Thinking Sideways: The fate of the ship Freedon

cents off retail shipping rates. Start saving today and get a free sixty day trial of a Pitney Bows C two hundred by visiting p B dot com slash sideways. That's p B as in Peanut Butter dot com slash sideways terms apply Sea sides for details. Ye hi there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm your host Joe, joined as always by your other host, Devan and the guy in this jour named Steve. Okay, there you go.

Uh yeah, the third one, the third wheel. Now you're not we're all yeah, we're all equally at the bottles here. It's smelling and I refused to put it on because Joe had it last. Yeah, we're talking about my feet don't stink. Yeah, let's uh, well, this is off to a raging start. What are we doing here today, Joe, Oh, I don't know. I was going to do a story about garbage collection, and then somebody dropped this one on my desk. Kind of interesting story. So I dropped the

garbage one and picked up this one. Alright, alright, its mystery. It turns out it begins in late nine when the freighter freed On set out for Haiti from Miami, Florida. Uh, the island of Haiti, that is, the freed was under the command of Florian meyer Busch, a German guy. It was an a two foot tramp freighter Reggie steered in the Bahamas tramp prader. Uh. Any any sort of tramp ship is like, it's not it's one that doesn't belong to a regular shipping company and so it doesn't have

a regular schedule. Essentially it does it just does sort of spotloads, so it picks up a spot job to transport cargo from the spot to this spot. But you know, it varies all over the place. And they're called tramp and you know, you associate that that word. What's kind of an old, rusty kruddy looking ship, which they tend to be because they're you know the obviously the new shining ones are that those are round by the big lines because there's lots of money. Yeah yeah, so that's

what a tramp prader is. So it it worked the Carribbean waters carrying loads of whatever people want to ship pretty much, and there's something there's some rumors that a lot of these boats do a lot of smuggling also, which would make kind of sense, kind of desper for cash because they're not getting the big and I mean by they're not getting the giant lucrative contracts. Oh yeah, they're not there, they really aren't. But they're just doing

this spot stuff. Like I can say, it's kind of a hand amout the existence, I'm sure, although most probably most of what they carry is perfectly legit. And you know, it actually is possible to carry a totally legit load and maybe have a little bit of drugs on board,

you know, I mean, it really is. And I used to know it got years ago who had had been in the Merchant Marine and he smuggled drugs just personally for himself while he was in the merchant Marines, and a lot of people did, so, you know, is that considered smuggling or just carrying your own supply considered smuggling thisgling no matter what the what you do it for.

Yeah he did smuggle. But anyway, but back to back to our story, um with frieda on was besides carrying the German guy at Floria and it was also carrying Lisa Bishop, who was twenty three years old from Atlanta, Georgia. Attractive white lady. Exactly exactly which makes us interested in

this story. Yeah, exactly exactly why we're doing it pretty much. Yeah, Lisa was, as I said, twenty three years old, a journalism student at Georgia State University living in Atlanta in n She had a boyfriend, Paul Cornwell, who if you watched Unsolved Mysteries, you can see Paul. He's on there because this is an Unsolved Mysteries the TV show special They actually did an episode about this one. Yeah, and

that long long time ago. It's sometimes I forget that they would just take any story, you know what I'm saying. Like the mythos of that show made it seem like they were always doing big important cases. They did everything, which is the fun thing about that show. Yeah, some of them worse, these these little smaller kind of more obscure stories. This is a legitimate story about it. Yeah, and it totally is. And it's a mystery. What the hell happened to her? The ship and everything. Oh, I'm

giving it all the way here. Sorry, Let's go back to Paul with his awesome haircut. And Paul did not have the best I'm assuming he's caught up at the times. He's got a better haircut these days. I guess it was probably the time they were filming, but yeah, even ninety one. By the time they filmed that, I don't

know exactly what they did. But at the time that Lisa left Miami on the pre dawn, he owned a punk rock club in Atlanta called Metroplex, which apparently in back in the day it was a pretty happening venue, and my think was still around. Actually I don't know that he didn't even I didn't even think to look at that. Yeah I did. I did a quick look. It does appear that's still there. It's probably totally different.

All those venues change, you know, totally from a year practically, but he owned it and managed it, and Lisa apparently hung out there a lot, because why not, she'd been dating him for like three years and she was hanging out there and met this German guy we talked about before Flori and Meyer Brush who had long hair, which was still okay in the eighties. Yeah, he had he had really really long hair. He had hair band kind

of hair. Yeah. I'm not making fun of it's just like, if you want to get an idea of how much hair this guy was, I think of poison in the eighties. Yeah, so it's okay again, is it? Yeah? Or if you're you know, big and buff and you have a big beard, it's okay again. You could be like, what's his name,

Flavio or Fabio? I mean Fabio, like Flaviot. There's a story, but I'll tell you guys later, little Finn people at At this time, as I said, Lisa was Lisa was a journalism student that she was sticking of writing a story about about Haiti. And she's done something traveling in the Caribbean, and she was thinking to be cool to write a story about the differences between you know, the economies and level of wealth in America and Haiti. Something that sort of lashed this all with guilt, makes us

feel bad about what's going on in Haiti. Versus you know, how well we have it here, that kind of thing, you know, starving children in Africa plight. Yeah, I kind of like that. Or you never know, I mean, maybe she wanted to do it more seriously intellectual story about what what are they doing wrong down there? That's something more really actually economically right, And I don't know who knows.

I feel like I shouldn't. I should quickly clarify that I don't think Haiti is in Africa because I feel like something, Yeah that quickly say that. Anyway, Yeah, it's hard to tell what she was trying to write about. What she did want to write about that, yeah, assuming you know, assuming that maybe she just wanted an excuse to, like, you know, hop on this this ship with this handsome, long hair German, an excuse to go down to the Caribbeans,

go somewhere. Yeah, it could have been. Uh. The story varies a little bit though, um, and I'm not sure

how important it is, but it could be. And then one telling I've heard, Lisa tells Florida that she wants to do a story about Haiti, and then Florida says, oh my god, in this German accent that hey, I'm the captain of this ship which is going to sail to Haiti, and and another telling uh, they're just chatting, and Florian says, well, I have a ship that I'm kind of the commander of, and hey, we're gonna leave on this run to go to Haiti, and hey, you

want to tag along? And and then maybe she came up with the idea that hey, I should write a story about it. Is in having the trip available to her actually spurred the idea of the yeah, other than rather than the other way around, exactly exactly, And the only reason this is even remotely significant is it's like, you know, some people have said that, well, did he sort of like, uh, find out she was interested and sort of trick her onto the ship or you know

what I'm saying, it was convenient I got. Yeah, it sort of works this way into the theory is there, right, But since it's hard to say since we don't know exactly which of these versions is true. But so back to Lisa. She decides that getting onto a ship it was by the way, besides Florida and there were seven other crew members who were all Haitians. She decided to getting onto the ship with this one guy she barely knew,

and seven other guys she didn't know at all. Was a great idea, sure, of course, but apparently her parents and her boyfriend didn't think it was such a hot idea. Yeah. Yeah, I saw Lisa's father on the Unsolved Mysteries episodes and he I don't think he ever men you saw that quote? For him? He was like, it's like, you know, I saw that. I saw this picture, but I immediately thought, this is just not the kind of people she ought

to be hanging out with. Something like that sentiments at every about any history of just about every guy their daughter was with. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, he just didn't think that Floyd was there kind of people. Yeah, and at Leasa's boyfriend, Paul, was also opposed for the obvious reasons, right and I don't need a name. Yeah. He tried to persuade her not to go, but Lisa assisted, and so she signed on aboard the freed on as a cook. So do we know how good her cooking

skills were? I have no idea, because that might play into our mystery. Yeah, she burned one meal too many, Yeah, you know, I mean if she was totally bad, So I seem it could have given her paletates of just TV dinners to prepare for the crew. I don't know, but it's not that long of a trip though, so yeah, Miami Haiti. I don't think it would be more than

maybe three days. Yeah, well if they leave, they left on the seventeen, and they expected to call from her on Christmas Day, which is eight days later, so it had to be less than a week to get there. Yeah, I'm kind of out in that it was probably half as much of that time. Probably. Yeah. Lisa and Florida and left Atlanta, traveled to Miami, where the Freedown was docked, and on the morning of December sevente the ship set sail with Lisa on board and also Florida and the

seven Haitian crew members on board. She at. Lisa did call her parents that morning to say goodbye, and she said she would call when the ship got to Haiti, and the plan was to sail the ship to go Naive, which is a small part about sixty miles north of Porta Prince Haiti on the west coast of Haiti. Yeah, and then her plan data return was the thirty one December. I was going to say a kind of just south. I'd say it's half again as far as the Palmas

from Miami, wouldn't you say something like that. It's like, you know, if you if you don't have a Miami said the Bahamas is like a couple of plus like eight or nine hours. Yeah, I mean yeah, And so I assumed this old this this ship was old and

rusty and everything. It probably probably wasn't that fast. But yeah, essentially to get there days down, hang out for a couple of days, and then a couple of days back up right, something like that, and then uh, if you look on the map with the way it works is you go do south from Miami to Cuba, and then turned southeast and sort of hugged the coast of Cuba until you get to the east end of it, turned south and then right left, right, and eventually you wind

up in Hey. And so that's became Fidel Castro's personal chef. Well, you know, actually that's probably that's the other way that that could have gone. It could have been so good of a chef. Oh good point. The actually the Cubans were contacted by by the American government regarding this story. But we'll get there we'll talk there later. Yeah, no one has ever seen Lisa Bishop ever since. Nobody ever since that faithful day on the seventeenth of December that

they left the and left Miami. Yeah, nobody, not even the crew members. Well that's a good point, right, she wass sensibly on a ship with them for a couple of days. So well, none of those people have been seen either. But she's a pretty white girl, so she's the only one that ever, anybody ever cares about. Absolutely. What about the pretty German boy, that's a good point. We'll talk about him. That we'll find out more about. And of course the Haitians haven't been seen, but nobody

cares about them, right, yeah, exactly. By the way, if you're not catching it, everybody, we're being sarcastic. Nobody cares. We care a lot, Yes, sure, a lot of people cared actually, but uh so, Christmas Day came and went, Lisa's parents still had not gotten a message of a phone call from her, so they got a little worried, not surprisingly, and also the families of the Haitian crew

members also apparently became alarmed. And I heard that actually they reported their their family members missing before Lisa's family reported her missing. Well, they would see or have con checked with them much sooner than her. They might have been waiting at the dock for the ship to arrive, and the ship never arrived. It never showed up. The ship never showed up. Okay, the ship, the crew, everything, the car. None of them have ever been seen again, gotcha,

none of them. So Lisa's family contacted the authorities, assuming I'd hear the Coast Guard would be the people to contact. Uh and I think family members of the crew also did. Do we have names for any of the crew, No, not a one. Now, the stories all of the Internet, this story is usually pretty stink and skimpy in the content is available. I thought i'd make sure that I just tendn't someholp. Yeah, no, you weren't the only one

who couldn't find that. It's actually, you know, I think of this as your your standard in TV movie starring Florian long haired guy and Lisa white girl. And then there's seven extras in the background speak or yeah, doing chores on the boat. That's kind of way it is. Yeah, yeah,

I know. The Coastguard contacted ports all over the Caribbean, uh and including the Cubans, because there had always been that possibility that somehow they'd stumbled into Cuban waters and mid seas by the Cuban navy or something like that. The Cubans swore they had not seen the ship or any of the people. They were probably telling the truth.

I also did some aerial searches. That's the Coast Guard did aerial searches in January nine of the Old Bahama Channel, which if just let me do you know what you know? You probably know what the Old Bahama Channel is personally, Yeah, do you want to describe it or should I? We'll go for it. Okay, this is the obvious route between Miami and Haiti, and it's again it's like what I

described before. Instead, you don't go to straight line because west of the Bahamas there's sort of a huge area of shallows there um and so if you want in a straight line towards Haiti, you run around sound. So you go around, you go south where there's a nice much deeper water, and then when you get very close to the coast of Cuba, you know, hang on, hang on left, go southeast and hug the coast of Cuba, and then go around and that's that's the old Bahama Channel,

and they searched that with with jets um. I think they stepped three or four times something something like that, didn't spot a thing. And the immediate conclusion, of course, was at the Freedom Sink, which is not unusual by the way we should describe it. It is a the photo that is out there, Yeah, it is a narrow, rusty hunk a junk, yeah, And it appears to have

everything stacked above the decks. So it looked in that photo that I saw, ignoring what you see on unsolved mysteries, it did not look as if it was all that stable of a boat and others it looked top heavy. Tab it was probably stable when he had everything stashed in the whole. I'm sure that they had. They probably were smart enough to put the heavier stuff down inside the hole, you know. And face with my hands up

in the air, I don't know. Yeah. Again, these are people who the more money, the more cargo they haul, the more money they make, so obviously they're probably going to overload the ship. I might have been a factor here. I'm not saying I want to give anything away that could have been a factor in what happened if the boat sank, but there's not a lot of other possibilities as well. Yeah, but anyway, as far as far as the Coast Guard was concerned, it was like, well, rust

bucket of a boat. You know, the weather's dicey out there, you know, I sank. Okay, no, no mystery there. But but Lisa's parents and Paul Cornell did not want to drop this case. Yeah, they didn't understandably. Yeah, they tried to track down everybody who knew Florian. That would be people in Miami as well as Atlanta because and I'm not sure why you hung out in Atlanta so much. She was apparently kind of a drifter. That's that's what I've everywhere I've seen it kind of said that he

just kind of went where the wind blew. Yeah, yeah, kind of that way. She's a good time. Yeah. I think Atlanta is probably kind of cooler than Miami. If his boat is docked in Miami, it's weird that he's in Atlanta. There's there's no obvious reason for him to be there, I think, is what. Yeah, I'm for it. It might be a cooler town and it's only about five six centred miles away or something like that. So

you know, I don't know about that. If it was a cooler town than than Miami, I thought you were about to say, I don't know about I was really wondered for a second there. Okay, Yeah, I had no idea what it was. Yeah, okay they okay, yeah, we're talking about the family. It's my fault. No, no, that's fine. Um, but okay, now I used my faulty keep going. Yeah.

They also besides, besides tracking down all all of his acquaintances, they tried to get the press interested in The Miami New Times published a big article about this story in April of nineteen nine, which would be four months later. Yeah, exactly. And and underwater salvagher named Bob Nyberg read the article

and he remembered something that he had seen. So it comes forward saying he'd seen the Freedom in Georgetown Harbor on Grant, Cayman Island, about two weeks after it supposedly disappeared. And this Grant came in island about five hundred miles to the west of Haiti, which is the wrong direction. Yeah. Yeah, it's totally on the the opposite side of Cuba from where our boat was supposed to be Yeah. Um, so

again he saw this. About two weeks after the boat disappeared, he had, as he gave a statement on Unsolved Mysteries, said, I'm gonna like I was working in Grant came in on January that year. They've been a boat that came in. We were working under water, directly in the harbor area

where the ships pulled in and tied up. When I heard the ship coming in, we came up and as as then came up from underwater and uh probably and as I was coming out of the water, we looked back and noticed that the name was Freedom f R E E d O N. And I made a statement to my friend that those guys need their freedom because they can't even spell the word yeah. So that anyway, he said that the next morning the boat was gone.

Yeah that, but he said it was definitely freedom. He made an out that, yeah, little things like that can stick out. Well, that is, every time I read the name of this boat, my I automatically in my head fixed it so the end became an M because you just you expected to be. I was calling it free on. Yeah, I like, I like all the free on disappears should

be free. Yeah, yeah, I know. But when Lisa's family and boyfriend heard about this, Paul Cornwell got together with Bob Niberg again that the two of them traveled back to Grant cayman In to investigate Cornwell and Ibrig's boat to witnesses who said that they had actually seen Florian, but nobody had seen Lisa. Yeah, they had actually took pictures of both of them down with them and showed them to a lot of people, and yeah, they got some ideas on Florian. Uh he was however, this is Florian.

He was seeing what the short dude with black hair? Is that how he described as a dude? Yeah, no, yeah, the guy he was seeing with Louis Yeah, just a short man dude. What was Lisa's hair? She was blonde, kind of a dark blond. Yeah, yeah, she was actually a good looking girl. But beyond beyond that, Paul and Bob found nothing in Grand cayman Um and so that

the trail kind of petered out. Later on, the guy was ided as a Haitian man called Philip, and reportedly Philip was the guy who charted the Freedom for its trip to Haiti. Well, I'll tell you how we found this out later, Paul Cornwell went back to Atlanta. He continued looking for any acquaintances or friends of Florian, and he found this woman who had been storing some of his stuff for him, Florian's Yeah, yeah, Florian stuff. And I'm still a little hazy on exactly what the connection

was to Florida. How and how Paul found this woman. Well, I know that they were apparently they had had a relationship, but I don't know how they how Paul found her. Yeah, I don't know. That's never really explained. Yeah, I don't know either, and that we don't know her name. So I'm calling her Jane Doe. So Dan, is that okay with you? You know, that's fine. I'm just considering, I mean, Janelle Mett thinking about what Matt Damon. No, I'm just trying to think about, you know, how she could have

come forward. Yeah, you don't know, You're probably probably somebody in the bar said, oh, yeah, I remember you used to hang out with this this woman, and it's probably just that way. But but anyway, this is how Philip was ided. He's a black haired guy. So Paul Cornwell finds a picture of a dark haired man in Floridance possession. It shows it's Jane Doe who says that, oh, yeah, that's philipp uh and they used to hang out, I had,

I used to have a relationship with Philippe. And also she told him that Philip was involved in a large scale smuggling operation. Jane Doe also was the person who told Paul that philipp was the one who had hired the ship to go to Haiti, whatever that was worth.

But when Paul heard this something about you know, smuggling, obviously that put ideas into his head, right, yeah, it would, Yeah, and he's thinking, well, something went wrong they you know, they met up with the wrong people or some horrible plot is uncovered and Lisa freaks out and threatens to go to the authorities, so they have to bash her over the head with a wrench. It's over body the sharks,

you know that kind of something. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm sure all sorts of weird scenarios once he was had. Now this really is true that they were smuggling stuff, so especially sensitive contraband, and that that's really kind of insane to bring along somebody like Lisa, you know, who's just can only be a liability. I mean, unless they're smuggling humans. Yeah, he's trying to smuggle her. Oh there's that. But yeah, we're not there. Yeah, we're not quiet. Yeah,

people are gonna love this episode. Oh but you've got to wait to hear more. Yeah, this is actually the standard operating procedure for like the eleven o'clock News and stuff like that. And we've had this conversation. I'm also I'm not a hundred percent sure about the identification of Philip, because what it sounds like to me is Paul found a photo of black of a black hair dude in Florence possessions, shows it to Jane Doe, who says, oh, yeah,

that's Philip. But how did he know. I mean, this black, this black hair dude resembled the person that had been that he'd been told about, short and had dark hair. Yeah, and but other than that, you know, it's I don't think it's a hundred percent for sure that Philip was the guy that had been hanging with him in Georgetown on Grand Cayman Island. Likely, it's quite possible, but not I would give it, give that one percent. And also the story got an update recently. It's it could have

been dancing. Who's dancing? Okay? I don't all right? Yeah, uh so this story is not dead though still it was, you know, gets chatted about from kind of time on on Redd and web Solute, et cetera. But there was a recent update from a er whose name is No More Anxiety. Is that you Devon? Yeah, it's okay, but you don't want to talk, Okay, okay, no more but No More Anxiety got in contacts somehow with Paul Cornwell,

and Paul told him a few things. I'll see. He tracked down Florida's parents, presumably in Germany, who told him that they had not actually heard from him since n Yeah. Paul also clarified what Jane Doe said about the smuggling thing. He said it was really actually mostly conjecture on her part.

Uh and uh. He said he's spoken to the families of at least some of the Haitian crew members, and those guys have not been heard of since n Lastly, Paul told No More Anxiety that there was a siding of the Freedom by somebody in the U. S. Navy recently like date dat unknown, but apparently some time since like two thousand ten, that's a huge time for it to disappear and reappear, well, especially something as old and

crusty and rusty as that thing. You know what I'm saying. Uh, yeah, so I'm gonna I'm taking that one with the big old grant of Also, one person in the US, one person in the U. S. Navy, and how, you know, how does he find out? I presume some guy contacted him and just said, hey, I was in the Navy, and he got the gout to saw who knows sent him a m Yeah, it could have been probably. Yeah. There's also a rumor rocketing around the internet, well not rocketing,

sort of pottering around the internet, I guess. But there's a rumor that the freed On has been renamed the Freelion and that is still roaming the high seas. Is that like Freedom, Freedom or Freelion that. Yeah, I guess they wanted to save money on pain. I guess they didn't want to the entire men, just most of it. Yeah. This is again nobody, nobody who republishes this claim ever,

says it's substantiated at all. Everybody says there it's it's maybe the Freelion now, but it's unsubstantiated, so who knows. So that's the extent of the story. So Lisa and the freed On leave Miami, and nobody has ever seen again, including the ship, and people want to know what the hell happened? All right too, Yeah, we all want to know,

So we got to answer that. Next, let's start talking about what possibly might have happened to Lisa Florian and the freed On and those other seven dudes and the other seven dudes. Ready to get into our cool theories and there are actually quite a few for this one. Yeah, we want to talk about the theories behind why seven Paitians and two random other people disappeared. I know what it is. You know what it is. It's Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson. He realized that this this ship was floating around.

He was going to screw up the movie that he would put out in a couple of years called Braveheart, and everybody was going to get confused if he said the line wrong, you can't take my freed on, you know, the cast and crewer look at him like, what the hell are you talking about this time? Now? Oh wait,

there he took that ship. Yeah, no, that's a little known fact that yeah, when when he when he screams freedom at the end, originally it was misspelled on the screw ripped and he did scream freed on that yeah yeah, oh yeah for real? Is okay back to our theories. Um well, our first one is the obvious one, of course, the Bermuda Triangle. It's very close to the Bahamas, so yeah, and so they would be kind of like off in

the westernmost tip of the triangle there. But yeah, they could have like sailed enough into it, probably have meet some mayhem like interdimensional time work kind of thing. Seems unlikely. Okay, well you guys don't want to go one of that anymore deeply, No, I really don't want to talk about how it was transported back too and sunk by the Germans. Yeah, I guess they probably would have fitten that time would

have like this is definitely a period ship. Yeah, you know, they always get transported to right before some cataclysmic historic moment right now, showed up on Bikinia toll, Yeah exactly. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, what's that over there? Let's going tick tick tick. Yeah, so that is definitely not the case. Yeah, okay, so uber me to try and go no like Philadelphia experiment. Here, let's get to some

more real life possibilities. And there are many here, but in particular order pirates, which you know is not actually the Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't Realian, so therefore it must be real. Actually, the crick the Caribbean does have a lot of pirates. There's not pirates for centuries, and there are real ones even today. They're still all there's still out there applying their trade. Maybe the Freedom was

taken at sea the ordes of some other mission. It's I I don't know if there was how likely it would be that their cargo was that valuable, although maybe they could have taken it to some ports somewhere. Yeah, I don't did. I can't envision this particular vessel being contracted to carry a high value cargo and it just and it doesn't look like a boat that is screaming money. So we don't know why. I mean, unless somebody had insider info and there was something hidden in that hole

that we didn't know about. It out there was a ton of gold in there. If the pirates wanted it, they probably wanted it for some other purpose besides the contents of it. They probably wanted it to transport something, for example. It also kind of looked like the kind of ship that they could get away with just taking It's not you know, it's not a high dollar liner where the where the people who own it are going to come after it. Maybe what was on the ship

was worthwhile. Maybe what was on the ship wasn't as worthwhile, but having a new ship might have been worthwhile. That nobody just flies under the radio, that nobody's really going to pay attention to you like slap a new coat of paint on it. And maybe that it was easier to get I mean, you know, maybe it was less staffed,

maybe the less defensible. Maybe certainly that certainly a ship like this is not gonna be able to afford to, like you hire a team of blackwater operatives to you know, like stand on deck with machine against through a pell boarders. And it really did not look like the sort of thing that anybody would have missed. Yeah. True, if that white girl hadn't been on that ship, we probably would

have never never heard about it. No, absolutely not. Yeah, nobody would have even looked for it probably, Yeah, No, And it wasn't just that she was white. Also, it's because of her family and her her boyfriend made a stink too. That made a difference too. But you know, but yeah, I mean, but ships do disappear all the time, whether it's natural causes or piracy. It could have been

taken the high seas. They could have just boarded the ship at the dock, which happens a lot to piracy is not just all you know, like well, but I if I remember correctly, it's not as if it left the dock on its own. It had to be pulled by the dog. It was taken by a tug. But I mean, it's still there's no reason you can't like board the ship and just say hey, nice ship, can I have a look around? And then you pull out your revolver and say, okay, we'll keep running with us. Yeah,

sorry for the cheesy foreign accent there. And that would account for the freedom being seen elsewhere, you know, even after it had been presumed lost, because it didn't, you know, because it's new owners. Yeah, they still hadn't gotten around to abandoning and scuttling at whatever they finally did with it. I sent with something like that, especially when the word

got out that it was being looked for. You might think it's time to find yourself a new ride, or you might or paint a new name on about you. You might just go further south or yeah, you could do that too. You could just head on South America or something, or across the pond or across the pond. I don't I don't think this boat would have made it. It probably would have made it. People that human beings have been crossing bigger distances on crappier craft for a

long time, But I don't think. I don't think I would want to chance it. Yeah, I don't really think this thing could make it. So let's keep moving. Yeah. Well, another possibility is just a more natural one, which is had just natural causes. It sank like there was a storm, for example. Uh, there's also the possibility that so it might maybe it wasn't. Even although it sprang a leak. It sounds like it probably would have taken a little bit longer to sink than to say it wuld have

been a storm. Yeah, because there that was the other thing, right, is there weren't There was never ever distressed, a stress call or anything like that. There was no distress call, but you never know. I mean, it might be that the radio wasn't working. I mean, obviously this is the best maintained well. It also could be a situation where the leak snuck up on them. If the hold is

full of junk, nobody's probably heading down there. Remember I told you when I was on that trip, my last trip, and we were on a boat and I couldn't figure out why we kept getting slower and slower on the way home. And then I looked down and I realized the hold was completely full of water because the ding

dong had never turned the bilge pump on. That does happen, so you oh, it'll be fine, and then you're you're slowing down overnight, you don't really notice, and the next thing you know, the deck is at the same level as the ocean around. I. I have actually been in a boat or two where that it's situation has occurred also,

but then we never got that far. And the one thing I will mention is having been in those some of those exact same waters at you know that time of year, it is not a nice time to be on the sea. That is, it is the time where it can get It isn't always, but it can get really rough, and I imagine it's very changeable, very quickly. Yeah, and you know there will be times where you're just like, well that I'm not going out on the deck today because that wave just crashed right up. Okay, guess we're

staying at sea today. Yeah, I mean it can be and if you've got cargo that maybe wasn't secured properly, or if it was top heavy like Steve was and overloaded, if it was crappy, you know, you get one good you know, or even just a big wave, not even big wave, or just a quick little back and forth, two or three of those will just have you right

over pretty quick. Your cargo shifts and stuff. But yeah, I know that one of the statements of Coastguard made it was relating to the weather and just how the weather is changeable out there. So they seem to have no trouble at all, the Coastguard, that is accepting the idea that the boat just sank right. But on the other hand, that then we got Bob and Iberg saying you saw the ship in Georgetown, Harvard just a couple

of weeks later, but he came forward months later. Yeah, so entirely possibly he may have seen this ship, but he's got the dates wrong in his head. Yeah, that's possible. I don't know. See, I don't know exactly. For example, when he was in Georgetown Harbor, maybe he was working there as as an underwater salvage diver, and so it may be that he was contracted to do a job and like the know, the first two or three weeks of January, and so maybe that's how he knew that

he had seen it after it was supposedly lost. Maybe I don't know well either or it could be like you said, misremembering. I don't know well either way, the place that he says he saw the ship was five hundred miles away from where that ship should have been anyway, right, So that's a mystery on top of that, even if it did sink, Yeah, and he had the dates wrong, why so why was it five hundred miles away from where it should have been? Well, it was. It was

a tramp tramp parator. So it's entirely possible, say they picked up a cargo in Haiti that was to be transported to the Cayman Ellen and so you know it's not But again it's this, it does sort of like put a crimp in the hole. It sank. Theory sank sank of the storm. I would agree with that. Yeah, so so damn him. Yeah, I know so. But on the other hand, maybe maybe Florida and meyer Busch learned that people were searching for Lisa and decided to move a ship in his business set to South America or

Africa or something. Yeah, and that's why the ship was never seen Again, I don't know. Well, let's go, let's go into our next year. We'll try to like make this all coherent by the end, because I know it's getting complicated here, right really not really, Well, let's move on to our next possible theory here, which is it Lisa and Florian fell in love and they decided to run off and started new life together. Yeah. Yeah, totally

discredit air disregarding the seven other crew people. But yeah, sorry, sorry, guys, we're in the love and we're gonna need to kill you. We're secured relationship by murdering seven and is in people. It brings us together. You know, I don't feel that bad about it because, frankly, I don't even know your names. Yeah, you're extras in our little drama. That would be pretty awful. Yeah, yeah, it would be. But but still, I find this one

hard to believe. I mean, this one has actually been suggested by other people, not just me, so that's why I'm bringing it up. And it also seems like you don't let your family think you're dead. No, you don't like your family suffer like that. You know. Of course, maybe she was embarrassed, you know, because she had told her boyfriend like, oh, nothing's gonna happen, Everything's gonna be fine. And then she didn't have to contact your boyfriend. Yeah,

that's a good point. She could have just said to the parents. He could have just sent them all's over and yeah, yeah, call him from Haiti and say, hey, just wanted to let you know that I actually ran off. Yeah, never coming back. But I love you guys, because you've got a horrible mustache and terrible hair and I just can't take that. I can't handle that mullet or whatever it is it mullet, Yeah, it was, yeah, telling you just call a parents man, write him a letter for

God's sake something. Yeah. So I'm not not buying that theory at all. So let's cross that one off the list. All right, okay, all right, next, sorry, this is a little more nasty. And what if the captain and crew of the Freedom, like say, raped and murdered Lisa and then just threw it to the sharks. Yeah yeah, isn't that very similar to the the guy with the sub recently and the reporter that he disappeared her overboard after some they suspect some sexual encounter went wrong. Yeah, and

I can't think of their name. I can't again either, but yeah, he was. He was the mad inventor genius guy. And I love when they're mad and genius all at the same time. Yea, So it's a similar situation. Yeah, again, and he kept changing his story and then he had to like, you know, carve her body up into a couple of pieces and throw it to the sharks, you know,

and stuff like that. So maybe this was yeah, well you know, but anyway, this this theory is actually a more believable theory than Lisa arrives in Haiti safe and sound. But but it still doesn't explain the seven crew members. No, that's it. You know. If they had done that, well maybe maybe after they murdered her, they murdered each other and see each other overboard. I don't know. This does not. This doesn't really account for the missing crewman. It did.

It actually does not. This holds as much water as that boat did. Yeah, okay, maybe not. Wait, you don't want your boat to hold water. That's actually you do want your boat to hold water. You want your boat to hold water out. Yeah, it was holding it in anyway, just like me. Right now, hurry up, we gotta get to the bathroom. Okay, alright, let's talk about Okay, our next theory, Lisa was sold to slavery, another popular theory on the internet. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of I

want to say, over use of the theory of human trafficking. Yeah, I don't. It certainly happens, and I think it happens a lot more than anybody wants to admit. But I don't think it happens as much as it's speculated. Well, the problem is is like when it comes to things like, you know, finding women that want to go into that particular trade, there never seems to be a shortage of them. You know, you don't really need to go kidnapping people, and but you do. I think you often you do.

I was I was gonna say, so, be careful treading down that path, Joe. There's sex a lot. There are people who go into the trade of being a sex worker. And if you who don't call no, I get, I get what you're saying, But no doubt there is some coersion involved in that trade and everything, but probably not as much as and definitely when it comes to women like Lisa or young and pretty. That whole theory is what's say, it's it's It really is very titillating to

a lot of people. Yeah, like I said often over you topic, Yeah, it sure does. And the only I guess the only way that I could really see that happening is if he you know, they was they were actually smuggling, and they were actually smuggling humans, and that they had already had some sort of set up in place, and maybe this was something that they did a lot,

but it still would not explain the missing crew. Ye, unless the hold was already full of human cargo and they stuffed Lisa down there and when they got to the port of call, he said, hey, there's a bonus I'm throwing in these guys. Yeah, I mean, that's the only way that honestly that's true. Yeah, that's a good point. But then what happened to him? But yeah, he got himself a new crew and went to the Grand cap

So that was I guess. The other thing is it kind of seemed to me and maybe you guys got a different impression, but it kind of seemed to me that the Haitian crew that he had was his crew for a while. It sounds were at least for a while, they weren't just one off contract people. So that would be a like an extra horrendous thing. They would be kind of hate. Yea, yeah, I h well, it's it's possible,

you know. I could see a scenario where they're going to smuggle all these all these people and then and then here comes Lisa's thing saying, oh hey, I'd so love to go along to Haiti. I just don't want to go to Haiti. And he's like, oh, this is cool. It's just has just dropped into my lap, you know. And so and so invites her long figures and I'll get a few extra bucks, and so they go do their deal. Then he and the crew take off. There's a Grand Cayman and then sink of the storm. Yeah,

that's getting complicated. Yeah, and you think they visit their family when they got you would think they would have stopped and said high. Yeah. Well, I mean, it isn't it possible that they weren't actually going to Haiti? Because that possibility, I'm sorry, I'm thinking I'm treading on a

upcoming theory. It could be we don't know that, we don't know that they actually he could have lied to her, especially if the way that this came about was she said, you know, I would really love to go to Haiti to write a story. Oh I'm going to Haiti exactly. Yeah,

and that's a sleep very true. I've had that thought of the Again, we had the problem with the crew members families expecting them to show up and they didn't show and so that's that's kind of the whole problem with you know, if he was a human trafficker or was looking for people to abduct, it would also also help explain why he was in Atlanta instead of Miami.

And it could also well, okay, so we could actually explain why they all disappeared because they may have met to their buyer and something went wrong and the cargo was transferred and he and his crew were killed because they didn't deliver, or they were jerks about it, or they asked for more money, or they did something that made the bad guys mad. Because despared, they got to hook up with the bad guys with their human cargo. And I'm in as to them. Their their their engine system.

Like sprung a carbon monoxide. He can gas everybody down in the hall. Everybody's dead. You're dead, now what you mean everybody's dead? Well, I guess I'll take all of you instead. Well see, And this is exactly why people trot out this theory all the time of human trafficking or sex slavery or anything like that. I think, because it's so easy to just be like, it's exciting and it's it's yeah, it's very dramatic and all that stuff. And but I agree, I don't think any of it

really satisfactorily explains the mission mistination. Yeah so yeah, well okay, so so much for the soul into slavery theory. All right, let's work on our next theory here, which is that maybe at least a bishop made it to Haiti, but she met a bad end in an unrelated incident. Right, me's a serial killer? Well, I mean it's not as if even today it's not a rough and tumble It was not a rough and tumble place. I mean, accidents happened, it's not an overly Also, it doesn't really sound like

she planned this trip out very well. You know. She kind of just was like, I don't know, I've I've had a pretty easy life. Let's go see what not easy life. You know, packed a backpack with her little clipboard and went down there and was like, I'm going to write about poor people. The first first poor person she sees, who maybe is like, you know, a really horrible serial killer or something, and says, Hi, I'm from America. I'm writing a story on impoverished people. Would you like

talk to me? And the person goes, yeah, I actually have a place where we can do the interview, and she goes, okay, that sounds great. What I really really wish everybody who's listening right now could have seen was Devin holding out her script like it was a clipboard with an imaginary pen in front of him, writing out as she was questions. I mean, I don't mean to paint her as like a yeah, but everything I've heard actually she was. She was a smart girl. But yeah,

but you can. But she put herself in maybe not the best situation by just getting on that ship, and so yeah, I think so her judgment could have been a little better. Um, you could have made a bad decision, she could have it could have been totally fine. We could be smirching the captain what's his name? Yeah, I mean Floria has attracted a lot of suspicion obviously, could

be totally be smirching him. He could have could totally be innocent of everything taking her down there she walked off the ship and on her way to the pay phone and did something stupid or just maybe she did everything right and cross paths with the wrong person, you know. I mean that's there's that too, you know. But but then again that's that's there's still a problem with that, which is, of course the crew members in the ship didn't show up either, haiti. Um, yeah, that's the big

problem in just about every theory that that's a problem. Yeah. So these these all these theories that have been put forth have been put forth by people other than me, really pretty much, So what really happened? Of course, as as Devin mentioned, do we really know that the ship was headed to Haiti to begin with, well said, you know their crew? Yeah, do we really know? Do we really know, for that matter, that Lisa actually got on board the ship. We don't know that actually had to

percent for sure, because nobody out't. I don't think your family and boyfriend actually went down to Miami to see them off with the docks. She did say that she, I mean, there is the whole she called. She called the morning of her departure. Yeah, right, But did she call from the dock? I don't think so, Okay, I mean I don't know, and she could have called from like a pay phone at the docks. That's what I was wondering about, is if it was just from her apartment or a hotel room, or if it was from

the dock before she got on board. It's never clear to me. That's why I'm asking this question. Now. We don't know. That's that is a good question. Um, But she did call sometime, And of course I've actually heard too that they actually didn't actually leave the dock until

like two in the afternoon that day. So between the phone call and actually leaving the dock, there was plenty of time for Lisa to knocket on that boat, wander off and wander off and get run over, maybe being a serial killer over here in Miami, fall into the mouth of an alligator. Yeah, there's a lot of them there. Yeah, and so we don't really know, but I assume she did get on the ship. All I'm saying. All I am saying is that we can't assume a hundred percent here. Yeah,

I agree. Yeah, there's other either. I answer your questions too. We've talked about that. What the hell is Florian doing hanging out in Atlanta anyway? If he's trade was doctor in Miami. As far as Lisa goes, did she meet a bad end? Absolutely, I have no doubt about him. Whether it was drowning or kidnapping or but whatever happened to her, unfortunately it was not good because I'm not buying the hole she ran off with Florian or she just decided to disappear and start a new life on Haiti,

you know, moving with the peasantry on Haiti. I don't think that happened. I don't think so, you know, I think that, yeah, she met a bad end. I think those seven Haitians whose names we don't know, probably yeah, they probably all I think unfortunately the ships sank um. The whole thing that happened with Grant Cayman and what's

his name, um, Bob Nyberg. I there's all sorts of possibilities there, Like, like you guys said, he might have just been mistaken about the dates that he saw the ship could have been another another ship named the Freedom. I was gonna say, it's not I mean, it's it's kind of a weird name, right, but what's not to

say that? Well, somebody, somebody on read it made a really good point about this, and that is that if the ship was from Haiti, when when this took place, This is not long after Baby d r Vallier and his regime fell on. I don't know if you remember Papa Doc and Baby Doc, who were some nasty little dictators who ruled Haiti for a long long time and they were pretty tyrannical, and so when Baby Doc finally

got tossed out, it was a happy moment. And this guy made the point that, you know, it's not inconceivable that a lot of people decided to paint the word freedom on the sides of their ships, their cars or whatever. And also, course, as you know, English is not the first language in Haiti, you know, so that you could easily misspell and it's also possible that they spelled it correctly.

But paint peels and rust flows, well is that too? Yeah, I mean yeah, and so I don't know, so it could have been another freedom, uh freedom, I guess it could have been another freedom Oregon the dates, Yeah, freedom

is good. Or maybe Bob just sort of was maybe he massage to facts a little bit, I don't know, or may Yeah there's that too, so that yeah, but I mean, if it wasn't for that, and again the people that they want and talked to in Georgetown and showed Florian's picture too, well, I've seen in Florida's picture. He's he's actually a good looking guy who was a good looking guy with long hair and everything. But I

don't know, he wasn't that remarkable looking. He looked like a lot of guys in the late eighties with long blond hair. Yeah, I mean it was it was a good looking guy, but yeah, I could see what you could easily look at that face and he looks like a lot of other tourists and other people that you've run into in the past months. Couple we all do and that and that, and let's not forget too that these people were remembering something. This was May one, Bob,

and you know Bob. Yeah, so it's like and that was what it was, Paul. So it was May when when Paul and Bob went to Georgetown to show these pictures around. You have months later and these guys are supposedly remembering, yeah I saw this for young guy, I don't think so well, or or they're remembering yeah, I've seen him before in my life. You know, maybe he

was there. He could have been there months before. Yeah, it could have been because he's a notorious drunk, or he was a jerk, or he could have been there years before. And it was just like, yeah, that hair. But yeah, if you were to ask me, did did this event? Did this thing he met this guy? Was it four months ago? Was it six months ago? Eight months ago? Right? Not? No, I probably wouldn't be able to give you a total clue on that either. So I just have to I just have to sort of

come in in favor of the ship sank. Yeah, and uh, this is not one of these mysteries, you know, it's it's gonna be kind of one of the it's like DNA testing. One of these days we will we will make the oceans transparent. We'll be able to look down at the bottom and see all sorts of crap laying down there, and we'll solve a lot of mysteries. If we see a wreck surrounded by bicycles, we know we

found our boat. There you go, bicycles. Haven't you seen the pot there's the photo of the boat head on, and then there's the photo of the boat being loaded, and it's it's one of the crew members. He's loading up bicycles. And they made they shot. They did so many shots in the Unsolved Mysteries segment of bicycles stacked up on the power I feel like I'm totally making fun of unsolved mysteries. Yeah, I had no idea, but they might find a ton of bicycles down there. I

don't know. All right. Uh So that's about it. Next inn in next week when we talk about something else. Meanwhile, if you'd like to send us an email with your own series, our email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Our website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Or you can download our episodes or listen to them. You can also buy merch There's links to our Instagram, links to our like our social media Facebook, and also

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thinking sideways podcast. So find us out there. It's easy, easier to get to us, just to our web page, and we have a subreddit of course thinking sideways. Um, that's about it. I think for this week, awesome. Got anything more to share? No more ideas. Don't get on bats with people you barely know, especially when they're rusty little boats. That's probably wise life advice. Yes, petition to find out the names of the seven Haitian men who went missing, it would be you know, if anybody has

access to please send it our way. Yeah, because I could not find it and it actually is very very frustrating. This is going to be really frustrating when somebody's like, I googled it in fifteen seconds later. But if you do, but if you do, please do send it to us, because I would like to know that's that. Yeah, well we'll do a special episode just on those guys. All right, see you guys next week. By everybody,