Thinking Sideways: The Strange Death of Zigmund Adamski

to see you and meet you on the fourteenth. Bye, think ye hi there. Welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Jill Mind as always by Devon and Steve. Okay, we almost said Joe. For some reason, you're looking at him. It's hard to keep you know. I have a hard enough time with my regular name. We're just gonna go by numbers starting next week, but I'm seventeen. Yeah. For this week, I'm still Joe. Uh. And we've got a

mystery for you, believe it or not. We're gonna talk about a strange death a guy named Sigmund Adomski happened in England thirty seven years ago, and if you're listening in the year fifty, Well you do the math. This is before you go any further, though, I'd like to get a shout out to our listener Savannah, who suggested this about a year and a half two and a half years ago. Actually that's been a while. Sorry, Savanna. I hope you're still alive, but if you are, you know,

hey shut up. Also, I had tip to Robin Wardour over at the Trail Went Cold, because he used to write for Cracked, and he wrote an article about this. Particular little mystery was that Robin's I didn't I so rarely read the art the Actually I don't know if you noticed this about Cracked, but they put the author's name is very very tiny font that he explained why you never noticed it probably? Yeah, Well back to our story. Uh,

the year was nine sigma. Dodowski was an immigrant from Poland who lived as his wife Lottie in the village of Tingley, England. Um, and I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing that correctly because I've seen various videos, interviews stuff like that. I first assumed it was Tingley, because who the hell would name their town Tingley? Apish? So anyway, now, that we've gotten hate mails started. It's a Tingley is in

West Yorkshire. I'm sure you all know where that is, but if you don't, it's about halfway between London and the Scottish border, the northern part of the country. Yeah. Sigmund worked as a coal miner in the Lofthouse Collier Repit, which is a fancy term for a coal mine. The mine was about two miles east of Tingley, and Sigmund had been married to his wife, Lottie for I'm not really sure. I've heard various stories about they met in Poland and emigrated together or he met her here, and

we don't really care more, we don't really know. We don't know, and it's not really that relevant to our story anyway. Was exactly when he came here, when they met more than like a year, yeah, more than a year. They were not nearly webs No, No, I don't know. I think that would be an interesting point if they were newly weds, but we don't really care or not. She would obviously be the murderer. Yeah, but well, yeah, I know, I don't know her age, but I do

know that he was fifty six. It's happened so probably married a long time, probably, I'm guessing, and also a lotty. His wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, sadly, and by nine here condition was deteriorating, so much so that Sigment had applied for early retirement from the mind so that he could care for her full time. And apparently his request was turned down, which is ironic because that mine was closed down about a year later. Yeah, as

with a bunch of government processes like that are industries. Yeah, and maybe that was it. They might have even known about it and just he just just and sayd hey, you guys, you know you're gonna close down anyway. Why don't you let me go early? I don't know, but you probably didn't have to pay his pension if they just closed down. I I assumed. I don't know. It's hard to say. I think that. I think these were union jobs. I think the pension was there no matter what. Yeah,

so I don't think they were. I don't think they were. Actually, that's why, because there's there's social assistance. But when all of those minds shut down, remember all the strife that happened in England for about a good decade or two because of all of that industry that moved and people just got left in the lurch. So I don't think it's actually was actually a guarantee, but I don't know. Well, luckily for Sigmund, he didn't need to find it. Okay,

silver lining everything right. So on Saturday, June seventh night, Sigmund was supposed to be on a wedding his daughter. His goddaughter was getting married and he was the one who was going to give the bride away. So that was going to be a big day. Yeah, special. But the day before, Friday, June six, um, something happened. First, they had some family members who were in town for

the wedding. They had him over and his wife did and had him over for lunch, and then after lunch he excused himself around three thirty pm left his house in Tingly Too. He said, go buy some groceries, ostensibly ostensibly thank you, yeah, exactly, it's there for you. And Sigmund never came back. He passed a neighbor on the way and said if he were was to him. So apparently that neighbor, whose name, of course is unknown. There's a lot of unknown people story. Yeah, he was the

last known person to see sig alive. This unknown person was the last known person yea unknown, Yes exactly. He's an unknown known it's a very unspecific specific content, yeah exactly. And leaving the house and not coming back was kind of unusual behavior for Sigmund, who wasn't noted for going off on benders. Uh, everybody knew him, said he was a regular guy, likable, very dependable, and just an all around solid human being. Not the kind of guy to

just go flittering off and leaving his wife. So it was unusual, and so of course, and it was also unusual because his wife did have an ass and she kind of needed care. So he wasn't the kind of guy that was just going to take off and her in the lurch. And so Lotti and the family figured something must be up and reported in missing to police. And I don't know how much of a search there was for Sigmund. I think probably mostly it was kind

of an app kind of situation. The officers were told to be on the lookout for him, but I don't think they were really beating the bushes looking really hard six year old immigrant. I doubt they were too awful concerned. It's not quite the same as one of seven year old kid gets lost, right for a pretty young girl? Exactly, Yeah, what was the thing I saw? Sorry, it's a bit

of a I thought there was something girl syndrome. No, no, no, it was somebody, you know, saying to their friend like, hey, I just I wish I was pretty, And they said, well, go missing, because I've never heard of a girl who's missing who hasn't been a beautiful or pretty young girl. So good point. He was not a pretty young grob. Maybe he would have. I don't know that. I've seen pictures of them, but they're they're kind of low rest,

so it's hard to say. And as far as police action, I'm not sure how how really in depth the investigation was, because and they might have actually gone into a quite huge depth, but unfortunately we don't have any access to the records because apparently it's still considered an open case. Yeah, and so there were some there arevents, some people that have tried to investigate this a little more carefully in the police have basically said, hey, you know, you gotta

talk to the corner's office. They have all the records, and then they go to the corner's office to corner's officers. Well, these are kind of like public records, but you're not actually what we would consider to be an interested party, so you can't see them that phrase. It's just so so well to fight. Oh you're not an interested party is and you have an official interest in this story, so exactly. I mean, obviously they were interested by definition

that we're interested parties, but not by the government definition. Uh. And the press also at the time did not get too terribly interested in this until almost a year later, and for reasons we're going to talk about. But it did become a thing eventually. The search ended for six five days later on June eleven, when his body was found in the town of todd Morton, which is about twenty miles west of Tingley. Uh. And you can find it on of course the areal if you look on

the internet. And the body was laying face down, and there are cats to say it was face up, but I have reason to believe it was laying actually face down. Yeah, but it was like yeah, good point. Uh. So the body was faced down on top of a large stack of anthracite coal in a coal yard next to the todd Morton train station by the way that that coal was in nuggets. It was basically briquettes. Yeah. Small, it

was man formed nuggets. Yeah. Not ye, not big fist sized chunk or raw you know, dust and powder kind of it was. It was something that has been formed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I saw a lot of questioning online and things with people saying stuff, and I was like, you guys didn't obviously understand what kind of coal this was or else all of this questioning wouldn't make sense. So that's why I wanted to make sure we brought we pointed

that out. Okay, And that is a good point, by the way, because yeah, I mean I pilot coal could mean anything. It could be piles of chunks of coal the size of your head and dust between grains of size of peace or who knows. Yeah, so son, the other units of measurements you want to call it there? Yeah, kilometers yeah, okay, yeah, So back to the Todd Morton train station. Uh, this coal yard was right next to the station. If you look at the if you look at the area view and the webs, you can find

the train station pretty easily. It's just to the west of the A six Highway and according to the best information I can find, the coal yard was just to the southwest, right next to the trail and the train tracks. And wait, let me guess it's not there anymore. No, it's not because, yeah, coal is not quite so popular these days. Don't ask me why, but it's not. It looks like there's a car park there now, yeah, exactly. But the pile of coal was reportedly about twelve feet high,

and Sigmund was on or near the top of the pile. Son, he was up there a little ways. So the question, the question our mystery, and well what was Sigmund doing in the coal yard? And Todd Morten he had no friends in that town, had no other business there that anybody knew about. And another question is, well why was he dead? Then? Where had he been for five days? Big questions that not have that have not been answered yet.

The coal yard at that time was being run by a guy named Trevor Parker, who was the son of the owner. And he said he had been there in the morning till about eleven am. I think he left to do deliveries. And he when he left, he closed and locked the gates, and when he came back at three pm, well he found a body laying on top of a pile of coal. He called the ambulance and called police. Well, he never actually went up to the body.

I don't know. He was not sure that it was somebody dead or somebody He was taken as a passed out drunk or something like that. I think that's what you know, or a mannequin. You hope it's a drunk person or a mannequin, and just called yeah and then he um, So he called an ambulance in the police. Apparently the ambulance got there first, and that's why it appears to me the body was faced down the ambulants

guys got there. The police. The statement by one of the policemen said, well, he was laying face up, but he had cold dust on his face. So it appears that the ambulance, the ambulance guys actually turned him over the police. And yeah, you would of course, and the police show up while he's laying face up, but yeah, he was faced down. I think. So we got a body. Uh.

The interesting thing. One of the interesting things is there didn't appear to be marks in the coal from his feet, like from climbing up the pile at least as one of the Yeah, one of the constables who was there that day was quoted as saying that he said it was undisturbed. There were no signs that anybody had climbed up or down. It. Uh. Just led to some speculation later that Sigmund had been dropped on the coal pile by a UFO. I'll dispute that later. Wait, okay, Uh.

And of course another reason for this UFO speculation was that the constable I just mentioned was named Alan Godfrey, who was involved in the Todd Warden UFO incident about five months later. That is, uh kind of a famous or semi famous at least UFO mystery. Yeah, yeah, it is well known. Uh. It's funny how like whenever police are involved in the UFO mystery, suddenly it becomes like

very credible. Huh yeah, yeah, I know. Well actually Godfrey, Godfred doesn't seem like a total total nutcase to be honest. But anyway, enough about the Todd Warden UFO incident. Uh. That's how the story finally got to the front pages. It was months after Sigmund died suddenly, but suddenly some newspaper guys suddenly put the two together. They realized Oh my god, the policeman had been there at the coal yard,

and then he has this encounter. There must be a connection and so and so, all of a sudden, there was all this speculation in the tabloids that Sigmund was abducted by the aliens and then who and then died and the aliens dropped him on the coal pile. Yeah, and then we'll talk decited to track them, because you know, aliens are just weirdly, they just follow people like that. Okay, yeah, sure, something like that. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about Yeah, we'll

talk about that a little more. That is one of the theories out there though about the UFO abduction, and that's why he disappeared for five days. Um. Personally, I think that the fact that a guy vanishes turns up five days later in a coal yard that he should not have been in, uh, in a town he had no business being in, on top of a coal pile that he had no reason to climb to the top of, and then debt of apparently natural causes. To me, that's

actually a pretty interesting story in and of itself. It's pretty weird, don't you think. Yeah, and even without the UFOs, well then the UFO bid feels tacked on. So it's like, how how did this not make the papers prior to this? Yeah? Yeah, well I'm sure it made the papers in some way, but it really seems like it needed the UFO angle

before it got legs, I think. And the problem with the way the press were investigated this, I think is that they it seems like they only really want to at it from the UFO angle instead of like, you know, going on interviewing family members and trying to find out if maybe there was somebody out there with the grudge investigative report, Yeah, doing that kind of thing. Yeah, I know, I'm sure the police did some investigating that on that score.

But you know, of course, as you know has already said, their records are kind of closed, so because it's an open case. And that's why when we talk about this mystery, there's so many people like us an unknown person said this, but his name is unknown or etcetera. But let's go

back to our dead body. Um, according to the accounts I've seen, uh Sigma's close, we're actually in good conditions, so they weren't filthy, so he wasn't sleeping the gutters for the five days that he was missing, his wallet and watch were missing. Uh, and I'm sure it was gone. Also, Yeah, his trousers had apparently been incorrectly buttoned, which makes you wonder if somebody dressed him after death, presuming by shirt

you mean his collared shirt. Yeah, he had a rest on. Yeah, yeah, so not a T shirt but his Did he have an actual vest on or did he have a British vest on? His string string vest on? Yeah, whatever that is, it's like a spring bikini maybe. Well, I was just going to say, because I like, in British terms of vest is actually an undershirt and then you know what we call vest is like the is like the undercoat. I don't remember what they call it. Yeah, waistcoat could

have been that. Yeah, just about all the sources I've seen for this our bredy so and I always do have a little bit of a problem with that. I'm starting to figure out that, you know, honey, bucket means toilet. Well that's problem is that there's no photos of the body. The photos you will see online re enactments, Yeah, but on the BBC, I think there was somebody like that, those aren't really the body. Okay, So I'm sorry, I interrupted. Did you so you're talking about his pants? Uh? Yeah,

the pants were incorrectly buttoned. Uh. There were other counts out there, by the way, to say his jacket was buttoned wrong, that his pants were unzipped. So as always conflicting accounts. Uh, you know, top side again, wearing a vest and a jacket. There were no bruises, cuts, or contusions. It did not appear that he had been in a struggle with anybody. He wasn't strangled or beaten to death or anything like that. Also, the corner reported it looked

like he had shaved within the past day. Uh. And most interestingly, he had some strange burns on the back of his neck and his shoulders. Burns had a kind of greenish ointment on them which was never identified. So it wasn't just Alivera, because Olivera tends to be kind of a weird greenish ointment. Well, I don't know how hard they tried to figure out what it was. Yeah, it was it was probably that that do from Ghostbusters. Yeah. Uh.

There was an autopsy done that very evening. The corner concluded the time of death was between eleven am in one pm that same day, the eleventh of June. So that means if Trevor Parker left the coal yard at eleven that morning, sometimes very shortly after that, Sigmund Dodowski wandered into the art and died of natural causes on top of that coal pile, or he was murdered and brought to the yard and left there, or maybe died and brought to the yard and left there. Those are

kind of our options or UFO there. Yeah, he was also you maybe. Uh. Corner also determined that the burns on Siegmund's neck and shoulders were about two days old, because you know, you know, you guys know, you guys have been burned, you know what that's like. They started looking kind of pink and fresh, and then the kind of gnarly two days later, you know exactly. Uh, but well, because because of that, police checked hospitals, emergency rooms clinics in the area to see if he'd been treated for

the burns, and they found nothing. And the burns were also unique in that they were well defined, so it's more like contact burns and burns from an open flame, you know what I'm saying. They weren't amorphous, yeah, what sheep were? They They were kind of I think kind of rectangular circular, Well, I mean they were, they were roundish, but I I thought that they were kind of like hot dog shaped, But I could be wrong. And so

you heard third, I mean I've heard. I got yeah, I got the impression that they were circular from the stuff that I read, but I would but again, I never seen a photo of it. Conflicting information. But the burns seem to be confirmed though, I mean they that they definitely are confirmed. How they How you know the shape of the burns and what caused the burns? Was it flame? Was it acid? Well, that's still up in

the air. And there there's a there are a few theories out there about the burns, which we'll talk about. And police did find in the course of their investigations that Sigma had been getting what are called moxibustion treatments from an acupuncturist. Yeah. I never had these in balls, putting a cotton ball soaked in alcohol into a small glass jar or a bamboo cup, putting the jar on the skin and lighting the band and lighting the alcohol. And I guess it's supposed to be a treatment for

rheumatism and some other ailments. This is one of those crazy, crazy treatments. It's like, there's that that weird treatment for when you've got stuff in your ear and they have the little cone, they have the cone that they stick in your ear and then you light the cone of the paper cone on fire and the heat is supposed to draw everything out. Like this is that same kind of How the hell did you think that worked kind

of treatment? Yeah? I don't know. It could just be like it a little bit of heats to something, so kind of it kind of makes it feel temporarily better, you know. That's I mean, that's why eventually, that's why they came out out with the idea of bleeding people because it actually short term produce good results because you drain a bunch of blood out of somebody feels kind of lightheaded and kind of high. Yo is that the right word. I don't know except that one. And that's

good enough for me. But but you know, and so people will go, yeah, wow, I feel kind of high. Yeah, your blood pressures drop. Yeah, we're just out of it. And so they started thinking, hey, that's drained blood out of them. That will make them better. And so yeah, it's it's hard to say how many people died from getting bled, like, I mean, there's a theory after that. George Washington was killed by his doctor because yeah, he was sick, and the doctors just kept taking blood and

taking blood and taking blood. I have no idea how much he had left in and by the time he passed. But yeah, heat is good for him, but he is good. But it's a temporary kind of fixed. I think. Yeah, you like heat up to relax the muscles, to treat them oftentimes, right, it's not like we'll put some heat on it and then magically you're cured. Like haired muscles are messed up, They're going to be messed up unless you do something to that. But this open flame treatment,

this moxie what is it moxibustion, which is you know, combustion. Basically, it's going to leave a burn on the skin. So it's almost as if it was more damage than it doesn't want I think done right it It doesn't. It's just kind of like a heating pad. You know, if you use an eating pad, right, it's great, and if you crank it up too high and then fall asleep on top of it, like this kind of second to greenburn or something I don't know. I say it's an

open flame. So always figured that's a bad idea. But were a side tracked, doesn't We're totally on a sidetrack. Yeah, Later on the corner said that Sigmund back to our story. It didn't appear star But apparently he had been eating normally and drinking normally. He wasn't dehydrated or anything like that. So if somebody had had him chained up in the basement for five days and at least he was being fed. There also was no immediate conclusion about the cause of death.

Apparently they had to think about it for a few months, and they finally decided that it was a heart attack that killed him. That's for the cause of the burns, well, that's unknown. Sigmunds whereabouts for five days is unknown. How we wound up in that coal pile unknown. And the mysterious green ointment, well, you know, nobody knows what that was either. They were sure it was appointment. It wasn't

like a weird miscolored pus or something. They seemed to feel like it was some sort of some sort of like it wasn't greenish and that sort of past sins. It was more like an even kind of clear ish but with a tint, with a tint to it, I think, yeah, I mean, yeah, okay, yeah, hopefully hopefully a doctor can

tell the difference between the past. Hope, I mean, I guess plus probably isn't there ord but you know, like when you get a blister and it fills up with that like clear liquid or what you know, Because if he had a burn, it could have blistered and it could have been the remnants of like the clear goo. Yeah I don't know, wouldn't have been green, would be a sign of a larger issue, and that would have been a parent I would presume larger. I mean, he

was dead. There was a sign of a larger issue already. Is there a larger issue? Yes, there is actually yeah, you have an infect yeah yeah. Yeah. So we have theories there. People have got a lot of theories about this one. Uh. First, the first theory, this is a big favorite out there, which is UFOs. Yeah. Yeah, so Sigmund was abducted by you fo. He died of fright from his experience, uh, and they dropped his body on the coal pile and high tailed it out of there.

And yeah, so the evidence for this is it did not appear that sigma they climbed the coal pile. And also when you want to talk about the coal pile, yeah, yeah, I have huge issues with the nobody claimed the coal pile. Okay, yeah, no, I've wondered about that one too, to be honest. Okay, finished that, we'll talk about we'll talk about the evidence for this. Yeah. Yeah. Also, his last name was Adomski.

And it turns out there's a very famous ufologist or an upologist I can't remember, FOLLOGISTO follogist named George Adomski. I think he was. I don't know if he was dead by that time or not. He died in nineteen he's pretty dead. Yeah, And so according to the papers, at least, that can't be a coincidence. So the obdumption in this theory could possibly have been a case of mistaken identity alien. Yeah, they looked in the phone book. There he is. Uh. And the aliens would account for

the strange burns too. It might be one of them in the spaceship was playing with the phase plasma rifle in the fort Wat range and maybe had a gun accident. Uh. And the Yeah, and you know, I went on the burns. Of course was done to that I identifiable because it was alien and origin. Well, it could have been the neck breath, right, it could have been like a holding device that overheated. And yeah, it could have been something

like that too. I don't know. I'm just loving the idea of the aliens, like, oh crap, oh crap, we killed quick, get rid of the body, the body, Why are we gonna done it? Well, it's says there's a coal miner. Okay, there's a pot of cool over there out of here that looks like a soft place for him. Drop him. Okay. Of course, another reason you haven't might not have been identified as the corner didn't try too hard to Again, I don't know how much testing they

did of that. It could have really doesn't sound like they tried very hard. It could have been they just sort of smelled it and said hot, doesn't smell like anything I know, And that's about it. This is nineteen eighties, so it's not as if they can just stick it in the mass spectrometer or whatever it is. It is a mass spectrometer. Yeah, okay, I was guessing that the name.

But it's not like they can just take a sample and pop it in there and figure out what it's based components is and just like c S I goooo oh it's used in this and that and this and that. We know what it is. Yeah, it's this, it looks like this. Yeah. Typically, you know, when it comes to testing for this or testing for that, it's like you have to actually be looking for it, so you know, you can't just pop it in there and then it

just says, oh it's this. You know, you test to see if it's this, this, this or this, and if it doesn't fall on one of those things, well okay, what we can do some more testing or we can just say, hey, we don't care. Yeah, I mean yeah, finding it's very small potatoes in the study. Yeah, finding ointments on burns. It's not exactly you know, a big deal. It's not a huge thing. But you were talking about about the whole no marks on the coal pile. Yeah, so this is the biggest load of who we I've

ever heard of. Ken, Okay, Joe tell me this. Where was this coal pile located? Again? It was located next to the train tracks and next to the train station. Okay, And what do trains do when they're moving trains, they go to those two Those things are correct, but they also they cause a lot of vibrations in their starting and stopping processes. And if you've ever seen a pile of anything that's about the size of these coal nuggets, here's something that makes a lot of vibration. Those piles move.

So we could very easily have been one and two trains came in and out of the station, and that was enough to to soften the indentations that were done by somebody's feet. There are a little a little rainfall perhaps, you know, and think about it. The paramedics come running up, so they've already disturbed the scenes and the fact that there's no indentations. I was gonna say, I just yeah, I think you know. They probably said to the paramedics like which one of like are those years and they

said probably yeah. But the thing about it is, too is if you're standing at the base, if you're paramedic, and the body is like say you know, yeah, ten feed up and it's like ninety degrees around the pile, you don't go up here and then over the body. You go around to the base below the body and go straight up. So it might have been that they traced right over the tracks exactly. That's yeah. So that's like I'm thinking that that much activity in that area

probably soften the indentations. And then you got these guys who first responder's job is to get to the body and help the individual. They can't be completely you know, they can't do Oh, we've got to take the securitis they know. Yeah, maybe not. I don't know, of course, I I you know, I don't. I don't know. If they climbed up there, it might have been thought, you know, that looks dangerous. We'll just rocks just so, rocks at the body until it slides down to us. Okay, Yeah,

I don't think that happened to you. Probably not they especially if you think they turned him over. Yeah, they did actually touched up Yeah, I think so. But and also and as far as the UFO theory goes, remember Alan Godfrey, the policeman, he was involved in the Todd Morton UFO. Yeah, well, he was, as I said, also on the scene for this crime. Uh. And he's he's familiar with this case. He was interviewed actually years later about this and he is he said it was quote

a load of rubbish referring to the UFO theory. Well there, Yeah, so even though God for himself, you know, totally believes he encountered a UFO, he's not not buying into it

in this particular case. Yeah, uh, this is this is There's another theory out there that I found on Reddit of all places, which is that he had a stroke, and he had a stroke while he was shopping for groceries and just sort of wandered off in a daze, and then some good Samaritans took him in and took care of him, hoping that he'd come to his senses and that they could get him back to where everybody

he belonged. But then when he croaked after five days, they just had to get rid of the body because apparently even though they were good Sumaritans, they weren't quite actually that good, and they wanted to avoid contact with the police. So anyway, what do you guys think of that theory? He could have wandered away from the Good Samaritan home on his own and they broked. I mean, you know, he could have saw the coal and thought, oh I know that, Why do I know that I'm

going to climb up there and something familiar. Yeah, I thought strokes tended to leave some pretty obvious signs. Oh yeah, yeah for sure. And I'm sure since they were a little iffy and the cause of death, I'm sure they looked at his brain and the autopsy and apparently there's there was no evidence of a stroke that showed up

in the autopsy. That That's the other thing I hate about this series, that is, I mean, seriously, you're gonna find some guy who's wandering around today as you You're not going to call the police or something and the hospital or something. And then even after that, when the police are like doing this investigation, you're not going to go oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah. I helped him out, but he wandered off. I didn't say anything, yeah exactly. So So okay, not the best

Reddit theory I've ever come across. But you know, you know, I mean, I I find all the theories and plug him in there, good or bad, it's not a good one. Uh. And there's a kind of similar theory, which was lightning. Yeah, I know, a similar thing. He was struck by lightning, became disoriented, and the shirt cut fire, so he took it off, his watch melted or at least got really hot, so he took it off to Stars of Walt. I don't know what happened to that his watch was hot. Yeah, yeah,

it was hot at some point. Yeah. And then he wandered around for five days because of the lightning, you know, mixing up his brains. And then when he finally saw that coal pile, he was like, yeah, something familiar. So you know, climbed the pile because it's cool. I love cool, you know, and uh, and he did have hard issues actually, and so if he did climb the pile, it's conceivable the exertion, you know, caused him to have a heart attack.

Nothing that was about this theory makes any I was going to say, because you know, if if a stroke leaves a whole lot of evidence getting struck by lightning, he would think he's going to leave way more evidence on your body. Yeah, you would think, especially if we're saying his watch melted, well, like not on his wrist. It didn't write or like marks on his wrist. And you know, his shirt caught on fire. Surely his jacket would have been singed at least, you know that his

hair would have been all singed to that. Yeah, so another another terrible theory, the lightning one. It's another sery. He left to start a new life, but he got distracted by a coal pile and died on top of it. He just loved Cole so much. Yeah, I know, yeah he did, and so I can't believe what it could

have been. He's leaving, starting new life, and he's saying goodbye not just to his wife and his family, but also to coal and you know, he had to go reminisce with the coal pile just a little bit longer before he left and had a heart attack and died. I like this sory that's it for this episode. Yeah, uh, suicide Now I'm not buying that one, guys. Yeah. Another possibility is sigmatic girlfriend supposing he wasn't as into the wedding and the whole family scene as everybody thought. Maybe,

and this is conceivable. I mean, there are people out there who lead double lives, So maybe he just thought and then there was a little bit of tension in the family over the wedding. Frankly I had heard, and so maybe he just decided, you know, screw this, screw these people, I'm just gonna go to my girlfriends and just hang out there for several days, you know, and

and just blow the whole thing off. And then at some point, well you know, he was gonna go home, but then he has his heart attack and dies, and then whoever he was staying with is said, oh, this is gonna be embarrassing. So I'll tell you what I'll do is I'll dress the body up and get rid

of it and put the clothes on. Dumpton. This one might explain the shirt being gone, because I'm thinking that dressing somebody in their vests and their jacket is not probably not that easy if they're dead either, But I mean the shirt would be comparatively harder, I would think so. Or maybe maybe the shirt had lipstick on it or some other kind of DNA evidence. So the hard part about this, By the way, I don't remember seeing this

anywhere else. What I was thinking about, Like, you know, people who have a thing on the side, usually they don't want to mix their two lives because it's an outlet and an escape. And by doing what you've you've theorized he would have done and saying screwed, I'm just gonna hang out here the whole time, and those people can just blow off. Well, that lets the genie out

of the bottle. Everybody now knows that you're screwing around, and suddenly you don't get that that best of both worlds that people who do this or after flies in the face of why he would have, you know, a girl on the side, Well exactly that. That is the problem is that if he had a girl on the side, he would have been more discreet about it. He wouldn't

have gone over to her place for five days. Well, here's something I will bring up, which isn't is not a nice truth to be facing, But there are people in this world who, when faced with um, the serious illness of a spouse, particularly one that's potentially getting progressively worse and worse, just run away instead of staying around

to take more and more care of that person. So it's possible that he had had this girlfriend and you know, she was fulfilling the needs that his wife wasn't anymore because she wasn't able to anymore, and was just realizing, oh my god, I can't take care of my wife anymore. And that's why he ran off, and he was intending

to run off forever. It's possible. It's not likely, but it's more possible than I mean, it helps explain why he might have gone, you know, just been okay with exposing quote unquote the double life, that he was just ready to leave. But again, I don't I don't think it's a good theory. No, it's there's no, not really much of anything in the way of evidence for it.

I mean, you know, it doesn't care for a few things like the body being being apparently sort of looks like the body might have been dressed by somebody else after death and maybe so what kind of account for that. It doesn't explain where the body turned up on top of a cold Oh no, not at all. That's not the screen. That's not the way I would choose to dump a body. Because they were talking about like in a lot of coal yard and dragging it up to the top of a coal pile right next to some

train tracks and train station. Well, I guess. And the other thing for me, when we talk about all of these theories that had don't have him going to the coal pile on his own, I'm willing to say, like it would have been really easy for one set of tracks to disappear, But the set of you know, some person dragging a body up a cold thing seems a little more like that would have been more obvious. It

does not. It does seem to me like most likely he got out there on his under his own power, because why the hell would anybody else drag somebody's dead body up to the top of you. I still question that they Okay, let's just run down this this this alley. I don't actually think that if he was already dead when he out to the coal yard, that they necessarily had to drag him in, because what was the guy

who was running the coal yard Parker? Okay, Trevor Parker's job may have been to shut and lock the gates. But Trevor Parker may not have been good at fulfilling all of his duties, and so he shut the gate. He did not, however, lock it, and therefore somebody could be like, oh, yeah, that guy always shuts the gate, but he doesn't lock it. You drive your car in. It's much faster to drive your car in and drag the body into a spot. Now, maybe they're hoping that

more coal comes and the body gets buried. I don't know, but you know, I don't I can't imagine that in a yard of any size that you would want to be dragging the body that wasn't a ten ft up the coal the coal pile, though I don't don't, I don't have an answer to that, but I could that somebody was, you know, doing the fireman carry or the the old the Agatha Christie mystery where they drag him in the heels are making lines in the dirt. But that's the dragon I'm not talking. I don't care about

the dragging through the yard. I'm worried wondering about the ten feet up a coal pile. Is the dragging that I feel like girlfriend was a bodybuilder, was a national shot put champion h and she threw him. Or maybe his girlfriend was actually his boyfriend. I mean, maybe he wasn't national shot put chip because yeah, yeah, I'm just saying that. It seems like if you're dragging a body ten feet up, there's gonna be some significant even with trains and all that stuff, it seems like there would

be some marks. Yeah, there would there would be significant marks, and there there's a risk of being seen and everything. I do think the idea about coming any of the supposing the gates were locked. But supposing that it was one of the delivery guys, because Cole was delivered to the yard. So those supposing of Trevor or whoever is out delivering things, that the gates are locked and maybe the delivery drivers had keys or you know, and so you know, it might have been somebody who actually had

a key to the law. There was no delivery, thought there were no deliveries. But but but I'm saying that if the guy, the delivery person has a set of keys and he knows and he had no yeah, he'd so even though that wasn't his day to deliver, but he still had access to the yard and you know, and so it could have been that could have been. Still to me, it still does not make sense as

a place to dump a body. Yeah, but anyway, that that's so we kind of got a little off track there with the theory was you know, the girlfriend he died and you know, I know, so, um, I'm not certainly this is not a great theory. Okay, let's move to the next one. Uh, there's another theory out there in the webs, which is an accident thought is that he was on the coal pile and unbeknownst to him, the coal had started combusting. It does happen if you

have coal. It's sometimes will will combust deep within a pile and you can't and tell there's no open flames or anything like that, but deep down there is burning and putting out poisonous gases like carbro monoxide, etcetera. And when these when the coal fires like this happened, they burned for a long time and then eventually if they do reach the surface and suddenly boost, they ignited. But yeah,

coal can that could actually happen with coal. Uh, And so maybe Signal, for whatever reason, was on the pile and inhaled carbro monoxide, etcetera. And died of carbon monoxide poison. But yeah, I know, but you know, maybe I don't know, doctor, I don't know. But then why was he even was he on the pile? Well that's a good question. Well

there's that. There's also the question of, you know, the police and the medical personnel who were on the site later and nobody got sick or noticed any ill effects from gas or anything like that. Well, also, he was on the top of the pile. He wasn't like stuck in a room with CEO two like all like he could have been feeling like faint and then just turned

over and everything would have been fine. There's that too, you know, there is a quite I think there was plenty of other air wafting through the area, so I don't I don't see how he could have. So this is again I think I also saw this one out on Reddit. So Reddit, you're not doing so well today because I gotta tell you guys. You know, usually you guys are more on your game than this, but you know, the theory is out there, so I just had to include it. And again I just think it fails on

a few fronts. Yeah, and uh, there's another one. Uh, this is this is kind of like hypothesized by the police at the time, which is there was a misadventure with the coal truck. Actually, you know, aside from the fact that we've already talked about there were no actual deliveries there were in those days. I do like this theory. This makes a lot, This makes on the outside, made a lot of sense, makes everything, yeah, except yeah it does.

And the theory was is that somehow Sigmund fell or jumped it was pushed into the back of a coal truck which eventually delivered its load of coal to the Tomlin coal yard with Sigmund in the coal um. But of course Trevor Park shot theory down because he said, well, there are no coal deliveries to the yard on that day, nor the day before or the day before that. Uh, so, so much for that idea. And also I guess the other thing is that it does seem like he would

be more covered in coal, he might have more cold closing. Yeah, there's that. It looks like a chimney sweep at them. Yeah, And it still doesn't explain how the hell he winds up in the back of a coal truck. By the way, there's that one too. Another theory that I was kicking around a little bit as well. He worked at the coal pit two miles east and so and then what twenty two miles east of todd Morten, And of course

the coal pit was was served by rail. So what if, for whatever reason he had to go to the coal pit, something happens. Maybe it's something kind of like our Dave Box episode where the guy is like, you know, whistle blew or god knows whatever reason and he's murdered or something at at at work, and so they just tossed him into a rail car that's full of coal and then and then it goes off, you know, by rail to todd Moore and where somebody there you know, pulls

the body out and puts it on the pile. But I checked it out and that there does not appear to be a direct rail connection between the Lofthouse coal pit and todd Morden real estate. Well, also, he was gone for five days and I thought it turned out that he had died. I know, well they held they held him prisoner at the at the coal pit. Okay, I don't know, fat him really well and shaped him

and stuff exactly. I mean, yeah, I was thinking like he could have gotten in the coal truck by hitching a ride, and maybe he was a little lazy, you know. And he saw a friend of his and he was like, I'm going to buy some potatoes. Can you give me a lift to the store. I'll just top on the back here, and somehow fell in or something. I don't know. The friend forgot he was there and just delivered him, or he didn't even tell money. I don't know. I

don't know. But again, it doesn't really account for the five missing days. So yeah, it does not account for that. And again it's like, well, also it doesn't count for how high up the body was. I mean, your average even if it's a dump truck and everything, it's kind of hard to imagine a body winding up that high

up from being dumped on the while. I mean maybe I don't know, that's yeah, And I don't think they had rail delivery either to the to the yard, because if they had had rail delivery, which would it would make sense kind of just right next to the railroad tracks, but they would kind of have to have a separate rail spur. Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't remember

a spur going into the yard. I looked at the arials, and usually you know that, Well, if a spur is totally not being used anymore, they will sometimes take up the tracks, but you can usually tell from there's evidence left behind arials. You can usually sort of see and there's no evidence of a spur there. Okay, Well, yeah, so that that's so much for that theory. Um, there's another theory. This is kind of more plausible, that he

was kidnapped. Yeah, Sigma's family actually believed he had been kidnapped and by As I mentioned earlier, there was some bad blood apparently between him another member of the extended family. And this sory comes to us from Bufora, the British UFO Research Association Flora. Yeah, Bufora, not Buffora. Okay, Bufore about ten years ago team members of Bufforea looked into Sigma's death. They wrote a report about it, which you can find on the webs if you look hard enough.

And I have a copy of it right here. No, it's not that hard to find. It's got pictures and everything. Uh yeah, and uh I've read it anyway, so you don't have to. Don't worry about finding it. The authors of the report are John Hanson and David Sanky. Uh and they actually did, I think a fairly decent report. You guys read it right. It was not sensationalist at all. Forward right, straightforward. They researched as well as they could

and uh, you know, came to a reasonable conclusion. Uh. So the authors tried to get ahold of police and corners records. Of course they were giving the run around. They did interview Alan Godfrey, the policeman, since he was there, he'd be an obvious choice, and that was when they got the quote from him saying it was a blow of rubbish. They also spoke to a few members of

Sigmund's family and they concluded UFOs were not involved. The report mentions one person who was named who told the UFO research is that what had happened was that Sigmund out of falling out with a member of the family. Recently, apparently another member of the family who was a female had left her husband, who was a person that he had falling out with, gotten restraining order against him and

husband against the husband. It was staying with Sigmund and Lottie temporarily and so, uh, probably the husband is the family member that Buffera Bouffora excuse me mentions, uh. And they state that his identity is known, but they don't give us his name, and I assume they do that for legal reasons. Makes sense. Yeah, Uh, So the allegation is that this person, then this is all guess this is not just a theory in their part. Somebody else alleged this who apparently was supposed to be in and

what we don't know who he is, damn it. But the allegation is that this husband abducted Siegmund, locked him in the garden shed for several days, and Sigmund was trying to escape and somehow came into contact with battery acid or some of the kind of corrosive agent which caused the burns on his neck and shoulders. But then apparently Sigmund died and then whoever was holding him had

to get rid of his body. And this Dad's got a little support from Ladyadovski, who Sigma's wife, who said after Sigma disappeared, before his body appeared, that she believed that he had been kidnapped. It does least some questions, I answered, like, for one, uh, what what could his kidnapper or kidnappers have hoped to accomplish by kidnapping him locking up in a shed for several days. I have

one idea, what's that just stopping him from attending the wedding? No. I was thinking that if it is the estranged husband, this husband and guys do this decide that Sigmund and his wife were had a thing going on the side, and that's why he she left him and went to live with them, And so he's gonna get revenge on this bastard for fooling around with my wife or Sigmunds seemed like sorry, it seems like he was kind of a ternal figure for the family. I mean he was gonna,

you know, give his goddaughter away. And you know, maybe it's that this guy was like, well, well, Sigmund is the only thing keeping me away from my wife. It doesn't even have to be some sort of relationship thing. It can literally be like he's the man of this house. You know. Maybe he had a shotgun and said, listen, you come near your you know, estranged wife again, I'll

shoot you. And you know, the guy thinks, all right, well I'll just kidnap him, and then I have easy access to my wife and surely she'll be coming right running back to me. You can still see the error of my way of her ways. And then it turns out no, maybe not. And I think the estranged husband was he the one that was supposed to be giving away that the god daughter at the wedding but couldn't because of the restraining order. Does that sound familiar? I

could have been that. Well, now again it's another unnamed person. Apparently there was somebody else who Sigmund felt was actually the person who should have been giving away the god the god daughter instead of him, and so there was some contection. I don't know that they were the same person or not, because again we're on another unnamed person drives me crazy. Well, I guess I have a couple of questions regarding and kidnapping right. One is they said

he was like well fed. Yeah, And I don't know, like do you wealth feed and hydrate and give all the creature comforts to your captives that you have hidden up in your sheds? Uh? You know, yeah, it depends at the point of kidnapping to make it kind of miserable for that person, do you would think? Yeah, so that it depends on what I tend to do with them.

Sometimes I start them sometimes, Yeah, that's you know, that's a problem I have to Usually there would be like ligature marks around wrists or some other well you think it would be otherwise restrained. The average garden shed is not that stout, you know, so you think you'd want to time up. And there were there. I didn't read about any sort of like handcuff marks or rope marks or anything like that. Yeah, So I don't know. Maybe

maybe it was kept kind of in a semi drug state. Also, maybe it's possible again that I mean, even if even if that's right, even if this particular person abducts you and has him in the garden shed, why the coal pile, Like, why not just go, well, he's dead in my backyard shed. Why don't I go next to the shed, dig a big hole and cram him into it. There's that and just disposed of the body that way. There's I think I can think of many, many lower profile ways to

get rid of a body wood chippers. Even if you drive them out in the woods and just push him into the creek, you know, that's you're still at least a lot less lack that he gets seen into the into the ocean. Yeah, I mean, there's a hole. But that's why driving miles with a body or twenty miles with a body in the back of your car, and yeah, well it might not have been twenty miles. I don't know where this guy lived. He might have actually lived near Todd, I don't know. But that's weird. Yeah, it's

it's it's really inexplicable. I wonder if this was a weekend at Bernie's kind of scenario, how they got there, they actually got there on the train. They went next to the stop, and so the guy was carrying him around, you know, with the arm at the back of his shirt, turning his head around like talking. Yeah, I had big three legged walk the coal yard. Yeah, that's how that happened. Probably go to the top of the coal yard ever,

look around. But yeah. One of the things about this that's really kind of intriguing to me is that the Sigmund was a coal miner and his body was found on a pile of coal, and so it makes me wonder if somebody was maybe sending a message. I don't know what the message was, and why it wouldn't be why they wouldn't have just dropped him at the coal mine where he worked, instead of this coal stockpile somewhere else. Yeah. Well yeah, again, well maybe the coal mine was all

full of people. Maybe, you know, maybe this yard and everything was actually a pretty sleepy little place and there were there weren't that many people around. Todd Moreton is a tiny, little, tiny little village. Yeah, But I just don't understand but that it could just be a coincidence that he was found on a pile of coal. I

don't know. It just seems to me that there's something going on there, Like was there a little labor unrest out the mine and maybe manager decided to grab some random coal miner and murder him and drop him out a pile of coal just to send a message. And maybe I don't know. Uh. And then it was the locktest call your disaster in nineteen seventy three, which I'm

sure you guys have heard about. Who hasn't. Yeah, Yeah, the long story short, Uh, somebody kind of dropped the ball and part of the Yeah, giant cock up it really was. And but without getting into a great detail unless you guys wanted to get into great detail. Now, the government official did not do the proper survey job they yeah, and so and so the mine was at least part of it was flooded with about three million

gallons of water. Uh. Seven miners died, and of course there was a bit of a stink about the whole thing. The political career was made out of it, Yeah, and died off of it too. So could maybe signal to somehow been involved in this disaster. Did somebody kidnap and it was part of some sort of revenge plot? Or am I just grasping a straw. I think that one, yeah, probably that one. Yeah, I mean that was that might sort of indicate the significance of his body one up

on top of a coal pile. Beyond that, I got nothing. I don't know, I really don't. I just thought it was kind of intriguing that there was this big disaster where he worked and then he turns up dead on a pile of coal. But the disaster it happened seven years before. Yeah, there was no anniversary or anything like that. Well they do, they actually they pulled things to record, but I mean, I mean, but his his disappearance and death were not on any kind of anniversary of the um.

So again, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. But yeah, but that was another significant event, the coal oriented event in the neighborhood. So I thought I sort of had to ponder for a second whether there might be a connection. But I really can't. I can't either. It's I think there's just an all around a very weird story, and it it's one of those ones that I hate because I don't feel like I feel any different or you know, anything like that actual resolution.

There's not a favor theory. No, there's nothing that quite explains everything, you know, even the most plausible one, uh, which is a kidnapping and being held against this will. There's questions. There's still that question of why the coal pile, What the hell why the coal pile is even in the UFO theory? Come on, yeah, I know. Why would the UFO go to a train station which has got people around and everything and dropped the body there? Because I'm telling you, because it looked like it was a

really cushy place to drop in. That must have been in I don't know. By the way, did you guys read one of those news articles from the time in the newspaper and they had it was accompanied by a little line drawing off your tip of your traditional flying saucer in the air, and then there's this line drawing of coal underneath. And then in between the two is this this silhouette of a body in falling. It was so funny. I was like, wow, they at this point

they were just having fun with this. You would have to, oh, yeah, Actually, I've always thought that actually working for the tabloids and writing some of those articles and headlines would actually be kind of a kick. Probably probably would be fun. Yeah, but unfortunately we gotta lead it at that because I don't know there might be somebody out there who's still alive, who still has the answers. I don't know at least

one person I think does. Maybe you can help us solve this, Yes, if you're listening, Yeah, give us the rings, drop us in the email speak of email, you might just want to send us one. And well, we happen to have one of those email addresses. It's called Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah. This is at the end of the episode, by the way, in case you hadn't caught on that. And uh, let's see what else got so many things. We have a we have

a website, Taking Sideways podcast dot com. You can download our episodes or listen to them. There you can find merchants and link up to the right uh. And there you can also find it at our episodes in other places. You can find them on iTunes of course, where you can subscribe, give us rating and review. Uh. And also of course there's other places like Stitcher and streaming services all over the place. We're also on social media. We have a Twitter account where we are Thinking Sideways No

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thinking Sideways and uh I see what else? What am I forgetting Cold Miner's daughter? Oh yeah, time for a song? Have me that guitar? No? I think that's about it? Yes, okay, alright, alright, well until next week. I guess that's it from me. And then Steven Devons so too the little oh bye guys, bye,