Thinking Sideways: The Valentich Disappearance

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand you never know stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Oh hey there, Hi, didn't see

you there, but welcome to the show. We're magic we can see through podcast and thanks for joining us here at Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, as you probably well know, and as of course, on my right it's Devin and on her right would beat Joe. I'll point out also your left. Yeah, I was gonna go there, but beat well. Yeah, if this is a circle, yeah, this is kind of

an awkward shaped circle. But anyway, this is taking sideways the podcast and uh, this week we're gonna bring to you another story that's got some odd circumstances that I found pretty interesting. And this is one that is that is dubbed the Valente Disappearance. So for anybody that hasn't heard this story before, fasten your seatbelts, put your trays in the upright position, and hang on. Is this a plane star? This is totally a plane story. But that's

not just about planes. It's about uf pos, it's about dinosaurs, it's about sea monsters, everything. Alright, we're off, sorry away. You have got to stop drinking eight glasses of kool aid before we start. Alright, so let's let's go ahead and start as we always do. Let's give it a

story here. So the year is and it is October one, and the key figure in our story is why a twenty year old man by the name of Frederick Velotitch uh, and he was piloting a Sesna two L, which is just a small single engine aircraft, and he is in Australia and he was going to fly across the Bass Strait. Weather it was calm, those class skies were clear. There's hardly any wins. Everything's fine. It's a three legs or at three stop journey. So he makes the first stop.

Everything's uneventful, and then he leaves from the Morabin Airport which is in Melbourne at six nineteen in the evening. After takeoff, he follows his flight plan and he goes to Cape Ottaway and at seven o'clock he leaves Cape Ottaway, so he has a very short john Lands takes off again for the second leg. Then the second leg of course over water. Yes, because he's going across the best, the best straight. Now if anybody hasn't done this, and I had to do this, this is on the look

it up on the map. It's on the southern tip of Australia. And Frederick said that he was going to go to King Island, which is a very short flight away. It's about a thirty minute flight round figure from the mainland to the island. Yeah, and then the island is you know, it's southeast Australia and the island is halfway between Tasmania and the mainland. Yes that I had no idea what it was until I started reading up on it and I had to go get a map. I didn't.

I did the same thing. I pulled up Google and I was like, please tell me where this is that because I'm not I'm not getting it off hand. Yes, you are the geography n alright. So uh. Frederick was a new pilot. He was relatively inexperienced. He only had about a hundred and fifty hours of logged flight time. He only had a student's license, he said. He was. So he's a young guy and he's he hasn't done

a whole lot of flying. Now, there's some strange things right off the bat, which is the reason for him taking this trip, he told when he logged his flight plan, he said that he was going to be picking up some passengers on the island and then on King Island, and then he was gonna be returning them back to the mainland. He told his girlfriend that he was going there to pick up crawfish, well crawfish, our passengers, So

they are that's true. You know you're supposed to lie to your girlfriend, right, Yeah, No, you're not supposed to. But here's the problem. He never made it to King Island. What he never He didn't make it a hundred twenty seven miles and he didn't make it. He never arrived at the island and was never seen again. Which is where things get a little cookie and a little weird and a little strange. Because of the fact that he was in contact with the Tower in Melbourne via radio.

He had about a six minute conversation with them prior to disappearing. We're gonna now, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna listen to through the joy of the Internet, a re enactment of that conversation, not the entire six minutes, but it's an abbreviated version, but I will give you

a good idea of what the conversation was. Recording. No, no, there are transcripts of the original recording available, but the Australian government holds the actual recording and they've only released pieces of it for investigation, for research people to look into it and try and figure out some of the things that we're going on in it. But they won't just put out the entire actual conversation. Why not? Uh,

I don't know. It's it's a government, and they do things like that all the time, and we just can't explain why. Okay, that by the way, but here's here's the thing. Before we go ahead and listen to the conversation. Two things to keep in mind is after his plane disappeared, he was supposed to land, he didn't land, and of course a search was set out for him to find him. That search pasted for seven days. They never found the plane, they never found wreckage, and they never found his body.

So he literally disappeared from the face of the earth. Let's go ahead, now, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's listen to the actual recording or this, I should say, the actual re enactment of the recording of that conversation. Sierra Juliet. Is there any non traffic? But that's five thousand step. No non traffic seeks to be a lie. The aircraft the five thousand states, what type of aircraft is this? I cannot concern it safely like landing line. The aircraft has just passed out of

me that at least a thousand state above. Is there any airforce aircraft in the vicinity? No known aircraft in the vicinity thanks to be playing some sort of game. He's flowing over me, well, the Sierra Juliet. It's not an aircraft. It's can you describe the aircraft as it's flying past. It's a long shape and unidentified. It has such speed. It's before me right now Melbourne now large would the the object things like a stationary What it's doing right now is all the king. The thing is

deorbiting on top of me. It's also I've got a green light and a sort of metallic blood. It's shiny on the outside. It's just vanished. That's going to acraft carsing on top of me. Again, that's covering and it's not an aircraft. And that is the last that everybody, anybody heard from him. He said it was passing over him about a thousand feet above, going very fast, and then it was orbiting him, and he described it as

being long and metallic, having or bright lights. And I don't know if it says it in this, but I did read this in some of the transcripts. It also indicated that it had one bright green light on it. Yeah, I think I heard that. What were his last words. The last thing that he said is it's hovering and it's not an aircraft. So that's that's that's exactly right,

and that's where everybody goes. Now, here's the thing that's not in this re enactment is at the end of the recording or the official transcript, there's an additional seventeen seconds of sound. It's been referred to as metal scraping noises, and then it just the radio completely cuts off and the signal is gone. Sort of noises associated with the plane crashing into the water. It's possible they've they've done a lot of investigation into it and there's been no

conclusion evidence of what it actually is. They can't say, oh, well, that's metal bending and up on impact because if you think about an impact is quite quick. Seventeen seconds is kind of a long time. That seems like a really long time. But no, let's see you hit it right on the head, Devin. First thing, it's UFO. Well, okay, first, that's the first thing everybody jumps to with this story. So I mean what I mean by that is that by definition, they said there's no aircraft in that area, right,

so by definition it is an unidentified flying object. I don't know that I'm willing to say, like face aliens, but it definitely, you know, to go a little off topic, They've released a bunch of stuff from the Area fifty one Roswell information and they are saying, you know, well, yeah, that's where we're testing all of our sealth stuff. So like all these you know, UFO reports, Yeah, they were legit because we were testing these self bombers and you

know people, they looked like nothing anybody had ever seen before. So, you know, I'm not willing to say aliens, but I am willing to say ufl and I would I would follow along with that he does. It's and that was one of the very things that I thought of, is it smacks very much of being an Area fifty one

kind of situation. Something's being tested, the tower doesn't know about it because it's top secret, and something happens, whether it's you know, the pilot of this this unidentified plane makes a mistake and causes him to go down, or he gets distracted and panics and something goes the wrong because he's seen it. Now. Yeah, yeah, you know, actually maybe they just use a disintegrator money. You don't you

don't know that they abducted him. Well, and everybody says, well, it must have been an alien and they must have abducted him straight from the airplane. And then, you know, so that's what the noise was was when he was being brought in for lack of a better term, the tractor being is it was his plane making all this noise. R was pulled through the middle of the plane, holed into the craft. I don't mean it's funny, is when I read the transcript, this is a little dorkish of me,

and I admit this, but the description of it. Do you know what the first thing I thought of when I read the description of the aircraft that he described. Do you remember back in the eighties the Disney movie Slide of the Navigator. No, it was Flight of the Navigator was a kid in the late seventies who was quote unquote accidentally abducted by a sentient alien ship and he has his crazy adventure and it sounded so much like it to me what I remember seeing in that movie.

I'm so sorry to tell you that you've just aged yourself. I know that. So his time, so yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the other weird things is, of course, as the story broke out, a ton of people came forward with reports of having seen something along the coastline lights

in the sky that didn't make any sense. With all of these reports, of course, I say the same thing which everybody yea, yeah, yeah, exactly, except that in some of the sites, and this is the problem sometimes with these sites, that you don't know how good their research is. Some places were saying at least a half dozen to ten of those reports happened prior to him taking off

on the flight. I also think I read somewhere that there was a guy who had set up a tripod on the coast and was taking pictures and there would have been no you knows as he was flying. Was twenty minutes before he disappeared or something, right, yes, and those are known as the Manifold photos. Yeah, Roy Manifold. But so the pictures showed something, right, Yeah, they do. And I looked him up and I was very actually find one copies of one of the two photos. So

here's for everybody who doesn't know. Manifold was twenty minutes before voluntees took off. He went ahead and set up his tripod and he set it on a timer for his camera to take six photos of the sunset going down into the ocean. Everything was fine. He wouldn't got the film to fill up. And photos number four and six supposedly show some kind of craft rising out of the ocean and then taking off. I can only find

on the internet. Photo number six, the one that shows this funny, weird, blurry oject which I've got to be on a looks like a beetle or a nati with its wing in motion. To me, do you think maybe something landed on his lands? I wonder, excepted they say photo number four had something coming out of the water,

and I can't find that photo. Yeah. So what I read, um, when I did read about this, was that they sent the photos to a bunch of different people who analyze photos for a living um and some that specifically were people who validate UFO photos. You know, there are people who are like, yes, this is actually UFO, so they're kind of you know, pro the whole UFO thing, And they said, we can't these photos are blurry, you know, it was. It's an old camera, just like to the sun.

It's kind of like crack equality. Do you think maybe if it wasn't the UFO, do you think perhaps it was the cracking the cracking. It could have been the cracking dude. Maybe yeah, maybe so right there, So UFO that is the number one go to explanation that you will find whenever you do any any searching around. And there are I kid you not a dozen other crazy UFO stories. And what I mean crazy is and somebody's nuts,

as in wow, where did this come from? Kind of stories that are connected to it, saying that she's shown up twenty and thirty years later and now he's living in Spain and he has an age. But that's the Internet. That's the hard part. The Internet is just right with I've read some of these things and it sounded like the Sci Fi Channel movie of the week kind of thing. And as we've said on this show before, I don't poo poo the fact that there's got to be something

out there. I'm not gonna say that there isn't because that's just foolish. But some of these stories I think are a little far festered. I think somebody might have written on so on that note, Hi, alien over Lord's

coming to take over. No. I think that the only reason that I would give this Like my big problem with saying, oh, you know, he crashed or oh, you know, any kind of like, you know, really reasonable explanation is that they, like planes don't just disappear into the sea usually, I mean they can, but usually there's like some wreckage, right, it doesn't just like cleanly all think down there's something

floating or I assumed there were like floatable things. And so only the only reason that I like can understand why everybody says, yeah, he was abducted is that, as far as I understand it, they didn't find any trace of anything happening. That's not exactly correct. Okay, So and

so here's a couple of things that I did come across. Okay, first off, when the initial search and rescue was going on, they did so one of the search planes or boats it doesn't specify, which found an oil slick that appeared to be aviation fuel. Now, the problem, well that you know, that's the problem. I have read both directions that it was and it wasn't aviation fuel. Again, this is over time.

This happened in seventy eight, so we're talking thirty five years ago, and these things get kind of mucked up as time goes on. Here's the here's the other thing. Five years after he disappeared in that straight. The wreckage of a Cessna was found, and it had partial serial numbers that could be recovered that were they were similar to his, but it wasn't a full serial number of the plane, so they couldn't say this is definitively his plane.

That's that that model of Cessna. I'm pretty sure probably most Cessnas and most light aircraft like that are designed to be able to float for several minutes before they go down so that you can get out. They're a light aircraft, they're not super heavy. The other problem is is the current in that straight is pretty strong, and it's very likely that if the plane hits, floats for a couple of minutes and gets caught in the current,

it's not going to sink straight to the bottom. It's gonna getleft sideways and you know, wind up somewhere towards you. I assume like where they're like flotation devices or like there weekend or anything like that, and those things are designed to escape from an airplane when it crashes and survive right up to the top. I don't think the beacons are designed to escape and float, though I've been I've been a little in small airplanes and usually the

beacon by the black box. I think that's what you're talking about. They have beacons to which are basically radio beacons. That there's the one. The ones that I've seen have a toggle switch on the top which is an on off switch, and then they have a little rail above that with a weight on it. So you go smashing into the mountain side or whatever that that wait slams forward and toggles the radio on, trips it on. Yeah, but that those ones that I've seen are securely fast. Sure.

You know, all my experience with water beacons is on a ship, so that's more made to float. Yeah, So I guess I just assumed they were all like that. But those are the only things that were found. That's that's the hard thing is that there's one spot of fuel and partial wreckage found five years later that is not a perfect match. Well, then we go on to the other theories, because there are other theories there are in the pilot error. There are pilot error is indeed

the next theory that we've got. Frederick wasn't an experienced pilot. Yeah, it was a very young pilot. Here's a little backstory on the young man he had applied to be in the Royal Australian Air Force, so the r a F. He wanted to fly for his country's air force. He took the test, and it's a five section test. The first time he took it he failed all five sections. He took it again, he failed three of the five sections.

So he may not as much as he wanted to be a pilot, he may not have had the aptitude to be a pilot. Sounds like that he had applied he was trying to get his commercial license, which is why he was doing all of this, this flying on his own incessnas and small planes, because he wanted to get a commercials license. For this particular flight, he was going to have to do what is called instrument only flying.

When you fly over land in the day, you can see the ground, you don't have to rely on your instruments as heavily, but when it's nighttime and or you're over the water, you're wholly dependent on using your instruments. He had never been in a situation where he had done instrument only flying, so that's that's a knock against him. Hopefully he had been paying attention though, you know, the things like you know, there's things in the dashboard of

your of your cockpit artifici and things like that. This is true, but there's there's a couple of other problems. Evidently was a bit of a maverick. Not to make a top gun reference, but he was a bit of a maverick. He had been in trouble several times in an airplane. And by been in trouble, I mean he got in trouble with the Australian version of what we would consider in the United States, the f A A uh.

He had flown into restricted air airspace before, which is a no no. And he knowingly and intentionally flown into cloud banks, which is not a good idea in an airplane because you don't know if anybody else is coming, especially if you're on just kind of a training run. That is actually something that that country will pursue and legally you can get into some really big trouble. And they were investigating him for having pulled those stunts. Yeah, and by the way, now that's that's kind of a

dumb thing to do. I mean, especially when you're a novice pilot. Flying into a cloud not a good idea. Yeah, No, it's it's not the smartest way to go about it. But okay, I remember being twenty and thinking that I had the world by it short it might have just assumed I'm so good. So that might have been part of what got him in the end, is that when he went on this flight, it was in the evening.

By the time he was heading out over the water, it was dusk, it was getting dark, it was late, so he didn't have a whole lot of visual cues to reference upon. So if he's not quite paying attention, he could have gotten himself into a spot of trouble. And we're gonna actually listen to something that I found which is a great thing for pilots and small craft.

This is called a hundred seventy eight Seconds to Live and it details how a pilot can quite quickly in a situation where they can't see, get themselves into a lot of trouble and quite likely kill themselves. This what we're about to listen to, is actually what happened to JFK JR. I don't know if anybody remembers, but that's what was at five eight years ago. It's been about

that long, hasn't it. He crashed a Sesta, and they believe it was the same situation as we're gonna listen to here in uh In this little video, the sky is overcast and the visibility poor. That purported eight kilometer visibility looks more like three. And you can't judge the height of the cloud. Your altimeter says you're at one thousand, five hundred feet, but your map tells you there's local terrain as high as one thousand, two hundred feet. There

might even be a tower nearby. Because you're not sure just how far off course you are, but you've flown into worse weather than this, so you press on. You find yourself unconsciously easing back just a bit on the controls to clear those none too imaginary towers. With no warning, you're in the soup. You peer so hard into the milky white mist that your eyes hurt. You fight the feeling in your stomach. You swallow, only to find your mouth dry. Now you realize you should have waited for

better weather. The meeting was important, but not that important. Somewhere a voice is say you should have turned back. You now have one hundred and seventy eight seconds to live. Your aircraft feeds on an even keel, but your compass turns slowly. You push your rudder pedal and add pressure to the controls to stop the turn, but this feels unnatural, so you quickly return the controls to their original position. That feels better, but now your compass is turning a

little faster and your air speed is increasing slightly. You scan your instrument panel for help, but you don't find any. It all looks unfamiliar. You're sure this is just a bad spot you'll break out in a few minutes. But you don't have a few minutes. You now have one hundred seconds to live. You glass at your altimeter and are shocked to see it unwinding. You're already down to one thousand, two hundred eat. Instinctively, you pull back on

the controls, but the altimeter still unwinds. The engine is into the red, and the airspeeds almost there too. You have forty five seconds to live. Now you're sweating and shaking. There must be something wrong with the controls. Pulling back only moves that airspeed indicator deep into the red. You can hear the wind tearing at the aircraft. You have ten seconds to live. Suddenly you see the ground the trees rush up at you. You can see the horizon if you turn your head far enough, but it's at

an unusual angle. You're almost inverted. You open your mouth to scream, and that is the end. Yeah, you have minus ten seconds to live. Yes, So what what what this is saying is that? And it took me a couple of lessons to really get a grasp on it because I never flown a plane. But basically, and correct me, Joe, if you if you took this differently when you because I know you've listened to this one prior to to today.

Is what's happening is a pilot is essentially going into a tap, into a spin and diving downwards, getting inverted and then going downwards. Is that how you how you understood this? Yeah? Essentially you can go uh And I'm not sure if they're talking about going into a tail spin or just getting disoriented and inverting your plane. I

think that's kind of what he was talking. Yeah, it's it's inverted and then and then you think that you're pulling back to go up, but you're driving, but you're actually yeah, yeah, actually, and so that's why your altimeter continues to unwine even faster even though you think you're trying to gain altitude. Uh. And you would think you would be losing air speed, but suddenly instead you're losing

up student gaining air speed. So so something's wrong. Yeah, and you would think, I mean, if you give the pilot long enough to think about it, you probably think eventually figure it out and say, oh, you know what, I bet I'm upside down. And then but if you don't have that long to figure it out, that's problem. Okay,

So here's where this ties into the story. Okay, I mean, I was just gonna say, I don't know a whole lot about airplanes, but I do think that don't these Sessna's have like a fail safe on that, Like, aren't they made to not be able to fly upside down for extended periods? You're correct, they do. Here's something that we haven't talked about so far. In the recording, uh

from Frederick and the tower. Near the end, he reported the engine running roughs and that he was going to head towards the island to land because he was having engine trouble. It's thought that he may have become disoriented inverted the plane which was killing the engine. Now this thing that he saw flying around him. It was a reported to be an exceptionally still old night, no wind, hardly any waves. There's been people who were there that

night said it was kind of an unusual night. You could actually see the sky reflected in the ocean, So he may very well have been seeing his own reflection. Was there a green light on that Sessna? Cessnas do have colored lights on them, Yes, they have white and they have colored lights, So he may have been seeing his own reflection. So he was saying it was toying with him, and as he was turning, the reflection was going away. You know if you think about how the

angle of the reflection would be. So it may have been that he had inverted his plane, and then of

course that would kill the fuel supply. I've seen some reports that say, well, this went on too long for the plane to been able to run inverted, But it's it's hard to say exactly what happened, but it's thought that he that maybe where the pilot air came in is he may have flipped upside down own and not known what was going on and tried to get out of there and instead drove the plane into Yeah, I guess my other problem with that is, uh, the sounds

at the end of the recording, like where that would have or the transmission with you would have come from if I mean, it seems like the first thing if you hit the water, the first thing that goes out, as communications would think. But you know, but even then, like would like, does drowning sound like metallic sounds for

seventeen seconds? I'm gonna play Devil's advocate for a second. Okay, Let's let's say that this is the correct theory that he crashed into the ocean, whether it be inverted or not, and instead of crashing head first, he skips across the water like a stone. That's going to make a lot of metal rending noises that I'm pretty sure he was. I mean, I don't think that he was using a

handheld cocky talkie. Pilots usually have a headset, so it may have been that it was picking up those noises like the wings and the body getting The only other question, right, is that, like, Okay, you invert your plane, you realize

what's going on. You hit the water the first time, right, You've got an open mic that's transmitting your metallic sounds right, what are you saying as the pilot right, like hit the water this bloody plane like upside down, Oh my god, like I'm gonna die, you know, Like there's definitely at least one right, like it doesn't happen, you know, And maybe he's like one of those people who goes quiet, but you say something, right, you say, oh, it's not a play, and then you like hit the water the

first time. If you've got seventeen seconds of open mic time of transmission, you say something at least once when you realize you're gonna die. If he was conscious, I guess, yeah, he may have been knocked out. It's gone out. I mean, I don't know what I mean. And that's that's this particular theory. There's more theories. Yeah, well let me let me run a theory by you guys. So somebody said that the metallic sounding sounds were actually sounds that could

have been caused by somebody fingering a mic. Basically, somebody somebody king the mic, happing the mic. We know a few things about this guy. He was definitely deep into UFOs. He was in it was it was a big believer in UFOs. We know that a lot of research on UFOs. Next up, we know that we know that his his dream of being a pilot was in danger being over. I'm not and I'm not suggesting suicide, but his his his his dreams. Yeah, there is a theory about suicide.

But I have a different theory um, which is that he took for life fest that he didn't need. So he might have been planning to discipline and take his own death. Now, being a somebody really in the UFOs, he maybe thought he would at least create a legend for himself before he before he disappeared and started his life over somewhere. He has four life vests, none of

which he was wearing, I'm sure. So as he's preparing to go down, he number one has he has a long conversation about a phony UFO incident with these guys stick and he's gonna like use this thing to like Joel the powers to be, to pay more attention to people like him who believe in UFOs and paying more attention to the UFO thing. And then his last cryptic transmission is it's not an aircraft. And then there's nothing

but noises at that. At this point, what he's doing is he's putting out a life vest as he prepares to ditch, and doing so, if he's wearing a headset, he's inadvertently keying the mic repeatedly because he's because he's doing because he's putting our life vest in a very tight and close area. So he's repeatedly keying the mic. And then after day he shuts the radio off, takes the plane down and ditch. Is it, maybe survives, maybe doesn't. Discipline gets out of the plane with his his three

spare life preservers to help get him to shore. And so there it is mystery salt and Joe has hit yet another theory on the head. Joe is three for three tonight, ladies and gentlemen. That is a theory is that he realized that what he wanted to do in life was endangered and he was probably gonna go to jail on the other way to get out of it. The variant that I heard on it was that he actually turned around and never even flew out over the water.

He actually flew to another airport somewhere and landed this right. We had radars and stuff, right, yes, but he not on the radar. He was on radar over the straight. Yeah, but wait, here's the thing. He topped off the tank before he crossed the strait. The fuel capacity on that particular plane would have allowed him after from the point that he was last in contact, he could have flown another eight d kilometers. Okay, but did he disappear from radar?

He did? He just like decide that, Oh, now's when I fly below the radar, And that's quite possible. Is that he dropped below radar. And there again, this is one of those things after it all comes out, everybody comes from oh I saw some crazy little plane making a funny landing at this place. Yeah, there have been reports that somebody landing a plane around that same time somewhere else on the mainland that wasn't supposed to be there. That was at an airstrip though correct, I think it was,

But it was. It was such a little blurb, but I couldn't find it corroborated anywhere else that I can't put a lot of stock in it. Yeah, because I think probably landing in an airstrip, it's like, well you can, you can disappear off and started your new life over again, but the airplane is still sitting there. Yes, you know, so, and he could have led it on a remote highway, but and then and then burned the plane. Here's a theory that then continues on with maybe it was a hoax,

And this one is not popular with his family. His father, Guido, for years has said that if something happened to my son, I wanted to be that he was subducted by a UFO basically, and it's very sad. It's a father's last attempt to make sure that his son is still alive. So there's there's a heart wrenching factory. Well, he hopes that his son is sowhere with the aliens and he's returned. Someday,

someday we'll see him again. And he's actually said someday I'll see I know he'll come back and we'll see him again. So but here's the thing. Let me point out again, there were when his story initially hit or when he logged his light plane, he said he was picking up passengers and then he was going to get or get some office. We never knew exactly which what it was. There were never any passengers and no crawfish had been ordered. So the whole story of why he

made this flight is kind of soft. There's been people who have said, well, you know, it's quite possible he was running drugs, and it's quite possible that he was in trouble with the people that he was running drugs with and that he was trying to escape. And that goes along with the theory that Joe put up, which is that he was ditching the plane to get away and start his life over, whether it be to get

away from whoever or for whatever reason. There's also the theory that if this story of somebody seeing assessment of landing on some remote land landing strip is true, it may have been that he did this as a gag, lands with his drug contacts, something goes wrong and he disappears because they make people disappear, and they go, well, we gotta plan here, we gotta get rid of that too. Let's throw that in the car crusher. So there's a

possibility that that could have happened as well. That's I feel like those are pretty good theories, although you know, the the only problem I have with that particular theory is that he does this as a gag and then and then turns around and flies off to make the drug Rendevoo somewhere after, just like you know, big time, putting himself on the radar and attracting a lot of attention to himself. Then he goes off to meet his buddies, you know, and transact the drug thing. It's like, that's

not a low profile behavior. Well, people don't always make the decisions, and the family does not, like they get very upset. Actually, and actually when this comes out, there's really you know, and there really isn't any evidence is there that he was involved in There's there's no evidence to support it whatsoever. It's just just got another theory. We've grabbed this point and this point and that we've got and let's link them up, which is a lot of what this story's theories are so well so far.

The final one, which again Joe touched on, was it may have been suicide. He may have decided that I can't be a pilot and I can't be a commercial pilot, and I can't be in the R a F. And I'm just I'm done. I quit. There's no behavior to support that. He seemed like a happy guy. He's nothing indicated to anybody that that's what was going on with him.

But it's possible. I you know, the thing that I you kind of always see with them people who really want to kill themselves, is I feel like they're usually really happy, like you. They appear often the people who are like really going to go through with it. Why would they be sad anymore because they know they're going to go kill themselves. Yeah, there's an end, is insight. We know we're happily going towards. It's very true possibility, you know. Or they're really good at pretending or whatever.

You know, they hide it really well. So I don't know that maybe a and I don't know either, But that's that's the end of the theories that we have. It's it's aliens, it's pilot air, or it's a hoax, and there's variants on every one of those, and we have no idea which one it is, and probably never

will well not necessarily. Um, this guy, if he's still alive, and I'm sure I'm sure he is, because here and is here is four p FD has probably made it to too short Tasmania or Bear Island, wherever the hell he win. It's probably a lot somewhere, and he's probably shortly going to be listening to this podcast. Yeah, very well, any just decided I want the hell yeah, I'm gonna come out. I'm gonna come out of the closet. That could happen. And by the way, by the way, you

are totally welcome to be on our show. We'll do Yes, we love following up interview. You have to get in contact with us, Yes, you do, because we can't find you. Nobody else has no. Well, that's uh, that's all I've got on this story. Anybody else got any little bits of pieces you want to you wanna profer on this? No, I'm happy with this. I think they're a lot of really great Yeah, there's a lot of Yeah, they all

have a big question mark after them. I don't think any of them are sound enough by themselves that you can say, yeah, I was definitely probably that one, which I like, Yeah, that's good, that's good. But I think that I would like to ask this question. I don't know if I don't know if you know this or not. So he tells the people at the airport when you which is not true. He tells his girlfriend that he's

picking up crayfish. Now, I presume that he told her that because she wanted to come along for the ride, and he told her there was gonna be hauling back a whole lot of crayfish and there would be no room, and that would be the plane would way too much.

It's funny that you ask that. I found one source that is completely unsubstantiated that said that his girlfriend had been with him on every flight that he had taken, the entire hundred and fifty hours of flight time that he had logged, she had been in the passenger seat with him, and that she was not in the plane in this particular instance. And there is again I don't know where this came from. It was on something I found. It was just again an itty bitty blurb that I

could never find anywhere else and never substantiate that. A week later, she showed up at some bed and breakfast hotel near where they lived and asked for him, expecting to find him there, and when the proprietor of establishments like, no, we we don't how do you buy that by that name here? But I think I know that from the news. And she was visibly distraught and very upset, and then she left and that's the end of it. So it it.

I don't know where were you going with this? Because it was it made it out as if she expected him to be there as normal. I have a new theory now, girls who are that kind of girlfriend who won't let you do anything that you want to do and you just want out so bad, but you just you don't know how to You don't want to hurt their feelings. I think that's what happened. He was just like, I get away, so it is a hoax, but it was to get away from the crazy girlfriends. We've got it.

He was like, no, okay, listen, I'm gonna fake all of this UFO stuff. It's gonna be awesome. You're gonna hear about it all in the news, and then you come meet me in the right and bed and breakfast next to our house. I'll be hiding out there under this fake name, but you know, I'll give them my real name too, so you can ask for that. That's fine, because that's totally normal. I'm gonna call myself Viper six. That's for Viper six. And uh she shows up and

he's like, uh, got away with it clean this time? Yeah? Maybe. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any theories of your own, please feel free to let us know. You can always go ahead and just send us an email with your theories, your thoughts, your concerns, complaints, or any other insights that you might have. Uh. That email that you can get ahold of us at is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail

dot com. And as always, some of the links because as always, we can't put them all up because that's the Internet. It's all of the Internet, and I can't host it all on our website, but you can find some of these links on our website. That website is of course, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. And with that, we're gonna go ahead and sign this one off, and ladies and gentlemen, we will talk to you next week. Every believe in the UFOs. I want to believe, Yeah,