Thinking Sideways:  The Disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst - podcast episode cover

Thinking Sideways: The Disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst

Dec 08, 20161 hr 16 min
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

Now you see him, now you don't. A minor British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst vanished literally into thin air while traveling under an assumed name with an attendant in 1809. Was it thieves, aliens, or an elaborate ploy?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by the incessant wheezing of a grumble of pigs. Instead, it's supported by the generous donations of our listeners on Patreon. Visit patreon dot com slash thinking sideways to learn more and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. The podcast Steve Interrupts,

where Steve interrupts constantly every day. I'm Devin, joined by Steve and the interruptre Oh my god, it's gonna be a long episode. It's not actually going to be that long of an episode, just going to if Steve keeps interrupting, what today we're going to talk What are we talking about? A joke? Okay, let's go Sorry, today we're going to talk about It's just because you had to Kenny bar earlier. It couldn't help an interrupt because of that. But you know what, I should let you go ahead and talk

about this story because this one's a fun one. Oh it is. No, it's a very good one, so highly dramatic, lots of death in destruction. Side words from the future, but I really need it. Knock knock. This week we're going to talk about the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst. This was a suggestion by Ash England. We're working through those suggestions, still listening. I think he is. I think he emailed us last time. Pretty sure. Okay, maybe not well asked.

When you hear this, come on, send us an emails. You're still alive. So um. The quick overview for this story is um that a minor British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst vanished almost literally into thin air while traveling under an assumed name with intendant in eighteen o nine in Germany, in Germany, while fleeing Austria Vienna. He's fleeing from Vienna, Yeah, which is in Austria. It is part part of the part of Okay, yeah, all right, let's start with Benjamin. Yeah, quickly. Great.

Benjamin was born on March eighteenth, seventeen eighty four, in London, so he was British and then he was when he disappeared pretty actually to be a diplomat. He was actually very young to be a diplomat. He I think he was like seventeen or eighteen when he became a diplomat. Um. He was part of the Bathurst family. Surprise. His father was the right Reverend Henry Bathurst and he was the Bishop of Norwich. That's pretty cool lineage. No, you guys

are impressed. He was the third son in his family, so we had two older brothers. And then he had a sister. And I don't actually know. I think she was younger. I was going to say I thought the sister was younger, but I never actually paid attention enough. Well, I don't think that I've ever seen it anywhere written, but I just know from stuff that we know from fifty years later, she was still kind of looking for her brother. No, that's Felida Ala Call. I think it's her.

I thought I thought that that was his wife, is it? Yeah? Am I getting the two mixed up? Because okay, it's the sister that had the awesome last name. Yeah, Okay, I'm sorry. I got him totally backwards that he did. So, Yeah, he was married to a woman named Felida Call. Sorry for the spoiler. Gosh, jeez. And I don't think that they had kids as far as I know. He became

a diplomat quote unquote at an early age. But it was definitely before he was twenty one, and then he married in eighteen oh five when he was twenty one. He was had already been a diplomat for a couple of years at that point, so really at a really young age. I've heard him as described described as very talented and really smart and just like actually qualified to be a diplomat, not just he was a kid. I was going to say that there's two kinds of diplomats

at this time. There is the you have inherited this up no matter how terrible you are at it, or you actually have a talent. And usually third sons don't inherit diplomatic charges diplomatic posts. But he wasn't exactly. It was more kind of like an envoy. Well that's true, yeah, I guess. But the thing is about diplomats at that time is that there if you do reading of historical stuff, they would have the ability to solve problems. So grievances of their monarch they would go in and they could

agree to the terms on behalf of their monarch. Now they still had to go home and get the monarch to buy into it. But yeah, I mean, obviously they had to be able to do that because he didn't have a fall right, But it's not like today, it's like, let me call the boss and double check that he's okay with it. They could, they had the power, So to entrust it to a guy that young, he had to know what he was doing and have some skill. Yeah. So in eighteen o nine Benjamin was sent to Vienna.

And as a reminder, eighteen o nine is like in the very middle years of the Napoleonic War, and it was when the Fifth Wars, not not Napoleonic War, Napoleonic Wars, because he was making war everywhere. Yeah, he was talented little guy. Um. So this was right when the Fifth Coalition formed in that year, and this, of course meant I'm saying, of course meant like everybody knows this, but this meant that an English diplomat like Bathurst needed to

get out of Vienna and pretty quick. So for people who don't know what the Fifth Coalition is, that was between Britain and Austria. In Austria because France is trying to take over all of Europe and they are warring everywhere, and the Brits would not back down. England wasn't going to back down, and they were making allies with anybody that they had. And the name the Fifth Coalition should lead you to recognize that there had been a first, a second, a third, and a fourth coalition prior to

this coalition. So they were bringing on allies to stand against Napoleon on a pretty regular basis. Now, the Fifth Coalition, I think, what did it last? Three or four years? Not very long? Yeah, it was very short lived, but I know it wasn't even years. It was from April tenth to October fourteenth, nineteen o eight. The Fifth Coalition, I'm sorry, eighteen o nine, Okay, okay, because I swore it was one that had gone on for longer. But

there were prior ones that managed for years. But so everybody that wasn't French was standing up against the French. Oh I'm sorry the dates I just gave you, that was the war of the Fifth Coalition. Yes, okay, that that makes me feel bad. Sorry. Regardless of the Fifth Coalition, they had a couple of years under their belt before Napoleon literally squashed the whole thing. But this is and there, this is one of those times where it's just war

upon war. Well, this was the beginning of the downhill slide for Napoleon. Yeah, and you know, eventually, of course, he was sent off to exile and eventually came back and said hello, remember me, and started all over again. We'll talk about that later on the Mystery of Napoleon. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about about it. There's some mystery there. So in mid November of eighteen o nine is when Bathurst decided he really needed to get out of there. Yeah.

He um that's because Austria had flicked it in, right, it surrendered Napoleon. Correct. Yeah, Actually, um, I I know that Steve did a lot of research on this. I did a lot of research on this, but um, I

bet Steve's notes are a little better than nine. So let's have like Uncle Steve's toy story time about a little bit of the stuff that was happening around the Napoleonic Wars in Vienna at that because I didn't well, you know, this is this is one of those things where I always rely on Joe to go super crazy the military campaigns, and then I ended up falling down

the rabbit hole. Um, it really is. It's it's it's strange because what happens is the Fifth Coalition is going on, and Napoleon gets wind of it, and he's none too happy, and he brings his army to Vienna. At this point, he um he occupies Vienna. This is in May of eighteen o nine. He occupies Vienna, and he basically he thinks he's put down any resistance, YadA YadA, YadA, and everything's hunky dory, and then he's got some obviously, got a bunch of other campaigns going on. So he he

leaves Vienna and a large portion of his troop force leaves. Well, it turns out the Fifth Coalition this is when they're stirring up all this trouble, and they make trouble. I guess that's the best way to put it. They make trouble. At this point, Napoleon realizes that he has to truly come back, and he truly has to put down what's going on in Vienna. And I believe that it is.

It's pronounced the Battle of vagram Um okay, and that took place between the fifth and the sixth of July of eighteen o nine, and it's a weird battle because it literally took two days. Napoleon shows up, he forwards his army across the river in the middle of the night,

thinking he's got the upper hand. But this is when um guns are really becoming prevalent and cannons, and there are there are casualties somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to seventy thousand men total between each side combined, but Napole But Napoleon ends up getting the wind. Not clearly, but he gets the win. A bunch of the generals that are fighting against him, the Austrian side, flee, they chase, some of them get killed, some of them get captured.

But it's a really weird battle in the fact that it took such a short amount of time. And even stranger is that go figure as a dictator. Napoleon lied about the whole thing to the French people. In other words, he told them that he had lost, yeah, maybe two thousand men, maybe men, but they the enemy had suffered massive casualties. I'm not surprised, that's, you know. And how how the French people gonna find out, Well, they're not

except that, oh, well, my husband didn't come home. Well he was one of the two thousands, or he died in another campaign. But that's why I said earlier, it was the beginning of the downhill slide for him because he wasn't getting these crazy decisive winds like he had in his early campaign. He lost a little momentum there.

But that's that's obviously that's the problem, and you're we're talking about with Bathurst initially is that he's got to get out of town because because Napoleon's coming it down

and nobody likes Napoleon. Napoleon didn't like the Brits. No. Yeah, the War of the Fifth Coalition ended on October of eighteen o nine, and that's when Austria ceded to Napoleon basically, and there was a little bit of a scuffle until early November nineteen I'm sorry, eighteen o nine, when finally the um French Bavarian army really defeated Austria in the

Peninsular War. One other bit of kind of geographical history that I think that we need to talk about this and I'll keep this really brief for this story, is that the north west portion of that area was known as the Federation of the Rhine and it was composed of like nineteen kind of city states which it all all put their fealty towards Napoleon because they had already lost him previously. Are you talking about the northern parts of Austria. I'm talking about from Vienna north. There's a

just to the west of Vienna. There's a band if you look at on the the eighteen o nine maps, and they just put it in this weird little grouping, but it is made up of all these individual areas that were run by um or whatever. They were barons and princes who were who under Napoleon went ahead and consolidated power in these small areas, but officially they were loyal to Napoleon. So this is something to keep in mind because this is the area that our dear little

Mr Bathurst is going to be treading through. So um Bathurst decides again in like early mid November, that okay, it's time to get on out of here. And remember again, this is you know, eighteen o nine. We're not talking like hop on a train and hop on a well, I mean you could have hopped on a train, but we're not talking like hop in your own car. Because you're a British diplomat, it's hard to get on a

train safely. Well, there weren't that many of them either, No, definitely not unless you're a soldier, in which case maybe there were some more. But anyway, he had a German courier or attendant, depending on like what you believe slash red how this person is described, I'm going to say attendant. His name was hair Krause r Krause, mr Krausse. Yeah. They decided rightly so probably to move under assumed alias

is because um duh. So Benjamin Bathurst went by Baron de de Coke, went by Baron to Coke, and her Hair Krause went by Fisher. Benjamin made no contact with the brittle British console when he was traveling. This guy's name was Galoway mills Um when he arrived in Berlin, because he did arrive in Berlin from Austria to Berlin, Germany. Now he was heading north to catch a boat to head to England, right Um. Some of the accounts that you'll read say that he was headed to the Baltic see.

Some of the counts you'll see said, no, he was gonna go to he was going to go south after a while. And some of the accounts you read say like, we don't know where he was going on just he was just going to go overland the entire time, all the way up to England, and he was actually originally considering going south to the Mediterranean. In hindsight, you probably should have done a good idea. How many times have we said that on this show the other way? Yeah? Yeah, um,

so okay. So so Benjamin hits Berlin, but he doesn't go to see the British console there, which probably would have been a good idea. That is very unusual. Yeah, I'm mean you guys know, I hope our listeners understand how diplomacy works, but um, you would want to check in with the consoles if you're a diplomat, especially if you were fleeing, unless you really didn't trust them, or

maybe he just didn't have time. Well okay, so he wasn't, as it turns out, because he did deliver two letters, so he had time to deliver the letters, but he didn't have time to even stop and drop a letter to the console there and say like, hey, passing through super endanger By. I've also read that. You know, if he's doing if he's not going to drop by the console, his I would presume his plan is to stay under

his to stay in cover, to not break cover. And yet some of the reading that I've done made it clear that it was pretty obvious that everybody knew that he was in town. It wasn't as if it was a secret, which is, you know, that's counter to trying to stay in your role of being in your cover. If you're gonna be like, hey, it's me Ben Been, Hey here's your letter. I'm gonna go I'm gonna be staying at the end over here, and you know me,

because I got this fancy pin in my head. But I gotta say he did not practice great trade craft. He really didn't. He changed his name and nothing else, and he wore very distinctive clothes and drew a distinctive carriage. He would have been wise to perhaps adopt a better disguise than just changing his name. I agree, and we'll talk a little bit about that whole situation in a minute. But so, yeah, he did stop in Berlin. He delivered two letters to two separate gentleman's but again didn't stop

with the console. He also changed horses in Berlin and hung out for a while. And this is the first time you see a date enter this story, so we have to make assumptions up until this point, but it is known. I guess that he left Berlin on November, so I gives him ten days to get to the next stop, which is strange because where he disappeared is only a hundred miles northwest of Berlin. Strangely with taking

ten days to get there. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, sorry, my number is based out of Vienna, and I was like, no, it's five. It's five miles from Vienna, not from Berlin. Well, he might have made some other stops on the way. He must have it, I mean he must have. He had to have. And what kind of vehicle was he using for? He was he was traveling by a shave or you know it's spelled like chase. It's a two horse carriage, right, it can be too, It could be

one of course carriage. But they're real lettle. I mean they're the open front ones. It's not an enclosed and it's got like just two wheels, not four, right, Yeah, sometimes they have three, but I don't I think the three ones that you see are actually like driven a little bit, is it? It would? It would it be kind of similar to like a rick Shaw, similar example, a horse instead of a dude. Yeah, and a little bigger. Um. But yeah, it's not like luxury travel. Although in the

book that his sister trip Athnia Thistle. Wait the wait, I love that name Trips. I'm gonna go with this looks like the kind of name you would see in a PG Woodhouse story or Harry Potter. Yeah, I was gonna say, this is my Harry Potter name. I like, Trypthinia. But how how are you saying it? I'm thinkin there's a lot of different ways? Um? Okay, So she is Um. She's Benjamin's sister, and she wrote a book called the Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr h. Bathurst, and she said

that he was traveling with his entire suite. And I don't know what that means is necessarily, I think there's like a bunch of rooms. So that sounds like a little work for the There's another definition, which is like and entourage. Um. And it does sound like he was definitely traveling with more than the one attendant. But Harry Krauss was his an attendant when he was in Austrian Germany. So I this this is something that I'm glad that you did more research on the vehicle than I did.

Because if I'm understanding this, this is a seat with a set of wheels under it is not a full enclosure. Would that be correct? Yeah, it's probably more like two seats. But yeah, okay, my reason for that is the descriptions of his disappearance. I want this to be understood. Yeah, I would encourage people to look up. It's like shas like a shay lounge. So it's c H A I S E. You can look it up and you will immediately go, oh that thing you know in in my

uh my high class family, we call it a chase lounge. Um, I am from the woods and I know who you are anyway, Um, Benjamin was dressed in gray trousers on the day of his disappeared. Well, this was his traveling gear, so it was the entire time he was basically wearing this. He was dressed in gray trousers, a gray frogged short coat. Frogs are okay, frogs are. This is where my degree

comes in hand. Two times here tis here So you know when you see the like really ornate embroidery on either side, and then you've got the thing that's just a ball that goes through loop. Okay, for everybody who's not in the studio, Devin is pointing at where the lapels of a jacket it's on your it's instead of buttons. It doesn't have to be up here to be all the way down. I that was just a convenient place

for me to be in front of the microphone. Yeah. Um. And then so it's the little ball that goes through loop. It's not a button. It's all fabric or embroidery. So you guys know what those are, yeah, from wearing right now? Yeah, And a short coat is um, it's a short coat. Um, it's kind of like a like a fur lined capelet that has sleeves. Is is this kind of like the short eighties gene jacket that has currently come back into fashion, you know, like if you take that length but make

it a cloak with sleeves. Yes, Okay, so I was right fashion. Okay, we'll just go ahead and a grating disagree on that one. Um. Anyway, so he wore his gray frogged shortcoat over a sable for greatcoat lined with I'm sorry over which he wore. That's how I wrote it. You're welcome over which he wore a sable for greatcoat which was lined with a violet velvet and a matching sable hat. Spending wardrobe there. Yes, he also had a scarf and a very valuable diamond pin that like you know,

pinned the scarf. Probably he was wearing it kind of like a jibo, which is like when you you know, like I'm sorry, I'm like trying to find it, well, all staying in scarf and wrapped around and then you put a pin right here. Yeah. I was just talking about you guys know this guy, right, I mean you've seen paintings of this guy of course, right, yea, And yeah, obviously a wealthy guy. Yeah, I like to show it and not really hiding it while traveling through like rural

enemy territory. Yeah, not wise. Alright, So okay, what is our boy doing? Okay, So he arrives in Pearlberg, Germany on November eighteen. Oh not, I'm sorry. Um, it was kind of in the like mid day is my understanding of when he arrived, and he spent the afternoon writing letters and then burning those letters, some letters, not all of them, some of them, and then he went to a local coffee house where he contacted one Captain Klitzing, who was the commander of a squadron of like crusade

basically like friendly soldiers in that town. Um friendly to his English plate and basically he said he was a merchant and he didn't think he was safe, so could um, could the captain please provide him with a couple of soldiers to guard him? And the captain probably saying like crap, Yeah, this is a really boring place. You can have a couple of soldiers. He was also super agitated. He according to the According to the accountings, Bathurst was making all

of the gestures of a guy who was whigging out. Yeah. He apparently couldn't even hold a cup of coffee to his lips without trembling. He was really freaked out. That's what happens with me, right, So the captain says, okay, yeah, you can have a couple of guards. We're not really

doing that much right now anyway, So here you go. Um. So Bathurst goes back to the inn, which was called the White Swan, that he was staying at um and where his horse and carriage were stable blah blah blah um, and that that's where he had been writing letters as well.

Was that in um, he goes back with his two guards. Um, he slept fitfully on a table for a couple hours in like the middle of the afternoon, which is what happens when you have a bunch of coffee, right, Because this plan was to travel at night to attention, right, well, it became his plan when he originally arrived in town. He had asked one of the locals if they could switch out horses, which I guess is like a thing that you could to post post for horses. And he

had said, we're gonna leave tomorrow morning. We're gonna stay the night, We're gonna leave tomorrow morning. Can you have the horses ready for that time? And um, the what it's called an ulster. What the ulster said was of course no problem. When he woke up from his fit full sleep around seven bathroost actually said, you know what, No, it's going to be safer for us to travel at night, So actually, can you have those horses ready by like nine?

And the ulster said, okay, dude, it's Ostler. Correct. Oh, I like Ulster better, but it's you're right, it's Awfler. I'm sorry. He's a stable hand. Yeah, stable hand and also spelled with an h or without an age. We just got the French pronitciation with the age of silence hand. Yeah. So the guy who's in charge of the horses um says, yeah, okay, we can get those horses ready for you by nine, No problem, jerk, I got nothing else to do. So at seven, when he woke up from his fit full sleep,

Bathurst Benjamin Benjamin Bathurst. I just realized I've been calling him Benjamin this entire time. Now I'm switching to Bathurst. Sorry, you get a little too familiar there, Yeah. Sorry. Mr Bathurst's dismisses his guards. So at seven, he dismisses his guards and then he goes outside to oversee the reloading of his things onto the carriage, which is just like on the back of the carriage again a very not

a very high enclosed vehicle. Yeah. So he goes out, he steps around the horses, like onto the other side of where the horses are. Yeah. I heard the story as he and he and hair Krause basically headed out to to like hop aboard and he like basically headed around the front of the horses basically as if he was going to climb into the driver's seat. If you're an American on the left hand side drive the car, and then you have heard that account, that account is inaccurate.

Not the only account that I've ever heard. That's one of the account But that's not as far as I can tell, that's not actually what happened. But um, we can yeah, we can do. The fans. The other accounts say that he left to go check out the horses. So why don't we just let's just tell the fantasy

version real quick, one that you hear the most often. Yeah, So the fantasy version is that Krauss and Bathurst go out and then so Bathurst goes around the front of the horses to get in the driver's seat and just disappears into thin hair. So basically he disappears behind the horse and then never never reappeared at or the carriage, yeah,

or the latter or whatever whatever. Yeah, the more reputable accounts I've heard of this says that Bathurst went out to check on the horses and to oversee the loading of his things a little bit before Kraus. Yeah, and Krauss was still inside. Um. And then when when Bathurst didn't return for an hour, went outside and was like, have you guys seen that guy? And everyone was like, no,

he just disappeared, and I remember seeing some stuff. There was some discussion that Krauss had presumed that maybe he had gone to the out house, or maybe he had gone back in the building and unbeknownst to kroused, or maybe he had gone back to see who is the guy that assigned the soldiers to him? Uh yeah, yeah, like maybe he had gone back to see him for some unknown reason. So he's just like, you know what, he's my boss, he does this stuff. I'm just gonna

hang out wait for him. It's really kind of what why not? I mean, yeah, you had no idea that he disappeared. Yeah, and that's it, um, I mean Bathroost attendance. Obviously, as soon as they realized he was missing, went looking for him, but they didn't find anything. And it was also kind of the middle of the night. I mean, you know, November nine pm. Um, it's not exactly like dark dark like it is for us right now is super dark and it's not even nine and it's yeah

it's not nine. Yeah, So that's it. That's our story. Kind of there's a couple of a couple of details. Uh so, a couple other little details to add here on December six, too old women. Okay, I guess I should back up a little bit. Um. The version that I am choosing to believe is Bathurst was traveling with more than one attendant, I believe, and not unusual for

which is definitely not unusual. I think it was him and Krauss in the one courage thing that they had, and then there attendance that we're following, maybe on foot, maybe on horseback, but kind of at a safe distance, so it didn't seem like it was this huge entourage

of an important person, but they were all there. And so it is my understanding that Krauss stayed in Pearlsburg Pearlburg Sorry to investigate this disappearance, and sent the additional attendance on to England to deliver the news of bathurst disappearance. But you will see often in other versions that Krauss was the only one traveling with him and was the attendant that went on to um the UK or to London to report his disappearance and then returned to do

some more investigation. And I think that's the problem with the stories because this story is two years old and it is it is very um exaggerated at times, and it has been exaggerated many times over the decades. I think that's part of why we have this differing many variations of who was there are and who delivered the he's missing. So I will tell you the reason that I believe that Kraus stayed behind is that Krauss was familiar with Bathurst's family. He had been his attendant for

a very long time. UM. I think since he had become a diplomat, that's my understanding that he had kind of been his main attendant. UM. So he was familiar and friendly with the Bathurst family and UM. In Trythinia's Trifina's version of this story, she went with her father when they had been they had been called by a local magistrate to receive this news. So they went to the magistrate house in the magistrate said, an attendant came and told me that, you know, Benjamin Bathurst is missing.

And it is my sense that had Kraus, this long time attendant and like good family friend, been the one to deliver the news, he would have been there and she would have mentioned, oh and you know Krauss was there. So that's that's my reasoning behind that. Just just um, I mean, it's it's totally possible. It's different. Like you said, it's like two years old, so who knows anyway, So we're going to go ahead and assume that cross stayed

and everybody else went. Um. So, on December sixt so, three ish weeks later, two old women bought brought Krause a pair of plants pants that they said belonged to Bathurst. Well, they said they found them in the woods where they were gathering firewood. Maybe yeah, that's true. They were they were great trousers. But yeah, well there was there was there was there was a letter in there. There was

a letter, but we can talk about that letter a second. Um. They found them apparently in a stand up trees a cops of trees, um um, just outside of town. They contained nothing but two bullet holes and a hand scrawled in pencil note on a scrap of paper to Benjamin Bathurst's wife. I am I'm not convinced that this was actually from him. Well, and there's no blood. There's no blood, so the bullet holes are likely fake. And I think

it's likely that this letter is fake. You know, they say it was scrawled in you know, like kind of a really haphazard handwriting. I don't believe that this is his. Well, and I feel like there's a bit of fanciful edition because the letter says I don't trust so and so when I'm going to be betrayed, and please don't marry again. And we'll talk about the actual contents of this note in curies because it does feed into one of the theories. But it is my general sense that pretty much everything,

whether these were his pants or not. They may have actually been his pants, but that pretty much everything surrounding his pants was totally false fied. I don't think the note was his. I don't think the bullet holes, yeah, they just weren't they like, well, they weren't fired or

any one was in the pants. And I, um, and I should note that, um, it's very likely that these pants were planted there a couple of days before they were found, or maybe even that the old women were lying, yeah, we're lying about the pants out there, or they didn't. I mean, they didn't have to put the pants out there. They could have just brought him and said we found these in the Woods when we were looking for mushrooms blah where old women believe us of old ladies are

always looking for mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, so uh, Bathurst's brother and or no, I'm sorry, his wife and her brother traveled to Germany to find out what had happened to Bathurst. There was definitely, uh at the time, a lot of rumors about this being a French conspiracy to get rid of this diplomat. So they apparently, again according to the

fanciful version, had an audience with Napoleon himself. I did not think, however, much more likely some like random proxy for Napoleon met with them and of course just said, no, I have no idea what you're talking about, Like, no, who bath Bathurst? But bath Bathurst? No, I don't know who that never heard the name? No a bath I don't know. Is that some sort of new fangled way to to bathe yourself? I don't understand that that whole description right there. Now, I cannot get Napoleon from Bill

and Ted's excellent Adventure out of my head. Right, that's right, because that is exactly how he behaved. I got to see that movie again. It's been too wrong. He everything I know about history. Yeah, that's everything I know. Yeah, exactly, wasn't so crazy. So now we're on two theories. Um So, in true Devon fashion, we're doing like there's a couple of subheadings of theories. You mean riddled with bullet points. Yeah, they real bullet points. Are fake, they're real bullet points.

So the first kind of subheading of theories is thief or theft, depending on like if you do spell check or not. It was obviously well with rob Yeah, I mean I think so. So it turns out that Bathurst, you know, just even his the way he was dressing.

Notwithstanding he may have been like pulling out his really expensive pocket watch and like flaunting it around and kind of flashing his really heavy coin purse around and lit kind of poverty ridden town, yeah, place that was kind of an a war zone or refugees and bandits, and

he's wearing this massively expensive sable coat, his diamond. I really feel like he was a bit naive of the world because he'd been raised to be a diplomat, he had been raised to be around the court all the time, to be he had no idea that people would assigned value to this itty bitty stone on a pin that I just used to hold my scarf. And well, I think that I think likely he did actually know that

people would assigned value to that. But what the value that he thought that people would assign to that was respect, right, Because if you're a diplomat, that's how you garner respect is you make an entrance as somebody who should be listened to because they dress in the way that you know, gardner's respect. And if you're a cut persons a meal. But if you're in like rural war torn that's not like hey, respect, You're like, hey, look at that idiot. He has a lot of stuff that I would like

to have. Thank you. I could, I bet I could him over the head and just take it. All right. So it's not unlikely that this was the theft um. But there's two different ways that this could have gone down. One is it could have been a theft and like dropping like left for dead sort of situation. Or it could have been a theft in murderer, And let's talk about both theories and the same they're a little the same.

One is that to kill in the other implies, Yeah, it's it's the the old TV show I bunk you over the head and take your stuff and you wake up an hour later and go and I'm naked. Yeah exactly. Um, So the we're going to talk about the like theft in being dropped theory. First. This comes from This comes from Trifina's book. Um, this little it's like a footnote in her book actually, and will link to this book. It's on Google Play. It's I think it's probably like

a free resource at this point. It's like almost two years old. It's so royalty free at this point. Yeah, I hope. So no copyrights. I don't think you have

to buy it to read it. It's all on Google which is pretty great actually like that and pro tip, we're going to post the book, but you can like search within the book just search for Benjamin and then you only get the pertinent stuff because it's no it's like all of the correspondence of her father anyway, Apparently, it's it's pretty possible that he could have been abducted and you know, taken some of the valuable stuff but left some other stuff and then he was just kind

of like in the middle of nowhere and didn't really know where to go. So there's this one account from um a quote unquote girl at the time, and I'm pretty sure that what girl means is like a young woman who works in a house, not like an actual child. Yeah. But she reported that a couple of days after Bathurst disappeared, Well, I'm sorry, she worked in the house of a console near the sea, which was a considerable distance quote unquote from Pearlberg. But it was on the sea, so I

don't think it's like that much. I don't know how Yeah, it's yeah, but not like a thousand miles or anything like that. It's about a week's travel. Yeah, so yeah, on foot. Um, and it was I would say, like four or five days later. She reported that a man had come knocking at the door late at night on a rainy night, and she said that she, you know, took her little light, whether it was a candle or like a hurricane lantern or something, um to answer the door, and UM saw for a brief moment a man who

quote matched bathurst description. He was wearing a traveling cap and a short fur trimmed coat. Basically she called it a rock here um, which is like a lined and trimmed coat which like reaches to the knee that's got like a what's trimmed with fur with a bright lining kind of p yeah, and uh so she answers the door and catches a glimpse of him, and but of course, since it's a rainy night, the light blow is out, so she only catches a glimpse of him creepy. Yeah.

And a guy with um an English accent asks for the master of the house and um, she says, well, he's not in right now. Also it's the middle of the night, so she's probably like he's asleep, dude, like what are you doing? But she says, he's not in right now, but I'll tell him you called right you were here if you'll tell me who you are. And he says, never mind that, but um, he asked to tell He asked her to tell her master that an English gentleman wanted to see him at the post house tomorrow.

So her master did actually go like, I wouldn't do it, but okay, UM went to the post house and actually asked after the gentleman and it turned out that he had just been there and he had just left. But apparently an English gentleman had actually been at the post

house waiting for him um in the morning. And there's two separate reports of boats who original need from the area where this console was in charge of wrecked yea being lost at se So there's the theory that Bathurst was this like weird gentleman caller and that he had been trying to get help from the console but had somehow otherwise booked passage. Yeah, but it couldn't have been

him because he's wearing this long for a code. But the baths for cut was found back in pearl Well later, Yeah it was, but it was found later back in Pearlsburg, So you're right, this probably wasn't him. With the credibility for this is that at that time in an Austrian area, there's not a whole lot of Englishmen running around, you know. I mean this is this is French controlled territory. But

it is French controlled territory. That is what the one of the things the Battle of Vagram did and the Federation of the Rhine that his whole area is now is controlled by Napoleon. It's it's it's French, so I guess, so it's it's hostile territory. It's not as if I'm like I'm going to take a vacation. No, you're not gonna do that. No, but it is a time where you probably are going to see a lot of weird English gentleman showing up at friendly houses saying like help

in the middle of the night. Right, I mean, I guess for me, it's it's an easy coincidence. The well, my my response to that is a lot of those wars were not sudden or unexpected. In other words, if you are a tradesman traveling in an area and you can tell that the threat is eminent, you don't go. You know what, I'll finish my business and then I'll kind of make my way. Now you get the hell out of dodge. So most of those guys would have fleed. And this is again, this is in December. The Battle

of Vagram happened in July. There is many many months later. Yeah, so yeah, dangerously that's true. Some are very just blatantly oblivious.

But okay, so let's talk about the theory that it was a theft and a murder, right, that like he just got hit over the head as he was walking past the horses and dragged somewhere else and then suddenly like uh, you know, the guy who they you know, gave a couple the guy who's in charge of the horses, they gave a couple of coins to and said like, hey, just say he disappeared by um said, oh, hey just disappeared. I have no idea what happened. And then you know,

thus became an unsolved mystery. Uh, there's some really good evidence for this one. On April fifte of eighteen fifty two, during a demolition of a house in Um on our Homburg Road, which was in pearlburg Um, which was pretty close to the Inn the White Swan where baths had been staying, there was a skeleton that was discovered under the threshold of the stable area. The back of the skull showed a pretty significant fracture that was obviously like from a blow of a heavy instrument and would have

killed someone. Yeah. Um, all of the upper teeth of this skull were quote unquote perfect for the time. Well obviously it wasn't British perfect. But the the lower jaw um one of the lower molars, showed signs of having been removed um professionally so by dentist um. So that's the sort of thing that's like early dental records. Right, that's an early sign of being able to say, yeah, my brother Benjamin Bathurst had one of his molars removed by a dentist at this time, so it's likely him.

It was a dentist, a barber who used a chisel to knock it out of your head, right, or like somebody got punched and it broke. Yeah, usually bowler still get broken off from right. But I mean, you know, like it's I'm sorry, it's hyberbally accidents happened. I mean, yeah, Trithenia was in Perlsburg for some reason when this house was being demolished year later. I don't know if it's possible.

It's certainly possible that the mystery was so prevalent locally that somebody said, hey, we're demolishing a house, you want to come hang out also, but it's also possible that she just kind of was obsessed with the disappearance of her older brother and kind of hung out. Actually, that she wasn't there exactly when after it was discovered somebody actually notified her and came down and look at that's

probably the more likely. That's way more likely. Anyhow, So she said she didn't think that skeleton was her brother's, although it was, you know, fifty years on, so I don't really know how she would have known that. She said the brow wasn't nearly as high and pronounced. But also the thing is, when you look at a skull, it's doesn't look like the head, at which point, if you're not trained to know that, it is extraordinarily hard for layman to reconstruct. Yes, the muscular features of a face.

I appear to have a giant forehead because I have no hair, when in fact I don't actually have that big of a I'm not a billboard brow, right, you've got kind of a neanders thank you, Yes you are. I don't think appropriately to be honest with you. I like, realistically, if I saw either of your skulls, I don't think I'd be able to be like, no, that's not step or Joe. No, definitely not especially fifty years later. You know.

It's one thing to say like in you know, as soon as you've got a skull, Oh yeah, that's that school. But it's been fifty years. That's why that kind of reconstruction is an arch Yeah, it really is um to make matters worse. This house that was being demolished. Um. The owner of this house was a mason named I'm sorry, Joe, can you help me with this pronunciation? Keyserve? That sounds

like an insult um? And he bought the house in eighteen thirty four from a man named Christian Merton's, who in turn had inherited the house from his father, who had purchased the house in eighteen oh three his dad

Okay Well. Actually turns out Merson Sr. Had actually been a servant at Dundundun, White Swan in eighteen o nine, and in spite of being a servant his entire life and living on servant wages, he had been able to offer dowries of U a hundred and fifty and a hundred and twenty pounds respectively from two of his daughters. He didn't offer them, he settled them. In other words, he was in debt for those amounts he gave. He

gave that amount of money promised dowries. I took the settling part of this to mean that he had agreed to a dowry of x amount for each of his daughters, which equated to this two hundred and seventy pound value, and he had he was making payments and then suddenly was able to pay it off. That's the way I interpreted as as a he had a debt of this amount and suddenly interesting paid it off. Yeah, okay, that's a good way to interpret it. Either way, he came

into a crap ton of money. Yes, because you have to remember this is like we're talking eighteen o nine money and I haven't bothered to do the conversion. Two hundred and seventy pounds is decades worth of income. Yeah, it's a ton of money. But I wonder this, if you're the daughter who whose dowry was pounds, how does that make you feel? Well, you're probably the younger daughter. Let's let's value there. That doesn't make it sting any less. Yeah, no,

it's accepted. So societal thing that make it sting A first daughters are worth more because they could and I don't know about like German law, but typically, um, if you have no sons. This guy did have a son. But if you have no sons or the sun becomes unable to inherit the property, the first auto will inherit the property because she's worth more. A second daughter might inherit the property if everything really goes wrong unless the

second daughter has got other like attributes. They don't, they don't really so much yet. But it is I mean, I think it's like the worth the value is. This is like so okay, but I think the value is it's the first daughter is like quote unquote worth more than the second daughter. You see that in Shakespeare. Please don't please don't send us letters sexist. This is we totally know this is. None of us are paying men to take our daughters off our hands. Don't worry, don't worry.

But it is pretty extraordinary that in eighteen o nine somebody was suddenly able to be like, you know what, actually I have two seventy pounds right here. Yeah, no, prop not at all out of the out of the question. These guys were in a position to observe him, and obviously they knew the area really well. They cost him

and taking the stuff. Yeah, and then an additional like nail in the coffin of this one is that, um, it's reported that that horse horse watcher guy the Ostler, Uh, he apparently just like abandoned ship a couple of days after bathrooms. Yeah, he just disappeared a couple of days after after Bathurst disappeared. His name was august Augustine Schmidt and uh On November nine, Bathurst's valuable for coat was discovered hidden in an outhouse that was owned by family

that was named Schmidt. Can I ask you a question, sure, how far away from the White Swan was the Schmidt property? I've never seen it described, so I'm asking nothing was very far from anything in this town. It was all

pretty local. Okay. But but okay, So then the other thing to bring up, I'm going to talk about something a second, but I also want to bring up with the fact that all of the buildings in the area upon bathroost disappearance were scoured by the local authorities, so they had been in presumably as much as they wanted to be. They had scoured the interior of said outhouse. Well, I mean, I think it's pretty easy to like overlook an out house, though I don't know. I don't want

to make that assumption. So that's why I'm bring But it was also it was of that year, so it was like two days after he disappeared, so it could

have been discovered in in said scouring. Okay, I'm actually they would leave in the outhouse so, because the thing about it is is even if the police choose not to search the outhouse when they're on in search mode, they still have to go to the bathroom they So it seems like not the best way because I read other accounts that was actually found in their house and not in their outhouse. Possible again, so it seems like a better place for a sable, I would be keeping

a stable in the outhouse. My My reason for asking the distance from the White Swan to the outhouse is that I questioned if maybe while going out to check the horses or check the shay Bathurst was sudden suddenly seized by a very inconvenient, imprompressive need to find a place to I don't think it's I don't think it was that close. Okay, that wasn't like adjacent to the property. Okay. That's why I was asking it, like I'm going to take this off and stuffed here because I don't want

to be wearing it while I'm doing that. I don't usually just crap in the street, okay. And I guess like to alleviate all of these fears, um Schmidt's mother admitted to have taken the coat and she worked at worked at the White Swan. I saw there were not very many places to work in this town. Yeah, it was the White Swan or the coffee house, and that's pretty much the posthouse across across the roads were so though, a woman who was employed at the coffee house said

that after Bathurst had visited her establishment. You remember that she that he visited there to talk to the captain, that Augustine Schmidt had come in and said, hey, where'd that guy go? Um? And then hastened after him and quote unquote, she supposed taken some opportunity to destroy him, or maybe she just wanted to, like, you know, collect on a bill or something. Well, there were there were hours.

There were accounted for hours between when Bathurst disappeared and when I'm sorry, when Bathurst left the coffee house and when he disappeared, that he's accounted for. So it wasn't like swiftly carried out whatever happened to Bathurst. Yeah. So the the only thing that I want to point out about this hole there was the skeleton found with the skull with the fractures on it. Is this was one of three or four total that we're discovered in the town over time. So it's not as if this is

the only one. But it is an indication of the caliber of this town. But and it is a nice convenient little trail of Hey, these people actually worked there, and one of the guys was like, here's suddenly all this money right after Bathurst disappeared. But that that also makes it completely possible that two years prior, some other rich dude flouting his giant wad of cash got clubbed in the back of the head and stuffed under the stairs.

Absolutely it could have been anybody could. Yeah. And again this whole this whole stating murder victims on your own property. I just I still don't get it. I've not said this before. I'm a big believer. And take him out to the woods or dropping him in a lake or something like that. I mean, I guess I understand it. Yeah, I guess I understand it if you're planning on living there for really long time and it's like in your house, like under the floorboard, which is which is what this was. Yeah,

it was under the kitchen. Yeah it was still creep Oh yeah, it's still really really creepy. But it's safer there because you know, you're going to be able to control in eighteen o nine, you know, you're going to be able to control someone like coming in and pulling up the floorboards in your house. I don't think it's that creepy for the era if you think about how how common death is and to us, like anybody dying around us is weird. But back in that day, people

dropped like flies all the time. Oh I got a hangouts And actually, you know the people that knows in eighteen o nine, and they hadn't grown up on a steady diet of horror movie, was it like they were like and then read read real, that's just not normal? Yeah, so um yeah, I mean I think it's likely that he just kind of got hit over the head and bobbed and then you know, op somewhere, and that a bunch of people in the town may have been complicit,

you know together. That's a that's the amount of stuff that he had on him would have been enough to furnish a couple different families in the town a significant increase in income. The only the only thing that that makes me want to lean towards this is the dowry payments. The diamond pin is completely untraceable because diamonds can be pulled out of a setting, especially a diamond pin. It's not going to be a crazy big diamond. The rest

of it is clothing which disintegrates over time. It is not going to be capped long term as an over multiple generations long term. Yeah, and it's not as though like dummy McGhee over here is going to be like two weeks later, Hey, look at this fancy coat I suddenly found. Actually I've seen that on the internet. But right, but we're much dumber than those people were because we have a series of tubes that funnels idiocracy. Yeah. Yeah, Actually moving the diamond and disable could have been done,

just not locally. It goes you know, which it turns out is not that far away, not really, And you know what, black markets are a beautiful thing. Also, again, they don't have like a series of tubes, so you know, if you do it within a couple of weeks, it's not as though people are going to know that disappeared. Yeah. Probably, it's easy to sit on so at that time, it's I mean, you think about it today. We know about a story for weeks or months, and then it lingers

for years. At that time. You could literally sit on the spoils of your heist for a year and nobody's going to have any inclination. It's weird. It has b b embroidered into the pill. Is that Benjamins forgotten about it? Let's move on, Yeah, to the next set of theories. It's just one theory. I think that was the only one that had a subset. There's a lot of bullets. And this theory is um French abduction. Um. So this this French guy, Um, he's a noleman and his name

was maybe what's wrong? Um. He was an exiled French noleman at the time. He was later exposed as a double agent UM working for Napoleon, like as in like

he had been faking being exiled. So he had been like a friend of the um London and then uh it turned out just kidding Napoleon was actually his friend and he was like feeding him in that Yeah, what he told um Mrs Bathurst in eighteen ten that her husband had been um seized in the yard and spirited away from Pearlburg by French cavalry and then incarcerated in a forts fortress. Yeah and yeah, and actually a variation

of this. This theory appeared in a European magazine around the eighteen ten time, so pretty contemporary to his disappearance. Um but they added a detail that the troops had just passed by a similar place where Bathurst was, and that they had been instructed to go kidnap Bathurst because apparently he was carrying Austrian court papers. I don't know if that's true or not. He did have a considerable

amount of unaccounted time in his travels. Local opinion was that the French secret police had been actually chasing Bathurst and that's kind of where his unaccounted for time when he was trying to shake them. So like there was there was like a town that he passed through twenty five miles southeast ish like on his trip from Berlin

to Pearlberg. Yeah, that apparently like the French police had kind of set their tracker on him at that point, and that the reason it took him so long to get from Berlin to Pearlberg was that he had been like trying to shake them kind of um patterns things like that. Apparently he had been um snatched by some people, some French police sympapathizers that were hiding in a house

near Pearlberg from there was a a French sympathizer. Yeah, so they The thing about it is is, um, you know, the French actually taking him wouldn't be totally surprising because he took it took ten days to get for Berlin to pearl Yeah. Suggests to me he was making a

lot of side trips and doing some spying. Yea. And they might have been like they wanted to find out what he knew, but most most especially they wanted to keep it from getting back to England with whatever can the information that he had that that that's that's the biggest that that is the biggest thing. That makes no sense for me with this story. If you look at the Battle of Agram, which is the fourth and the fifth of July, and the accounting is always say and

then he was recalled to England. Okay, so let's let's presume that that means somebody sent correspondence to him saying you need to leave, stupid, don't just stay there. Let's just pretend that he's staying because he thinks he has to do his duty. That would mean that correspondence saying the Battle of Agram has happened. Let's say it takes a month to get back to London and then another month for that correspondence to get back. So that's July August.

This is now September that he's getting his correspondence. That still means that he should have been out of town much earlier than he was. It's um so I did the the Google thing here and it's five hundred miles approximately five hundred miles or eight hundred kilometers from Vienna to Pearlberg. Five Okay, so it approximate. Yes, well, actually

know the one that I pulled. I actually took this based off of roads, current roads, which are actually going to be kind of reflective of paths because of topography, but not perfect. I get straighter and more. But my my point, my point here is that I did a couple of different things. I did research on how fast does a carriage travel in a day, and the average carriage could travel about twenty five miles per day. So if it's five hundred miles, that's twelve or thirteen days. No, no, no,

that's twenty days. Sorry, she should have taken him about twenty days to get to Berlin, to get to pearl Burke, so he should have been there. If he was leaving in the beginning of September, he should have been passed there long before he ever got there. But then if you also look at contemporary accounts of people's travel times who were traveling back and forth in that area, that

trip actually only took about twelve days giver take. So my giant question is W A T F. What was he doing in the area, because it seems like he waited an add amount of time to leave, and then it took and in an extremely long amount of time for him to make a commute which others at the time had been making much quicker. Let's just for a second, um, I want to extrapolate that theory out to like modern day. Right,

I've driven across the country a couple of times. I've made tracks that trucker make in like half the time, So I make the people that I'm taking for the contemporaries were diplomats of the time. Okay, But I don't think that Bathurst was like I'm gonna I mean, he was wearing like really fancy clothes, and he didn't seem like the kind of guy who had about any kind of hustle in him. He was going to take his time.

He wasn't gonna power through. Yeah, he But the other thing is he did wait so long that it's totally likely that there were like roadblocks or things that he had to like pause and pull off the street and hide from the armies. I agree with you. It took him way longer to leave and to get places than

it should have. And he was going through the Federation of the Rhine, which is not going to be happy to see an Englishman, right, So it's not unlikely that he was taking these weird circular routes around to get places. But I agree, especially once we start looking at the fact that it took him somehow ten days to do a hundred miles from Berlin to Pearl. Well, that's why I'm thinking he made some side trips. I think I think that he thought he was the original James Bond,

and he was pulling some kind of shenanic. He might have actually been James. Well he evidently not, because James Bond never gets caught and dies. James Bond gets caught and lives and gets the lady. This guy got neither his life nor the ladies. Well, you don't know that. Oh damn you, he could have disappeared into the sunset to join the circus. Where was he going to find another lady with his awesome of name? Oh wait, no,

he was never. No, I totally agree with you. I actually think, despite all odds, that a French abduction is like the most likely of the theory secret police, the Napoleon secret Police where apparently like just all over the area, I mean, end coach. I don't want to say anything negative about people who feel like they have to cast their lot in with who is currently in power, but they are negatively referred to a lot as turncoats, that's

the phrase. But there are a lot of people who said, you know what, I need to survive, I need to make a living, Tell me what to do, tell me who to look for. I found one. I took care of it. And those are the people who are going to do the reporting and may have done the deed, and they are they're always lumped under the umbrella of oh, well that was the secret police. Well, the yeah, and the somebody could have read it him out for a reward to yeah, I mean, yeah, what's his name? The

guy that paid off the dow raising. Maybe that's where

part of that money came from. That's true, and it's you know, it's also I guess not totally unlikely to me that um, somebody hit the guy over the head, stole his coin purse and then you know, called the secret police that we're hiding out at the sympathizer's house, I mean was right across from the post house, which I think was right next to the coffee house, which was right across I mean if they were like real close together, so you know, the French police could have

been hiding out literally next door to where the horse carriage was being you know drawn, and you just you know slightly bribe the guy who was taking care of the horses to hit the guy over the head, dragged the staff. Is so they could have literally posed as stableman, right, or the stableman could have or just like bend the you know hitman from perpetrator, you know, hit him over the head, steal his purse, distribute coin to a couple of people who were complicit, and then you know, have

the police come dragged. As I said, originally, the thing about this story is that people say, you know, he walked around the other side of the horses and disappeared. Attendant didn't know he was missing for a freaking hour like that gives so much time for so many things to happen. So for me, I happy to say it was the French police. Quite possibly it was that, or you know, the doctor, but just the doctor Aliens. But no, no, because because Napoleon was he was not in a good mood.

I can see him giving orders, shoot to kill, orders essentially find if you find a British on our territory, our newly claimed territory or newly reclaimed territory, because they keep making these stupid coalitions. And again this is a historical bid. The British had not done him any failures because they were still they had control over the seas, they had the better navy, and the Brits are the French had to do everything on land. That was a huge imposition to them, so he had no love for them.

So I can see him to be like, if you find uh any British, kill him, I don't care and I'll pay. I'll pay your feet, yeah bet. Or it could have been hauled him off to Magaburg prison and just interrogated the crap at him for a while and then denied it all. Yeah, you know, they're vi dropped his coat and somebody picked it up, and that's why they found it. Yeah, as far as being killed, you might not. He might have just died in prisoner disease. And because that happened a lot, a hell of a lot,

they might not have tended to keep him forever. He might have just said there until the hostilities are done. He's a prisoner of war and we're gonna let him go, and then hoops, he gets Typhus dies. Yeah. Yeah, that's his story. And thinking about the count of Monty Crystal, that's that's the one that is so improbable because of the fact that everybody dies in those deplorable conditions. Yeah, it doesn't people are going to last that long. No,

it's lucky. And you've got a strong immune system, you know, maybe you could hold out for a long time. But but three quarters of them didn't. That's why he could be that he just he died that way. Yeah, it's entirely possible. Yeah. Actually, people out I had of prisons in much healthier conditions, with better diets died a lot too, So yeah, entirely possible. So so many ways he could have died because it was eighteen or nine and people

died like flies in those days. Yeah, I mean, I I'm a I think French abduction is the most likely. What do you guys think? God, I don't have what hard time making up my mind. Um, he was a high value target that way, but then again for a robber or bandit, he was a high value target. This it really does. I mean, I can just is the descriptions of him being such a weary word and so nervous. I could almost see this being a situation where he did himself in and by that I mean nobody else

was around. He freaked out, he dropped his jacket, he ran into the woods, He suffers hypothermia because it is November in the in that area, and he keels over in the animals hedium and somebody finds his pants later, Like is that it? No? But it's just like that might as well be brought in because there's just as

many possibilities. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Napoleon's agents got him, but seems most likely, although that the possibility, because he's dressed so nicely and got all this expensive stuff, the lots of coins, and diamond. It seems like robbery murder is also, you know, highly possible. I think no matter what,

it wasn't some weird disappearance. I think that. But I think it's really important that, like the record show that thinking Sideways thinks there was an hour that a lot of stuff could have happened to him, and there's a lot of unaccounted time from his time between Berlin and Pearl Burke. I think those are two really important points to bring up talk about this story that it may

not actually be as fantastical and nefarious as everybody thinks. Oh. I don't think this is nearly as fantastic as made out in the three terograph posts. Yeah. That's the problem is that this is put up in so many places in such an abbreviated force. Oh I know, he stepped around, he stepped around the nose of the horses and he was gone. Yeah didn't didn't happen like that? Yeah. So if you um want to see some of our links, especially that whole amazing book by Trip Wilms, Yeah, that's

probably the right way. She's I like Thistle Whistle better, but um, if you want to see that or any of our other links to research. You can find that information as well as UM stream the show on our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. UM. You can obviously listen to us there, I think you can download from You can still download from the website, UM, but it's pretty likely that you are not doing that.

You're probably listening to us on iTunes. If you're doing that, go ahead and give us a subscribe and rate and review if you haven't already. That's how other people find us. You can download and stream from pretty much every server UM, including Google Play UM, which is again where I found that book. So like great resource, like Google. Google taken over the world and we're happy about it, which is great.

We're happy about it now. I'm happy about it for good. Yes. UM. If your service allows rating and reviews, please go ahead and do that as well as subscribe. Again, that's how other people who use the same service that you use will find us. UM. If you don't do that, nobody will ever know about us, and then we'll have to stop doing it someday. UM. You can find us on social media. We've got a Facebook group and page. The group is public, the page is public. UM. You have

to request to access. Yeah, so like the page, join the group. There's some really great, interesting discussions that happened there almost every day, actually more than almost every day, like every day, a bunch of times every day at UM. You can tweet at us at Thinking Sideways UM. Don't please don't try to start a conversation with me there though, because like a hundred and forty characters is not enough,

really serious. If you have one little remark to make us great, good for the one off comments, but nothing is better than the the comment followed by the response of please email at but blah blah blah, please respond at blah blah blah blah. Okay, I give up. Yeah, So, um, you can tweet at us we. You can also follow us. I got a good amount of followers so far. I'm pretty happy with the fact that I can just tweet stupid memes all the time and people are like loving that,

so that's great. You can also find us on Reddit. We've got our own subreddit. We're Thinking sideways. Are Thinking Sideways is um and there's some interesting discussion that happens there as well. You can email us with any kind of feedback, suggestions, general accolades. We're Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. You can support the show in a

number of ways if you would like. Um, you can buy merch which is shirt, smug stickers, bla bla bla bla blah, night lights even um we've got Zazzle and red Bubble those. Um, there's links on our website for those. Um, you can do a one time donation on pay PayPal. You can set up a recurring donation, but as somebody who has a reoccurring donation on PayPal, it's not the best way to do it. Um. If you want to do a reoccurring donation, you can do that on Patreon. That's p A t e O and p A t

r e o n dot com. Um, and it's patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways. And you pledge a certain amount. It's like a pledge per lap. Each episode is a lap, so you pledge certain amount per episode and then you, um, you know, just pay at the end a month. And that's been really helpful in supporting our show. Thanks everybody. Yeah, thanks, all of that having been said, UM, I think I'm going to go ahead and chaise on out of here.

You go ahead, Steve, I'm still thinking, oh, I've disappeared. Well, yeah, how do you

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android