correct, And they said, go to the condo, live in Florida, will pay your expenses, will cover your living costs. And imagine they gave him money

to you know, spending cash. Absolutely have some money though they did have money. They have by the way, Santa Rosa, just to spare having to look at Google Earth. It's on the Gulf coast of Florida. Yeah, yeah, it's not on the Atlantic coast. Yeah yes, um so yeah, Ben, Ben, you know, okay, be hard to turn that down. Yeah, I really would. So he went to he went to Florida, and while he was there, he began to indulge an

old hobby, which was scuba diving. From the stuff that his family has put out, Ben began diving at the age of fifteen, so he seems to have been an experienced diver. He wasn't a professional, but he was, you know, an amateur diver. And I don't have a sense of if how you know how frequently that continued. One he don't in Florida, it was he was definitely diving, like all the time. That was pretty much all he was doing. It seemed like, and it seemed like when he was

a kid, he really enjoyed it. So he kind of got maybe he picked up an old hobby. But I don't necessarily have the sense that this is something he'd been doing avidly the entire time. I would not disagree

with that at all. In a place like Tennessee, it might be tough to find good places to go because I know, I know people around here who are scuba divers, and there's really not much of any place to scuba diving if we don't yeah deep deep lakes or what really make good or beautiful underwater landscapes or what you're after interesting things. So I understand why he might not have done it so much, because you don't want to jump in the river and scuba dive. Yeah, not so fun. Yeah. Well,

also like a waste of resources. You can snorkele in it. You should just snorkle in it. Um. So well, Okay, So Ben, he's scuba diving, and he evidently didn't like diving in saltwater, which I can't hold against him. Saltwater rashes, Yeah, it's it's gonna it's gonna take a little physical toll on you. Plus the buoyancy issue. I was just gonna say, the buoyancy issue. Yeah. Ben was not a small guy. I think he. I think Ben was like six foot ballpark, which would and I think it was something like a

hundred eight to ten. Okay. I knew that he wasn't a skinny guy by any means, So, but he didn't he didn't like to go there. So he liked freshwater dive. So what's he do. He finds a place near him called Vortech Spring because it's freshwater. It's absolutely beautiful and it is fresh for those who are going to pull a Joe and go to Google Earth and look for Vortech Springs. It's just outside of Pasta Leon, Florida, so it wasn't too far away from where he lived. And

as Devin said, it's really pretty. I mean it's a giant, it's a it's a natural spring. So it is cool water upwelling out of the earth. Yeah, that's not really cool in my book. Well, when it's a hundred percent humidity and a hundred degrees that way right, we're not talking Oregon Coast cool. Correct. It is very nice to swim in, and in fact, its main draw is for people to swim in it. They've got zip lines and stuff like that. I mean it looks like a fun

place to go. Oh yeah, I'd like to go. But and I'm sure the water was just all fresh and clear because it get getting changed out. I mean it was up well from the aquifer. And then that is exactly why it is so popular with divers because open water divers can go there. The water temperature is consistent, the current is gentle. It's consistent but gentle, and therefore it's not dirty. There's lots of aquatic life to check out.

So it's really really interesting. And let's keep talking about the cave because there's a couple of things that I want to go over, one of which is the shape of the cave. So the vortex springs. If you think about it, it's a giant hole in the ground. There's

a big basin. It's fifty to sixty ft deep, which equates to about fifteen and sixteen so it's fairly deep a ways down and if you look at it in profile, if you look at it, there's maps available which you should look up because we're not ever going to be

able to describe it. Well no, no, but it almost to me from the side, looks like a semi deflated pastry bag, you know, the thing that like that you decorate cakes with, because it's it's kind of triangular and then it's zig zags back and forth and it's really skinny. Devon's laughing, but she gets it, she totally gets it. But so it goes down for for quite a bit, nobody knows how deep the cave is and by or

how long the cave is. Is the the appropriate way to say that, we know basically how deep it is at the back correct. What they need to do is is like dress up a small child in a wet suit with tanks and everything and send it to that skinny part. Think you're supposed to do that? I think, yes, yeah, it's crazy, I know, Joe. But okay. For the length of the cave, we know that the cave is over seventeen feet long, which again for our folks that are

to the same measurement system, it's law. At least at least that's it's probably farther, but that's as far as anyone has gone that we know of, and that that number, by the way, is self reported. It's from prett reliable source, but it's self reported for the distance. If anybody's ever gone into a cave, as we were talking about, they get harder and harder to go into because they get smaller and smaller as they go, they get narrower, and this cave is no different as it dives down the

walls and expand and contract and change shape. But they generally continually get closer and closer together. They call them restrictions, I think is what they call them. And I'm sorry, yeah, bottleneckt So it's like, you know, it's a wide open cave and then there's this like part that you have to squeeze through and then it opens up again and it's narrow and that can be horizontally or vertically or both. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are caves near us called the Caves

which do this. Um, if you've ever been in any cave, you know what we're talking about. Yeah, there's not Ape Cave. There's not too much of that though. It's i mean it's good to the very end, well at the very end. Yeah. There's another one that's only a couple of miles away from there, called Little Red River Cave. Yeah. Have you been there. Yeah, it's a gated cave, but but you know,

you go all the way to the end. He didn't really, Okay, when you get it goes downward and there's a there's it's it's a difficult, more difficult than Ape Cave, but it keeps going downward and there's some climbing and stuff involved, and as you get down towards the end, water starts coming in because you go below the water table and so there's water dripping from the ceiling and running running down the floor and everything. And then you finally get to this end, then it's just a lake. It's like

it ends in water, which it may continue. Oh yeah, so if you put scoopy gear on and went down that, I'm not about to, but if you wanted to, you can see how far that thing goes. But I had my creepiest cave experience in there. One time. I was like, I was caved with three friends and we got to the and then we turned around and started heading back to the entrance and I was bringing up the rear and suddenly way back and this is this is like actually a distance away from the end of the cave,

and suddenly I heard this. I heard this thud coming from behind me in the cave, and I stopped and I looked. I never found out what it was. Definitely, if I was looking over my shoulder a little bit more than I normally would, butt like something heavy dropped, like one thing dropped, like something something, and yeah, kind of something to look on Devon's face. Yeah it was. It was just a real soft just just sort of a way off of the distance kind of. And I say,

I don't like somehow it lived through it. Well back to vortex springs. Yeah, okay, So at the end or the farthest reach that we know of the cave is only about ten inches high, which is really be the really small, especially if you got a bunch of gear on. Yeah. Yeah, and there's and we're gonna we'll talk a little bit about the diving and styles that are required. But people are squeezing themselves through these cracks a while carrying their

oxygen supply. So it's it's not something to be taken lightly, and it is definitely something that you need to know how to do before you do it. Still, don't do it. Well, We've read enough, I know all of us have read enough stories of people getting lost in caves. Some of them were lucky enough to be found alive. And this is cave diving, not just people lost in in caves that are filled with air. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's dangerous,

crazily dangerous. I think the only way I'd do that, I'd take some fluorescent some fluorescent green cord with me or something like that. So I got to just run a line the whole way. Cave divers do typically run a cord. They tend to run a cord behind them so they can turn around and easily retrace their path out because it's very easy in a pitch black environment to lose your way. Breaks or something like yeah, anything

like that. Now, for Vortech Springs, what they've done is there was a there was a string of people who drowned in the cave, got lost and out of air and drowned, and so the state said we're gonna shut you down. Probably, So what the owners of Vortex Springs did is about three hundred feet in they put in a gate. And that gate has it's a keyed gate. If you present identification and certifications saying I can cave dive,

they will give you the key and let you in. Otherwise, it's meant to stop people from going into the cave and getting lost and dying. Now, the how effective that gate is, it's not really high tech. It looks like a bunch of pieces of rebar that are jammed into the stone and happens to have a lock and a hinged gate on it. You know, my sense of it was that it is more to discourage than to actually

stop people. I mean, I think that if you're a diver and you're kind of inexperienced and you're just thinking, oh, just go to this cave blah blah blah, and you encounter a thing that looks like that and there's a stop sign, and it's just it's just sign that's got the grim Reaper on it. Right, Yeah, you're you know, instead of just the sign, which would be pretty easy to just kind of ignore, it's fun. Yeah, I think it's more meant to be like that symbolic, hey, don't

go pass here unless you want to die. Yeah. The problem with the gate is it is easy to bypass, or it is not difficult to bypass, I should say. I wouldn't say it's easy, but people have been known to get around. Well, there's a video. Actually, there are a couple of videos by this this guy um that I watched, and I just wanted to bring it up real quick. Actually, let me do real quick. Just I just want to finish just two little bits of detail about the cave and then we can talk about that,

because that's really important and interesting. But the only other thing that I wanted people to know about when it comes to the cave itself is that the depth of the cave that we know is around a hundred fifty feet deep. That's underwater, which would equate again that's forty five. And that's a significant number because divers who tend to go to a hundred and thirty feet or below typically have to breathe not just straight a normal gas mix

of what's in the atmosphere, regular air mix. They've actually got to do a special gas mixtures, and that's to help stave off things for decompression issues, to bends exactly. That was. I've been told that most divers actually always turn around. Most A hundred thirty is the depth that you can go. But if you want a safety cushion, correct, Yeah, yeah, for a safety cushion, it's somewhere in that, in that range, but that's the bottom. After that you have to be.

You should be if you well, if you don't have if you yeah, But and then you were gonna talk about this the gate, I know because you were looking at the video. Yeah, I was just going to bring up a little bit um. There's some really really interesting videos that you should watch if you can stand to Um, it's a little I mean, it's a little creepy. I you know, told I was telling you guys that I have developed a new fear um. But one of these videos,

it's not totally clear what's happening. But in one of them, it was filmed by a guy named Nick. He and he has a diving partner and they do these deep water cave videos just all the time. They have a bunch at Vortex Springs. One of them is Nick showing how easy it is to get over the gate um and it doesn't take a about a minute. You know, there's a little spot where you can just do. You have to push your tank in before you um, and then you climb over and then you put your tank

back on um. And he does it a couple of times. But that's it's really interesting. It's very easy. It looks very easy once you know how to do it. Yeah, it looks very very easy to me, very very easy to get caught on that thing. It's ground, but yeah, I mean it would be pretty easy to snag something on it too. Yeah. Yeah, this is not something that we're saying lightly to just go do what we're saying, don't.

This is yeah, please don't. It's just this is at the from the videos we've seen from that time possible. And I haven't heard anything at the gates ever been upgraded. But yeah, I suspect it has, but I don't know. I hope probably since then. Yeah, I mean, that's super interesting. And I have more about the videos that the guys posted later, but I'll talk about that one. It's relevant. Okay, sounds perfect, So let's get back to the story because

that's enough about the cave itself. Yeah. Um, and there are maps available on the internet, so to look at one of those, we will probably have been postal link might be one of the links. So Ben could have been diving at Vortex Spring for up to four months. He probably was. He probably was because he moved into his parents house in Florida in April of that year, and so I imagine not to long after that, I would I'm going to guess several weeks after that started diving.

He was. It was kind of a regular around there. He was a total regular. They knew him. He was there almost every day, absolutely, But what he did that is a giant no. No. From everything I know about diving and everything I've ever read about diving is he was so low diving now, you know, even even above ground caving. He really don't want to do that alone. No, there's because if something that's any kind of adventuring you

don't want to do alone, you don't. Uh, it's it's it's a no. It's you know, you always have you dive buddy, you always go down with somebody else. But according to accounts that came out after the fact, Ben was either a little bit unapproachable, maybe came off as a jerk, or people have described him as overconfident, and so maybe that came through in a negative way. You know, somebody just read that wrong, and so he never got

a he never made a friend to his dive. But I almost wonder if the overconfidence really kept people from wanting to be his dive partner. In that it read as reckless. You don't necessarily want well not just cocky, but I mean genuinely reckless. You don't want to have a dive partner who's always saying, hey, let's break the rules and do all these things. And I don't you know, I'm not as trained as I should be, but we're going to do this thing anyway. That's not what you

want from a dive partner. You want somebody that you're like, very confident in their abilities. I assume he he did. He did seem to come off by some of the stuff that I've read and watched. He said that his skills were much more than they were in terms of his experience. Um, because there's a movie that we'll talk about where he had he was trying to pass himself off almost as a dive instructor, which he was in

no way, shape or form qualified to be. He wanted to be, he wanted to he did, he wanted or later. But the point is that he was acting as if he was one, and I imagine that for people who knew what was going on, that was really off putting. So that that worked against him. That absolutely did not. That behavior didn't work in his favor. Whether whether that's what he did or not, I don't know. Well, the point is he wanted in by himself. Yeah, you never know.

I didn't know, Ben. Obviously, he had only been there for four months, so he maybe didn't have enough time to really meet people, or maybe he just liked to dive alone. No, that's that's absolutely possible. Absolutely good idea. No. Um, So he was like we said, though he's he's certified to dive in open water, he's not certified to dive in caves. Uh. And as we said, he had he decided that what he wanted to do was become a

dive instructor. He had also expressed to his family that he wanted to learn to cave dive and then he wanted to open his own dive business. Yeah, I didn't want. One way to learn the cave divers to do it with the qualified instructor. Another way to do it is to read a lot and then just do it. I'm sorry, I should be clear. I'm making a joke. Yes, please

do not do that. Do not do that. Okay. So if you want, I want people who are interested in this to do this, which is to look up technical diving and look at the certifications that you have to get. And it is a huge list with a certain number of hours of every one of them before you can be and have that to your technical diving record. You can have that and say I can do this, Okay, it's all hours based. Ben wanted to do this thing.

So he was going underwater and logging tons and tons and tons of hours at a breakneck speed to say, so if a certification takes a hundred hours, He's like, well, if I go six hours a day every day, I'll be there in no time flat. You know, take me less in two weeks. I can totally make this happen. Well, that's not the way that you're supposed to do it, because the reason that it takes hours is so that

you learn how to do certain things. They become automatic reactions and automatic functions so that when you're in a catastrophic situation, you automatically react in the proper way. And that wasn't what he was doing. He was just piling on the hours based on his log books anyway. Yeah, which is do you want to explain real quick what a log book is? Oh, that's a very good question. So it just seem so s logbook is quite literally a book where you write in a log of your activities,

something like a time card. You say, when in the water at did x y Z exited the water at so for a total of time of underwater I mean, and that's it. And then it's a tally and you're just keeping a record of everything you're doing and practices, then to go back and reread your log books to think about things that you did. And this is why you don't do things. It's such a high speed. Say once a week you go die for three hours and then you reread your logbook three weeks later, like I

totally don't remember. Oh that's ride. And then I do this like you know, I equated to the same thing as taking a final. Did you guys ever do this? You had cram like mad before the final and then take the test and remember none of it the next day after the test. Yeah, that's how I did finals for sure. But I mean, I think what you're supposed to do that? No, And I think you also in your log book you take notes and draw diagrams and

you know any important information. I suspect you also say things like, here's what my oxygen tank was at when I went in, Here's what it was at when I came out, how long it cooked decompressed. Here's how I'm feeling, you know, here's how I'm feeling the next day. Well that's more of a dear diary, but I'm making But I mean, I think those are all very important things to be keeping track of as well, probably he probably should be paying attention to how your body reacts to

all that crap. Your body time to react is the really important part, right, because if it turns out that the next day something is going to negatively affect you, if you just keep doing it and doing it and doing it and you haven't given your body time to do that reset, you're done for. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's what a log book is. Yes, Okay, So let's go to the eighteenth of August two, which was a Wednesday. By the way, Ben McDaniels went in the early part

of the day. He took a dive in Vortech Spring and went down and afterwards he was seen by people hanging around. So it wasn't like he did his dive, came out, went home. He hung around, he was writing his log book, he's adjusting his gear. We know that at one point he went and filled his tanks because of some security footage. We don't know what he filled his tanks with, whether it was just a regular air

mix or some specialized mix. We don't know. By his tanks, I mean, there were other tanks that were found that didn't. This is the question. We don't know about that we don't know which tanks he put the air in, whether they the ones that he was wearing and disappeared with, or the ones that were subsequently found after the They also we also don't know for certainty that the ones that were found after the fact were actually Ben's. It's it is pretty strong strong, but we we don't. They

don't say Ben McDaniels edged into them. They do now, but they didn't. Yeah. Yeah, And also another thank it's frustrated about this mystery is I would like to know exactly how many tanks been owned. That would be useful. I don't know if there's a way to find that out. Well, I guess you could call his family, but the problems they might not even know. They probably don't. Yeah, I don't know that they have an accurate number, And I don't know that anybody's ever said that. That's a really

good thing. And I thought the same question, but it's not. I mean, I believe that if the tanks that were found were bends, then he had at least four tanks, if not more. But he had to have the three, so he would have had to have had at least four, yes, actually five, Because you don't cave dive without two tanks, right, Well you shouldn't. Well, yeah, I guess you could, but keep going for an all time record of some kind.

But that was what my face was was that, you know, we they found the tanks, and they found at least two of them had the X the special mix in it, the regular air, regular air in them. They weren't a special mix at all, two of them, that's right, I'm sorry. I had them switched. Two of them were normal air and one of them was the special mix, right, but

one which was weird. Right, It's weird because, as I said before, if you're going to dive in that cave and you're going to go to that depth, you should be using the special gas, the gas mix, not just regular air for the decompression issues. So that questionable judgment

in terms of the way he went about it. Well, I thought that normal air was used when they were coming up during decompression, that they would be your cans for like when you're coming up slowly once you were above a certain No, I may have made that up.

I think I actually don't know enough. I remember reading so much about it, and there's so much technical details that I will be honest, I do not remember the writing answer to that, So I don't know if I would just think that if you're using something special below a hundred and thirty it means that you can't use that something special above a hundred and thirty feet. No, it doesn't. Yeah, you can use it above. Yeah, it

totally doesn't stop using it to set. But I imagine it's probably cheaper to buy just regular compressed air than it is to buy that special mix, So that might that might account for that, that's true, But I don't I don't know that that he was really concerned with cash either. I don't like that sense. Given some things that we're going to talk about in a little bit here, Actually, let's let's leave those tanks where they are. And I don't mean that is a pun. But so he filled

his tanks. He fills his tanks, and then Vortic Spring closes at four o'clock at night, So everybody who's swimming and having good time goes home, but Ben goes for a dive at some time around seven or seven thirty that night. So did you sort of have a browth thing on with the people, the people that owned it? Is that how you could do that well, the divers

could stay and finish their dives. So swimmers, the people that are using the zip line everything, Hey hey guys, pools clothes get out, you know, to get all those people out of there. But if you're a diver and you go in at three o'clock and you've got two or three hours worth of air, you're gonna stay under And so I I don't know how it was that he would wrangle the I'm gonna go in after the pool is closed thing. It's not as if the pool was gate it off. If you looked at pictures, you

could walk in anywhere. You really could. I mean, there's an entrance with stairs for divers, but he could have literally gone in at any point. I had a sense that the owner of Vortex Springs, Kelly, really liked Ben, or at least after the fact, seemed to like Ben. I think the clarification, I think he just didn't care, and Ben was kind of at least amicable with the people who ran it, given the bit we're going to talk about a second here. So I think I mean,

I think he just was doing it. It was against the rules, but they were kind of like, well, he's going to do it either way, so we can't stop in yeah, or he paid people off, also possible. Absolutely,

that's absolutely a possibility. So here's the thing. We know that he's in the water because somewhere around seven thirty that night, as he's going down through the entrance of the cave heading to the gate, he passes two other divers who were exiting the cave who also happened to be a employees of Vortex Spring and their names are Chuck Cronin and Eduardo Tehran and ed where those stops, I mean they passed him, He stops, He signals to Chucks, you know, wait, goes back to Ben and he unlocks

the gate for Ben. And that is because they were convinced that Ben had been going into the cave and however he was doing it, he was bypassing that gate. He was wearing his helmet and life he was wearing. He's wearing his all of his gear to go into helmet. That's the important bit, right, He's wearing a helmet. You

could go down it's called the Piano room. Is that is this big open cavern right before the gate um, which is the kind of the last stop for any basically, Yeah, so I think you can go down there without a helmet correct into the piano room, but when you go deeper you need a helmet. So that was I thought why they thought he was definitely and going for a well, yeah, if he's if he's in that area, then it's pretty

obvious what he's doing, well, you know. And the thing about it is he's been hanging around so much, you gotta figure he's pushing the cave, you know, ever deeper all the time. But and one other reasons. It's not just the whole going around thing, but they he figured that if you let him in, that would save been five minutes maybe of air. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's that's the only logical reason that I can think of. Now. At first I thought, well, I mean, it only takes

a minute or so to get into who cares. But really, where it's important is what he's getting out. If he's running low on air and now he's got to stop and do something that takes two or three minutes, that's two or three minutes of air that he may not have. And I think that Edwardo even said that he said he thought that Ben was jumping the fence anyway, and he would try and save him sometimes, so he unlocked the gate even though he knew we should make it

very clear. He knew that Ben was not certified and not well trained to be cave diving, and actually, um, you know, to speak to Ben's talent as a diver aptitude if he will. Um that guy was talking about earlier, Nick who records all these videos. There's lots and lots of videos out here there that he has, and I believe and I'm this is just me putting a couple of things together. So I'm not sure on this, so

please don't cristify me if I'm wrong on this. But Nick has a video called, uh, the Lost Diver in the Piano Room, and it's like a three part thing and it's him and his diving partner are going down on a routine swim. They record the whole thing, and then when they're swimming around the piano room, they encounter a diver who I guess is maybe lost. I don't know who I believe is Ben. Didn't they say they thought it was him after the fact, Um, I you know,

I don't know. Here. The way that I put this together was this guy who films these videos named Nick Um. And then in this movie that we watched, Nick's or Ben's Vortex, they show a Facebook post that Ben had made a couple of days before he went missing that said, oh, I think I interrupted a video shoot today when I was down training. Uh, Nick was down there and he was he was, you know, filming, and I think that they, you know, they helped me find my way out or

something like that. So I believe that this is the case. And I again, I don't know that for sure, but I think if it is Ben. So the way that divers, Yeah, they do this side tank thing where you think of a normal scupid Ever, they have the tanks on their back instead when you're cave diving, you mount them to

your side so that you're slimmer behind your armpits. They run along the sides of your body so that you are a when swimming horizontally, you're not a thick Yeah, so you're flatter so that you can maneuver yourself in into and out of crevices easier. Um, So it looks like Ben is really struggling. Well, it's hard to say. I saw the same video and it could be that or he could just be fool around. I mean, he

could have been. I really don't know. It looks like it's hard to say what what the hell exactly, Well, it's hard to say. It's hard to see too, but it's hard to say except for the two beams. Yeah, those guys need to work in their lighting. Well it's hard. So it's hard for a number of reasons. One, you know, back to the buoyancy issue. It seems like he's kind of floating. He's having a hard time diet, he's not using the right amount of weighty compensate for. It does

look like that a lot. And it looks like he's moving more awkwardly than the videos of people who are trained with the side mount system that I've seen. And he's also doing the hand signal for like which way, Um, so he's trying to signal to which partner and which way down? I think, well, I don't know, it's just all the hand signals is which way? I mean, obviously when you're scupinaving, you can't say like which way which

way down. The hard part about that video, though, is I agree with Joe's At times I thought maybe he was screwed round. But the other part that's really difficult to tell what's going on and potentially wrong is that everybody is spinning in space, and there are times where you can tell the camera is upside down and the person in frame is upside down because you know, the bubbles should be going above them and I stand there heading towards their feet, they're standing on the ceiling. Yeah. Yeah,

so it's hard. It's hard to tell, but um, it's it's interesting to see if that is indeed Ben. It doesn't look like he's very confident or moving as fluidly as you would hope somebody who's attempting dives like the ones that I think he's attempting. So I just wanted to also throw that out there too. Yeah, that's man, I don't know, it's hard to Again, it's hard to say what he's doing. It is dark and it's a murky little video. Yeah, well that's the problem. And that's

the thing again. I think we talked about this a little bit more but before, but cave diving, the only light that you have is the light that you bring. So if you have crappy you ever had a car that had crappy headlights, then you got a car that had good headlights. You're like, oh my god, how did I not run anybody over the same thing? Cave diving your crampy little headlights, you're not gonna see very well. And that's what makes that video so difficult. But back

to Ben and Edwardo. As we said, Eduardo figured that Ben was bypassing the gate, so he unlocks it. And then normally what Chuck and Edwardo would do is they would finish their dive, they'd go top side, and they'd wait until they saw Ben's bubbles coming to the surface, because that mean he was out of the cave, he was going through the decompression process. Things should be fine.

And then that was a fairly frequent occurrence. Then that Ben wouldn't dive at night and obviously done it several times, and these guys I really feel like they were kind of trying to look out for him, like that idiot, Well hang on, Well, we'll keep an eye for him in case something seems like it's not right, and then we'll have to we'll go try and help. That's the sense that I got. But instead this particular night, they didn't wait for Ben. They left, They took off that

something going on. Probably yeah, I think, and had coffee. Can't be babysitting this guy all the time, although it is a little suspicious that this is the one night they didn't stay but find whatever, But that is raised a lot. It is suspicious the one time they don't stay he disappears. So those guys go home. The next day, Ben's truck is in the parking lot because he has not that we know of, come out of the water.

Nobody notices notice. I'm using notice with quotes, and that means it was a Thursday, though it was August, so maybe school is still out. It was particularly hot, very busy. They said they didn't notice it because they were busy. You know, I think that doesn't bother me that much.

I think you're a little busy. So what you're really saying is I didn't notice Ben because if he was having at the rate that he that we seem to think he was diving at, it's totally possible that he would get there really early in the morning and go for a dive, and then bang out in the middle of the day when it's really busy, and then go for a night dive after everybody's left, and that they were used to just seeing his truck there all the time,

and so what they're really saying is we didn't notice been around, but you know, his truck is always there. Anyway, truck is there, he's probably off underwater somewhere, you know. And that's that's a really good point. I've never heard anybody, i mean, we've heard about his night diving habit, we'd never I've never actually seen anything that said if Ben was an early riser and was in the water at six, when they opened up at eight, they just Ben's Ben's

diving again. It sounds like he was doing a very accelerated process. Really, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that he was often there early in the morning too. So the next day is of August, that's a Friday, and that's the second day he's missing. EDWARDO actually is the one who recognized the truck and realized that it had moved and asked around and nobody said they had seen Ben, and so then he turned around and called cops. Yeah, he probably thought, oh, I left

on Thursday and it has been there the entire time. Yeah, probably something like that. The police came, they searched the truck. They find Ben's wallet. It's got seven hundred bucks in cash in it. Uh, there's equipment and his log book in the pickup. They eventually, when they can't find him, they bring cadaver dogs. Cadaver dogs for those who don't know, I know, we've talked about it. They're not cadavers. The dogs are not. They are dogs that react to the

smell of a decomposing human body. Those dogs were brought and supposedly triggered when they smelled the water. Don't I have a hard time with it as well. I don't think the body would have started decomposing that quick. I don't think that they could have smelled it if it was under eighty or a hundred feet of water like that. Plus there's gonna be other things dying, of course. Never docs are well trained a differential between and say, a

dead possible human being. They're supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, so I I have a difficulty with the whole cadaver dog thing. But you will see that reported. They like I said, they they signaled on the body, so they signal on thank you. Yes, they signaled on the water. And at that point local divers who were certified to go into the cave and knew what and found out what Ben had been doing, went into the cave, and those divers logged our upon our looking for him in

the cave. Uh. The strange thing that they found right away was they found a pair of his tanks near the entrance of the cave, which we mentioned before. We talked about that before, So that was weird. The location of them is weird because typically what a diver does is you don't leave all of your air in one places on the way dropped tanks like bread crumbs. You dropped tanks so you can find your way back out

and be get some air. If you really need some air, you got a low tank, you can switch them out. So it's odd that they were there. Somebody said that it looked like they were placed by somebody who didn't know what they were doing. Oh yeah, you do hear that? Yeah, I mean there there is a lot and there were and there were three tanks, right, I believe there was. But what I want to I do want to touch on real quickly is there have been a lot of things that have been said in the media, and we've

started saying some of this as well. Which is questioning his diving abilities. And so when we say things like that, I don't want it to come across as we say Ben was an idiot. It was he was doing things that were not done the way that a proper cave diver would have done. I just wanted he didn't those tanks where that That's also a very valid point, but I just want to cover that because I've noticed it's kind of happened a couple of times. You know, we

don't know. We're not saying that been I mean, he may have been a nod inexperience and shouldn't have been doing what he was doing. Probably that's completely different. Yeah, I was an experienced scuba diver, not in caves. Yeah. Um. By the way, so this place was very very popular vortech springs with scuba divers, and so scuba divers coming and go on every day. Yep. Okay, So it's it's strange that nobody noticed those tanks. Well, they may have

noticed the tanks. It may have been that a diver who was like, oh, well there's somebody obviously in the cave. That must be his tanks. Okay, So here's a question. I see the look on her face. H Yeah, here's a here's a question for you, a real brain puzzler, if you will. So, Edward Oh unlocked the gate for him Thursday night. Uh, and it's a pad lock with a key, correct, How did it get locked again? Well? Ben could have locked it, but it was locked correct?

When Well, that's that's something that was That's I mean, that's a really good question. Is that. I'm assuming that EDWARDO unlocked it and maybe even handed the padlock over to bed just in case some prankster would come wouldn't come along and not at that time of night, I know, I I imagine that if that if EDWARDO unlocked it, he left the unlocked padlock on the loop, he would have given the lock to Ben. He wouldn't no use

for it. Well, well, the us is that you have it with you, so nobody's going to lock you in. But if nobody else is expected to go in that night, then what's the prom But he definitely didn't leave the key, right, So it's EDWARDO unlocked the gate and then at some point relocked. It had to have been relocked at some point, yet it was eventually. I mean, it's not as if when they you know, I don't believe that when they went down the divers went down looking for Ben, they said, hey,

the gates still unlocked. I'm sure that some employee who was looking around when uh, nobody's been in here today, somebody left the gate unlocked and they relocked it. Imagined that would have happened the next day. But no, absolutely no idea when that could have happened. For me, that's a really really really important detail. You're right, it is. It's the bubbling gun in this case. I don't know.

I have no idea when that gate got relocked, right, Okay, okay, Zinger done, Um okay, So let's uh, let's continue on with the story here. So Ben's parents come to the area and they stay there while the search has begun for their son. They've made some not so great choices in the way that they've discussed the case with social media. Specifically, they've they've peep some people off in the fighting community,

because I mean, poor Joy supports is exactly what. It's not like they're intending they actually know they need these people's help. What I'll say is that they they have said things in the way that you would expect grieving parents to say them, I'd agree with that. So while they're they're there's divers in the cave looking. One of the things we talked about in the beginning is that

this spring, obviously because it's an upwelling and overflows. The water overflows out through um and drains into Blue Creek, which then goes into some swampy areas because it's Florida. And of course they checked those corpses, they checked all of that. They ran dogs through the area, they searched it. So nobody has found at this point below or above the water. So Ben's body has completely disappeared. His possessions aren't there, like his dive gear, everything he would have

had on. None of that is shown up at this point, as they have to do. Eventually, the police called search off. I mean, the divers are like, listen, we can't find him. He's not in here, and the police are like, we can't find him on the ground. We're not going to keep combing this area, and they're calling off. It's not that complicated cave really, I mean, it's twisty and long, but there's not that many side passages. For the most part. I am in agreement with Joe. I know, Devin that

you feel a little different. But when I watched that, though the walls do undulate, they are essentially a straight line. From the overview from space. If you look at this cave, it seems to kind of be in a bit of a bend, maybe almost an S shape as it goes away. But for the most part, it's a it's a tube that goes straight in the ground. I will I will

agree with that for the moment. So there's no giant offshoot you you know, as far as we know, but there are places where there are holes, you know, between where the floor is and the wall that who knows what's behind there, because frankly, every single person who has gone into this cave has cared for their life and wants to come back alive, so they're not going to stick their head in there. So we don't know if there is a cavern in there, if somebody did squeeze

in there, anything like that. So something to go along with that and why there may actually be offshoots that we don't know is the floor of the cave is very silty, and I've actually read accounts from divers who have um been stuck in uh sandy lanches, I believe

they called it. It's very sandy, and they went into something and then the sands started coming in, the silts started coming in, and they had to dig themselves out, and for every two shovelfuls out or one out, too seemed to come in and it took them a while to get some headway to get back out. So, yes, it is entirely possible that he squeezed in a hole and he knocked something loose and the whole closed behind him. That is possible, and that could be some giant because

we don't know. One of the other things they found was his shovel. They believe they think somebody I think it's his shovel because it was placed very deep in the cave, but they don't know that it was Ben's. But it's believed to be his. Yes, and it apparently matched the description of a picture, which is a standard issue folding. Oh yeah, No, it could have been anybody's,

but it also could have been Ben's. Yes. Absolutely. The thing about it is is, uh, you know, I used to know some cavers did caving myself, and uh, and there's always the real hardcore ones really really want to push the cave. That means that if they find some little crack or crevice or hole, they'll go try to force your body into it to see if they can actually you know, break through and find another room or

another cave or something like that. And the thing about it is is even the hardcore cavers that I used to know would never do something like that by themselves. Well you know, it's like, you know, maybe you want to when you get stuck, you want to have somebody to grab your feet and pull you back out of that hole. Yes. Yeah, So back to the McDaniels though,

Ben's family. So while they're there, remember I said they were hanging, They were there while the search was going on, and then once the search was called off, what they decided to do was they decided to and this is the part that I told you they did where they kind of bungle things and they really made people mad, is they put out a ten thousand dollar reward for someone to find their son's body. Because at this point they know he's dead, but they say, we'll get They're

pretty sure. They'll give ten thousand dollars to anyone who is, as they put it, brave enough to go find him. No, because all of the cave I was like, are you kidding? You know how much danger I put myself into going in this cave looking for him in the first place, and the cave diving communities up in arms, and they are saying, listen, you need to you need to pull back this reward offer. Your going to get somebody killed.

The mcdan is on their part, they ignore that they increased the reward not once, but twice, to the tune of thirty thousand dollars totally in the end. Eventually they took they took that away, but they did only after a gentleman by the name of Larry Higginbotham and he's from Biloxi, Mississippi. March two thousand twelve. He uh, he drowned in the cave and it's believed, not confirmed, but people were pretty sure he was going in there and looking for Ben because he was having a hard time

and he needed some cash. He thought, if I find He's evidently said something about finding this guy. He had also been following the case. I mean, he was a cave diver who had been following the case since it started. So it wasn't just like out of the blue, Oh, thirty dollars. I will. I've never done this before, but I'll do it. Yeah, no, no, absolutely not. I gotta say that must really suck to be that moment when

when you coming about it. I don't want to think that through at all, the moment when you realize you're out of air or so Ben's um. Ben's parents did eventually withdraw the offer of the reward. They've still been very active in regards to the case. They are still very active on social media in anywhere that discusses the case. I've seen them come up in discussions, threads, from articles all over the place. Chances are they're probably listening to

us right now. And if they are listening, I do wanna give my condolences for the loss of Ben and Paul. I feel terrible for these Yeah, we all do. And by the way, we've been saying so, you know, I think that Ben was a good guy. It's like, you know, we're saying stuff like he was an incompetent cave diver. Question, I'm an incompetent cave divers too, and I'm also I'm also you know, I'm much more incompetent scuba diver than Ben. Yeah, I've had a respirator to take once and I was

in a swimming pool. But I don't know what I'm doing. But okay, well that is our story. Okay, well I took a long time. Goodbye everybody. So at this point we should probably go ahead and get into the theories. And there are three very different theories. It's actually kind of an easy when there's three simple chippy UFO, drowning. Yeah, I thought big Foot was in their nose rowing underwater big Foot, underwater fot that sounds like under water big Foot.

You don't think Lockness monster did it? Yeah, that's true. Nobody is nobody has actually proved that this this cave does not connect up with Locknuts. True. Nobody has Yeah, show me the proof. No, ain't there. Oh, this is one of the moments when I love working with you, Joe. Okay, let's go to theory number one, which is that Ben is still in the cave. Yeah, he's crawled into some tight little crawl they shouldn't have done. Here's here's something

that people need to know about what this is. Sadly, what people have figured out after the fact, what happens to cave divers when they their bodies are retrieved. They tend to when they're running low on oxygen, panic, weird, strange, and what happens is their bodies tend to be found in little cracks and crevices that they're trying to squeeze them selves through in the mistaken belief that that is

the way out. You know, they're panicking, their thrashing, cling, and so they get into it, and then that's where they die, and that's where their body stays, and that's where it's found. So it's possible, as we talked about, he could have been freaking out and gone into some

teeny little cravice and stuck into an area. I mean, frankly, he could have been not even a little bit freaking out and got himself into a little area that he thought was gonna be because I think one of the things that we kind of glossed over is that he was very vocal around vortex springs and saying that he was going to discover, you know, he was going to find a different part of the cave, and he was going to go deeper than anybody else ever had, and

he was going to find all this new stuff. He had a lot of bravado he did, and um, I you know it's it wouldn't surprise me that if he saw something he was like, oh, I can fit in that crack. There's got to be something interesting in there, and I can fit in there. He went through there

and then got stuck. Well, it's it's yeah, it's it's possible that he went through and he got stuck because it was a dead end and he couldn't get back out, or like we talked about before, the sand fills in the hole and there's no evidence of him having been there, or you know, his line got cut. I don't think he was diving with line No, I mean his like air line. Okay, So I don't know how it could

have gotten cut unless somebody actually cut it. Well, if he had been like shimmying under rocks, I don't I didn't see a lot of sharp rocks down there. It's limestone. Yeah, so there's not a whole lot of really jagged edge. The only problem I have, I know I'm the one who's saying it could have been this, but but here's the reason that it wasn't is that, as far as I can tell, all of the cave drivers that went down there afterwards reported seeing no disturbances. Yeah, and let's

let's talk about that briefly. Okay, So people who are listening, what you need to remember is that it is a silty bottom. So if you run your fin through it, you're gonna leave an obvious mark. If you're squeezing through a hole, you're going to scrape the stone and leave marks because there's there's algae and stuff growing on the rocks, and you're gonna scrape that off with your suit and your helm it and your arms and your tanks and all of that. You're gonna be leave very obvious signs

on the walls and the floor and the ceiling. And there were none that stood out as this is brand new and this weird. There's a bunch of screen marks that go into this sandy thing that's just here like that. That wasn't what happened. And it does sound like it wasn't very frequent that people were going down into this cave. I mean, I don't think it was one of those things where you would be able to say, well, you know,

somebody went down a day or two before him. So I wasn't one of those things where they were like you know, several people a day going, but I don't know that for sure. I don't know the traffic. I have nothing that has ever said what the traffic in that cave is. But there was the one report one guy who went down like really really deep. Who was this, you know, legendary deep and he said he said there was evidence of no one having ever been as far

and as he was. So that's true. M Yeah, I'm assuming that most of the divers that played around in Vortech Springs probably they do. They do. Here's the so I talked about for divers that do die in caves is that they tend to cram themselves in a little holes. There's also been a number of cave divers who have disappeared and everybody has gone looking for him, and for several years couldn't find them. And then five ten years later, somebody's bopping along kind of like what Devil was saying,

and suddenly spotted and opening. Because again it's pitch black, you only have your lights, so if you're not at the right angle, you may not see it. And they have gone through a bend and they've looked up and there is a mask on the floor and a wetsuit full of bones. It does happen that way, and there's been a great number of a number of divers have been found. Though, Yeah, I don't think it's going to

happen again. That's not that's not that complicated. But also also in in Ben's vortex, when the dive team went down, they went down with a high definition camera and a priest all a light like you could see anywhere than anyone could have gone banks that they really illuminated. It was so it felt like you could see everything and there wasn't really any Just know they didn't. They didn't

from somebody, miss um. Now, the thing about you said Joe earlier is that Ben was saying that he was going to find the end and he was gonna find things that people had never done before. Again, this is one of those things that his his dad. I don't know how his dad's came upon this, but his dad said online that everybody went the wrong way in the cave and that if they would just go the right way,

they would find Ben a lot of sense. No, I know you're joking, but it doesn't make any sense to me because everything I've seen on this nothing supports that so I don't even know where Mr McDaniels got that information. He's never been in there. I mean, I'm sure he's seen the same maps that we've seen. I'm sure he has, if not better ones, And it sounds to me like many many divers dove all the way as far as

they could, as far as they could squeeze through. Although I guess the interesting thing is, um, gosh, what's her name, Jill from Ben's vortex? Yeah, Jill, Yeah, she uh. She said that when she looked at the map that Ben had been making, that it didn't correspond at all. She's not the only one with her understanding of the cave, So I guess it is that is an interesting thing. Whether he was mapping it poorly or maybe he did he was going a different way, I don't know, Maybe

he wasn't. Maybe there is some hole that leads to a different part out of the you know, piano room for instance, right, so that he hadn't actually been jumping the gate this entire time, that there was some random hole that he had discovered and that's how he went, I don't know. I don't think so. I doubt it, because I mean, there was I don't know how many divers. I got the sense at least a couple of dozen divers went down. They're searching the cave. Yeah, and it

hundreds of hours of dietime we're logged looking for him. Yeah, and I can't believe that, you know, they've ben found some hole somewhere. I can't believe those guys didn't find it too. I would agree with that unless there was like a sand avalanche. But I mean, yeah, just that's worth mentioning. I guess too. But there's some other really compelling evidence against him not being in there. I guess

him being in there. I guess him not being in there, against him being in there, and and that his The cave is full of aquatic life, specifically eels, which are carnivores, and so if there had been a body in the water, there should have been increased activity among the eel population, and there should have also been a spike in the bacteria in the water due to the presence of a

decomposing human body. Yeah, they've been testing the water, right they Yeah, they tested it immediately, like a month straight. They tested it, and there's no increased eel activity and there is no spike in the bacteria. So that is what has led the vast majority of people to say there's no way his body's in that cave, because the scientific evidence says he's not here. There's no slings of him. So that then leads us during number two. Ben's not in the cave. Ben's not in the cave, Then where

is he. Ben's not alive, but Ben is not in the cave. That is what theory number two is. Okay, so you we've briefly touched on him. There's a guy by the name of Ed Sorensen who threw a series of miscommunications I didn't get to talk to. I tried to line that up. But Ed is in that area and among cave divers he is very well revered. He is one of the most experienced. He has his own he's got his own school and he teaches cave diving. When the guy knows how to cave dive, he's been

doing it for years. I read Gripping Tail about this family that had gotten trapped in the cave and he actually wanted to rescue their daughter. Yeah, he's pulled out more than one person alive. Because believe it or not, if you know somebody's lost diving in a cave. Soon enough, you can send a trained professional end to get him. And he has done it multiple times. The guy is a really good diver. He's good at caves and he knows what he's doing. Yeah, if I ever go cave diving,

hopefully he's going to be around somewhere nearby. I'll go to the school, but I'm never getting a cave. So the thing is is that Ed shows up several days after Ben has disappeared. They call him in and he says, yeah, I'll go I'll go in and I'll go look. And he's got better equipment for cave diving than Ben had. He's got the experience. He also was using a under water propulsion device, you know, one of those little skimmer things.

He could. Always wanted to have one of those, ever since I was a kid, and I wanted to see where he used stuff like that so he could shot himself down through there so he could cover ground faster. And then he started diving the cave. He was dropping tanks along his way, so he had tons of air supply with him, not the band, and then he is he's looking all over and he goes he's the one who went to feet back. Yeah, and he said, listen, there's there was no signs of anybody in that cave.

So he is one of the huge proponents of the guy's not in the cave. I didn't find him, and I found everybody else who got lost in over the cave. I kind of I kind of gotta say, well, Lead probably knows what he's talking about. Would say, so, yeah, so he ain't in the cave. Well, that solves that problem. Actually it doesn't it. Then this to a gentleman that we mentioned briefly earlier, which is our resident skeeezy character

in this story, the owner Lowe Kelly. Yeah, so the guy who Lowell Kelly, so Mr Kelly, as we said, was the owner of Vortex Springs and uh so he says that he was there the night that Ben disappeared, later than Chuck and EDWARDO. And he said he didn't see Ben and didn't see anything hanky going on except for that random drunk guy he says, walked up at sunset and wanted to go diving. The drunk guy, by the way, is only in Lowell Kelly's account. I've never

seen him anywhere else. And he supposedly walked onto the site, which is not easy to do. So I sort of discount the whole drunk guy thing. But Kelly says, maybe, well maybe that guy I was responsive for what happened to Ben. That what he said, well, it's it's it's alluded to. I discount that right away because on foot and drunk is a long way to go to get in there, and so it just kind of it doesn't

add up. Um So then, but here's why I don't like low Kelly in general, besides the fact that I just think he was a bit of a dirt bag, is that he had an employee that he said owed him thousands upon thousands of dollars. And by the way, I don't know the date that this happened. That's what I'm about to talk about. It's prior to Ben's disappearance. We know it because he got into legal trouble. But what he did is he had an employee who he

said owed him thousands of dollars. He got that employee into his vehicle, we believe under darrest, took them out into the swamp Everglade Woods something something that attempted to extract the money. From them with a baseball bat. Yeah, excepted that employee managed to get away, and low Kelly only earned himself a bunch of charges, kidnapping an assault being two of them, but he got away probation. He got very lucky. He only got probation and he didn't

even have to serve all that. Well, I don't know if that was the lucky part. Yeah, yeah, I don't think he had very good luck. Because a year after Ben's disappearance, were looking at two thousand eleven, there's a barbecue happening at Vortex Springs and according to the the story, and I'm using air quotes here, he fell down some stairs. Take that to mean whatever you want. All I know is that he was injured. Somebody gave him a ride

home and put him in his bath that night. Somebody else showed up in his house the next day and found him in a very bad stage, in a coma. Well, I don't think he was in a coma quite at that point, but then they took him to the hospital. He was in a coma. He died within a month. After that. He was in hospice for basically a month. Head injuries is what I have to infer. This whole thing means is he fell down the stairs and wailed

his head quite severely. And this is one of those cases where you think, well, if instead of taking him home and helping him out of his clothes and helping him in a shower and then laying him down in his bathtub to sleep it off, if you had just taken him to the hospital, he might a lip. It might have been a good idea. Yeah, but he did try to beat money out of a person with a baseball bat, so I don't know. Well, it might have been, it might not have been the person who was helping

him call. He may have said, if you take me to the hospital, you're fired. Yeah, I mean, this guy seems the rational behavior to begin with. I'll be honest, I don't necessarily think that he was in a cognitive place to say things like that, but maybe you agree entirely with that. So yeah, so Mr Kelly passed away. Anyway, I'll tell you he's but he has a suspect for you. Well, he's a suspect because let's run down this road. Let's say that Eduardo and Chuck let him in the cave. Well,

EDWARDO specifically and Ben goes in and Ben drowns. Well, the water it's an upwelling, it's all coming out of the cave. And it's entirely possible that Ben's body was pushed out of the cave and he came to the surface, at which point Lowell finds him. And I understand that this is hard if you look at the map, because

it does some some kind of switchbacks back and forth. Yeah, it's a little hard to believe the body would actually if it was positively point, that it would actually come up to the surface, because there's like a spot, there's several spots, one spot right outside the cave entrance in the piano he was, if he was positively buoyant, where his body would have wound up. Well, I'm not in disagreement with that, particularly for it to have happened that fast.

It's possible. I mean, also could have gotten caught on the gate. He probably would have got I mean, the hole in the gate isn't that big. Okay, So maybe Eduardo and Chuck said something to Lowell, and at nine o'clock Lowell went down and found Ben dead. Okay, let's add that to the mix. Either way, Lowell realizes that Ben is drowned and Lowell has already dealt with the heat of the divers that died in that cave in the past and says he got rid of the body.

I got to get rid of the body. So he hauls Ben out and he takes him somewhere and he buries him, or he throws him in a swamp and lets the gators get him. Can I tell you what I think about this theory? Yeah, well, it sucks because he didn't do a very good job of sanitizing the crime scene. Remember one he leaves, He leaves the three tanks behind in a pickup truck, all of which you know he would think he would have gotten rid of.

So here's a question. What if Ben, Well, what if actually luell Um said, hey, Edward, oh, Chuck, I know you guys usually hang out wait for Ben, but I can stay. I'll stay, right, So that explains why they didn't stay, because that's extremely out of the ordinary for them. He goes down and you know, finds Ben, or maybe he's annoyed with Ben or I don't know what you know. So he does pull him up, but then he thinks, okay, if I just leave the truck and leave the tanks

and leave everything else. People will just assume that Ben drowned and it will be a non issue and there won't be a thing. I mean, why sanitize it that much? Because he's trying to, Because there's two reasons. Either a he doesn't want the heat that he has already gotten by having divers die in the cave before, which by not sanitizing the crime scene he and up getting anyway.

Or it's entirely possible that some shady dealings were going on on property at night, at which point you want to get rid of the cops any attention from the police, like, you know, get get him away, Get him away, get him away. I have nothing to say that Kelly was doing anything weird like that, but it's the only thing that I can think of that would justify him ditch

in the body. But I completely agree with Joe that he would leave a truck that is a prime evidence and oh it just happens to have a bunch of money sitting in it as well. It doesn't make any sense for him to get rid of the body, not get rid of the truck. And because if the truck and the tanks, but if the truck has found fifty miles away. Yeah, well that's the beauty part. How does he move the truck with the keys? He way? I I don't Yeah, I don't know exactly what you do

when you're scuba diving. If you have a locker inside the scuba shop, maybe will you leave your leave your wallet and your keys and stuff. Yeah, I'm not really sure, but I'm sure there was a way to get into the truck. Well, frankly, I think it cast less suspicious on low if something like if he did kill Lull for instance, right, if he liked actively killed Ben. I'm sorry if law killed Ben. Yeah, if Ben killed Loule,

he did a hell ofmet changing. But so then it is less suspicious that the cars there and the money is there and all that stuff because you just assumed that something happened to him. Yeah, okay, like you may catch heat for like another person died, but if you have a ward of saying, listen, this guy didn't know what he was doing, but I let him in anyway because he was going to go in anyway, and you were able to kind of cast this in this guy like these people didn't. This guy didn't know what he

was doing. He just he accidentally killed himself. It was an accident. Maybe that's less heat than oh yeah killed the guy. I mean, well, I still don't understand his motivation to Yeah, I don't. I don't think. There's been a lot of talk about how shady some of these people were, and I'm not sure that any of them really were all that shady. But the thing about it is is when you when you commit murder, you don't

leave the corpse. Like I work in an office. Now, if I was to go murder somebody in dispose of the body, I wouldn't leave it in the lobby of the office building I work in. I would say, I would take it out. I would bake that body disappear permanently somewhere far away from me. Yeah, I mean so, I don't think anybody that worked at at Vortex Springs

is really a suspect in my book. But if you're somebody who hung out at Vortex Springs and you happen to know Ben, and you know he's spending a lot of time, you know, in that cave pushing the envelopen stuff, and for some reason or another, you kill him, either deliberately or accidentally. Well, you get rid of the body and then you go park his truck and then draw and drop some tanks into the end of the vortex.

So there's one spot if you dropped him in here, I'm not I don't think a tank would roll all the way down to the gate. I mean if it got past this one. So that what Joe is pointing too is the map, And on the map there's a bit of a bend in the base of the bowl before it rolls into the actual cave itself. Yeah, and I don't think, Joe, I I think what you're getting at is it is nearly impossible for somebody to be able to from the surface to set tanks in. I would have to have them get all the way to

the bottom. It would have to be a diver, Yes, have to be a diver. But here's here's the thing, though, is that if you got to that cave entrance point this point right here where where it narrows down, and you just started just rolled that thing down, it would go all the way to the gate and it wouldn't go any further. It can't roll any further because there's

a gate there. So you can drop it there so I'm just saying, if somebody wanted to if somebody wanted to kill him, somebody wanted to disappear him, disappear him, and then and then totally totally misdirect everything. You take his truck, you park it there, and you put the tank in the in the vortex, and then in the spring. I guess, I mean, I guess we don't know that. I mean, we don't know that. We don't know actually that he didn't successfully complete his dive that night and

leave and go home. I was just going to say, we don't know with certainty that who what EDWARDO and Chuck saw was in fact Ben. That's true too, I mean, I see, I assume they sort of knew what they identified because he knew what his gear looked like like as wet suiting his tanks. Yeah, but it could have been somebody else in his stuff. I guess that is that is? Are you okay? I'm just gonna I just want to ask you a question, because I'm not sure if I know where you're heading here. Are you saying

that it could have been Low in Ben's gear? Not just Low? I'm just saying, if we're going to say somebody had killed Ben and disposed of his body. Then they created this whole other thing, right that Ben maybe didn't actually do. Maybe Ben had been dead for ours, maybe he had not been dead for hours, but that a decoy story was set for him to set up the idea that he I know was the red blue pillar, the blue pillar. Just totally absolutely. But I'm just saying

that it is possible because it is. No, it's a that's a good point because you know, how do you identify a guy by his gear? I'm assumed the most part of the dark. Yeah, but all the you know what if I saw the guy based on the video we saw, if I saw him several times, that is it's pretty it's a pretty unique set up. His specific helmet, his mask is not every mask is the same, his tanks,

but it's gear. It's his gear. So like if somebody dressed in Ben's gear, even if they were like not six feet and two pounds, if they were kind of close, it'd be pretty easy in that much dark to just say, oh, yeah, it's been Yeah. So all this guy was doing is what that guy was doing, and he was just placing the truck there and taking the tanks down to plant them.

And yeah, I mean it's not likely, but it's possible. Yeah, And and and I think the reason probably the tank wasn't any further than the gate is that guy whoever it was and then again saw hypothetical, really didn't want to go past the gate. Uh maybe in the g yeah exactly. So I'm just I'm just gonna drop it

right here. That's good. And so and then and then hung out down in the piano room for a while, just hung out, hung out for a while, you know, and then you know, yeah, and then eventually after it's dark, you know, yes, it's still they're on out and then going on and walk home, and and that in fact, it might be that. So how far you know, the talking box? How far down is that vertically? Yeah, I think it's forty Yeah, it's I think that it's anybody can any regular diver can get to that box. Yeah.

So my understanding is this is that so if you hang out down there and you you go through your complete decompression routine. And then was my understanding is that the two tank they found, one down low and one up on the platform where the talking box is. Now imagine you know, you just you just parked the truck there, so you're gonna have to hoof it. You gotta walk aways, and do you you gotta you gotta take those tanks

with you or you can just leave behind. So whoever it was could have just left them on the platform at the talking box and then just swam up to the surface and gotten out that way. So that's that's just a rough theory. Yeah, I mean we're we're in conjecture canyon at this point first, very much. So, Yeah, because I but I think that foul play is is quite possible here. So I think we've covered that theory and be it to death. Yeah, let's let's go to

our final theory. Let's dive into it, which is that Ben ran away and started a new life. He's living out a farm with Dorothy Arnold Amelia Earhart. I know that every disappeared person's story comes across as and they left to start a new life. Actually pretty good. This one's actually got some legs under it, small legs, yes, they're short legs. So it's a very short theory. So we talked about this a little bit already. Is that there's a documentary out there called Ben's vortex, and we

haven't really taught. We've talked about things we saw in it, but what it is it's a husband and wife team of documentary makers who also happened to be divers. Well, they're both divers. Jill the wife is a cave diver professional and yeah, Robert McClellan, he is not, but he is a diver. So they started making a documentary and their initial idea was, listen, we're gonna go in, We're

gonna film the cave. We're gonna bring this back to Ben's parents so that they understand how what this cave is like and that he's not in there, so that they'll take the reward away, so that they'll stop enticing people to go in there and potentially lose their life. Now, over the course of their documentary, Jill changes her position a hundred and eighty degree. She comes to believe that Ben is in the cave based on his maps, but her husband, he Robert, he's still to this day thinks

that Ben just skipped down. That I appreciate that bit about this documentary the most because they don't follow a common line. They don't and and she outright says like I really want to say he's not in the cave, but I think he's in the cave, which is crazy, especially because her husband even says sorry. But her husband even says, you are the one who presented me with all of the evidence to say that he is not in the cave, which is why I think he's not in the cave. And she goes, I know, but I

think he's in the cave. It's great, like it's a totally it's a hung jury. It's one of a few times you see that. So here's the here's the thing about the the documentary. It's really interesting. But Ben's parents, they go to visit the family and they are very open with these folks, and they let them film everything and they talk with them, and at one point they come to realize that Ben is not their only son,

but they actually have three sons. Uh. And they had a son whose name was Paul, and he had died two years prior, at the age of twenty two from a stroke or if you if you look go out and read, and he died of an overdose. But you know, well, that's that's what that's what it starts to come out as they start looking at the autopsy, and as they start um digging into some of the history, they come

to question the stroke theory. So they settle on and they get the it's the autopsic report, right, They get the autopsy report and it says overdose on it. So then they start to think about what the family has done and they realized that, well, they're they're strangely controlled about information and the way things are presented, which from one perspective, I totally get their grieving family and they want their child to be put in the best light.

But on the other side, they start this whole thing, this whole foundation for stroke prevention, which is something that their kid didn't die from. So it's a little kind of heading it up and everything. Yeah, so it's very questionable. And as you read correspondence from Ben to his family, he always makes sure it always did everything that he writes,

he's always thanking his parents for everything they've done. Now that could be because a he realizes how much they've done for him and he is sincerely thankful, or it's brought up maybe that's because he is required to say those kind of things for the cash to keep coming in or the hell to not rain down and I don't I don't know, I mean just conjecture. Well, and we should clarify that when we say required, it's not as though his parents said, listen, if you don't say

to us every single time, it's a learned behavior. It's a learned behavior, right. I mean, I think almost every kid who's ever relied on their parents as an adult learns that what you I mean, whether you feel it or not, you have to say, I am so thankful to you, and that's how you keep getting things. Yeah. Absolutely, it's true. Because as soon as you start saying, ah, man, screw you guys, they're gonna be like, okay, just kidding, we won't give you a bunch of Hey mom, Dad,

you're a total senter jerks. Oh well, you know it's positive. We're going to make for you because we love you. Never mind, we don't love you that, we don't love you that much. Instead, Dad wants a new new motorcycle. I mean, that's that's that's that's the way it comes across. Its completely possible. So now, so let me get this straight. So, um, so, he's living for free in this condo in Florida, and um and also getting cash with the parents and all

he's got to do is say thanks occasionally. So is that the kind of job you would quit? No? No, And that is my problem with this theory is that if Ben ran away, let's the theory is just so we lay it out in its entirety, is that Ben went down, Ben came up and marched on foot with his gear out of vortex springs, or had somebody meet him and took him there and left his truck behind. My problem with that theory is that he would have had to start over, so he wouldn't have had any cash.

So it seems crazy to me that he would have left the wallet with seven bucks in it exactly I mean, I mean it leads credibility to the dying idea. If you leave a wallet with least a couple of hundred bucks in it, but seven hundred bucks and also also the dog. You know, he left his dog behind. His dog could have starved. The dog is troubling. The cash is less troubling to me. It doesn't seem to me that seven hundred dollars seemed like a ton of money to him, given that he was having seen the house

that he grew up in in Tennessee. And you know, it's possible that he had a bunch of money while away and it was just like whatever he had in his wallet at the time. I mean, yeah, I think seven hundred dollars a lot of money. I think most people do. But I also didn't grow up in a house like he did. But my, I guess my my issue and why I pointed the seven hundred bucks is

that he's going to have to start over. And chances are when he starts over, he's going to have to start over in a lifestyle he is entirely not accustomed to. So knowing that you were going to have to live like you've cheaper and than you've ever done it, and so under the radar, you take every dollar that you could conceivably take. That That's what I would if if I was going to disappear. Yeah, but you've lived poor before. I have. Yeah, So like I know some kids who

have never lived poor before in their entire lives. And then like we went to college and suddenly their parents were like, well, we'll give you seven d a month allowance and they were like, I can't live on that would mean seven hundred dollars a month and For me, it was mind boggling, right, because that's like, that's so much money. You can do almost anything you want with

that amount of money. Well, it depends. And if that's that's after after rent, No, no, no, that's like their parents were paying for everything that was there, like spending

money that they're walking around. No, that's really good. But I think that there are kids in this world, and I mean it's possible that he got to the age of thirty where he just like, I mean, you don't get fifty thou dollars in debt to the I R S for not spending any money, right, you don't incur as much debt and have as much stuff going on for not living large or beyond your means. So I think it's possible that you know, what's the it's the rest of development. Quote, what is it a banana? How

much could it cost? Ten dollars? Like, I think there are people in this world who have no idea, and so seven may seem like, no, I don't, I don't need that amount of money, And it's entirely possible. I mean, I don't think that Ben showed up in Florida with you know, five tanks. He probably picked up tanks while he was there, and he may I mean there was Joe was t and I were talking about this earlier. Their standard sized tanks. It's not like he bought anything crazy,

but tanks are cheap. No, no, no, yeah, they were there like tanks. He himself a set of tanks, or at least a set of tanks and gear. Yeah, you're right. It is a situation where he may not have and that possibly could have been what got him in trouble in his businesses. He didn't understand the way the world works when it comes to money. Entirely possible and go ahead.

I was just gonna say he was also doing that real estate thing, and well he started out in construction and he thought he could spin himself into real estates and but that was like it was like a pyramid scheme. Real estate. Also the year and also the year was two thousand ten is one of the real estate markets was really in a crapper. The thing about it is is the whole disappearing thing is I just don't see

what it got him. I agree, you know, I mean the negatives are well, the positives are basically nothing possible. The positive are you're out from underneath the thumb of mom and dad and you are free of them. Who. Yeah, but you don't need to disappear to do that. Well, you might need to disappear to get rid of your fifty dollars worth of debt to the I R S. Yeah, I did hear. I did hear one rumor online at the fifty grand had actually been paid off. I've never

seen that. I'm not I'm not sing I did see that. I did see that, But you know, I could be wrong about that. But you know, maybe his parents paid it off and they just said, hey, you know, some whenever you're whenever you're rack back in money, whenever you're back in the money and you've got a lot of money, you can pay us back. Please please do it. Otherwise we'll just take it out of your inheritance or something like that. Yeah, I mean it could have been something

like that. I wish you had inherit. I mean, no doubt me too. Yeah. And the thing of hot it is is, I mean he was walking away from some good stuff. I mean he had a dog, he had a he had a girlfriend, and and I've seen I've seen stuff on the webs on the web about how, oh my god, his parents were horrible people. Well, I don't. I don't think they were. I don't think they worry either,

and I don't. For me, my biggest drawback on the Walking Away from Life is to see how Paul's death affected his family and to know that I don't think that Ben was like a horrible guy. And I can't imagine even if you didn't really care that much about your family, putting your family through something like that. Absolutely. Yeah, well that's my biggest Okay, so the things that I see that could and I'm going to do this and

then let's let's finish. The theory is that his if he believed his brother had died of a stroke, or knew that his brother didn't actually die of a stroke, but his parents put up this front that said it was a stroke and we're gonna do all this stuff and by way, by the way, you're gonna be the front man of that organ ization, he may have kind of just got sick of it. I can't take this anymore. The other thing that may have driven it driven him to that was he had not too long before he disappeared,

gone home. And one of the things that you see in Ben's vortex is you You go through the house, and I would call it a shrine. There is a shrine to Paul in a single room. It is nothing but Paul. Same thing now for Ben. And they got a house big enough that they have an entire room

dedicated to this one person, to himself. Well, but he may have I mean, it may have been the situation where he had to walk, you know, his parents and go visit Paul, and he had to go in there and he just feels, you know, it feels like he's betraying the truth and just so sick and so fed up.

And I mean, I know people get that way. And it may have been that he said, I'm gonna hatch this cocka baby plan and I'm getting the hell out of Dodge and I never have to see you people again because your liars and I can't take it anymore making this up. I think that probably he might have been totally on board with the whole thing about about hushing up, the whole overdose thing. What's Joe, what's your

favorite theory? My favorite theory is that somebody killed him and made it look like he died on a dive. I think he's in a crevice somewhere. I'm tied. I'm that he's in the cave. I am seventy percent that he is not in the cave. And I believe that of that set is Lowell Kelly is involved. I don't know how. I don't know where he's at, but I don't. I really, I don't believe he's in there. I would say low Kelly in my mind is like involved, but I think he probably is just in the cave. Okay,

it's interesting, are all three different? Yeah, I don't think Lowell Kelly would be involved. Again, because you don't crap in your own nest um. He could be looking at chicken. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that there is evidence that you know, I mean cars parked there, he left tanks behind. There's it looks like maybe he drowned in the cave. Lawsuit, you know, I mean seriously, and so or if it's murder, it's not a lawsuit. They have to sign a waiver. Well,

there's that, but waivers. Waivers can always be broken by the wouldn't have signed a waiver? Yeah, Ben wasn't allowed to go in the cave. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, And so there hasn't been a law suit against them because there's no body to prove that he died in the cave. That's why I think that that he's not in the cave, and I think Lolls involved. I think he died. This jerk went in there and never sign a waiver. Yeah, you're gonna get the pantsuit off of me. Yeah, exactly.

But so he disposed of the body, but he didn't dispose of the tanks in the truck. Again, I'm sorry, we're laboring the crow about of this all right. So at this point we have gone over this story quite a lot if you if you want to read any more about it, we will have links to it on our website website of course Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. On the link there you can listen to the show.

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was it? Who was it? Frederick gasoline, plus of the comment on it today your yeah Frederick challenge. There's always some really fun stuff going on in the group. It's a good group of people. Yeah, And the only thing I haven't talked about yet is that we do also have a subreddit. So the subreddit is there. People are slowly but surely joining up, so you can join that if you'd like to talk about episodes in there, and you two have any other things that we've missed and

talk about. He's not in the cave. That's about it. He's in the cave. Not in the cave. He's in the cave. Yeah he is, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Kay Bye.