Welcome back to the Path with Chili.
I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I want to welcome our lovely co host Ashley back with new baby Teddy. So tell us everything, Ashley.
Oh Man, Well, new parenthood is tough, but I'm in utter love with our little Teddy Bear. He was six pounds and eleven ounces and he's our newest true crime fan in the family. So we are so happy. Our little girls are obsessed with him equally, so we have all these little mamas running around the house helping him and take care of him. And I think I might have fallen even more in love with Rebel after giving birth to our sweet little Miles Theodore. So I am happy.
I'm tired, but I'm so glad to be back with my friends and recording our podcast.
Yeah, it's definitely great to have you back. And I saw Teddy for the first time just a few minutes before we started recording him. He's only a few weeks old at this point. He's so tiny and absolutely adorable. And I made an announcement. I know our listeners have been following us knowing about your pregnancy, and I announced on social media when you gave birth finally, and they
were all so excited for you. So now I'm glad to hear that they'll finally get to hear you back and talk about what it's like to be a new mother again.
Well, you look amazing, and I'm so happy I got the chance, I think a week after actually gave birth to get a peek at little Teddy on zoom And he's such a perfect little baby, like the cutest little hens and feet, and he's so just chubby in the right places. He's just everything.
Now that we've talked about my little Teddy Bear, let's dive right in to this week's case.
October twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, Cape Otway, Australia. After leaving on a seemingly routine training flight in a Cessna one to eighty two aircraft, twenty year old Frederick Valentage vanishes without explanation over the Bass Strait. During a radio transmission, Valentage describes seeing an unidentified flying object and his final words are, quote, it's hovering and it's not an aircraft. When independent eyewitnesses corroborate seeing strange things in the sky
in the area that night, speculation mounts. The Valentice's disappearance might have been the result of an alien encounter.
After that, The Path Went Chiley. So today we will be going down Under to Australia to cover one of the most infamous unsolved mysteries of all time, the nineteen seventy eight disappearance of Frederick Valentage is The actual release date of this episode will be October thirty. First, I thought it would be fun for us to do a
Halloween themed episode which involves potential UFO involvement. Now, while I personally find UFO stories fascinating, I know that not everyone likes them, which is why we've never really covered them on The Path Went Chile. But this story is different because, regardless of what your stance is on UFOs, a man still went missing under mysterious circumstances and has
not been found to this day. Frederick Valentich was flying Assessed Noel one eighty two aircraft over the bas Strait in Australia, and under normal circumstances, there wouldn't be much to discuss here, as it might seem obvious that Valentage's playing crashed into the water. However, what elevates this story is the fact that Valentiche made a final radio communication in which he describes seeing an unidentified flying object and concluded with these cryptic words quote it's hovering and it's
not an aircraft. And since a number of other eyewitnesses reported seeing strange things in the sky that night, this opened up speculation that the Lentage may have been abducted by a UFO. I should also mention that I have a particular interest in this story because it happened to
take place on the very day I was born. In fact, if you type October the twenty first, nineteen seventy eight into Google, this is constantly cited as not only the most famous mystery, but the most famous event period to have taken place on this particular date. So I guess this can only mean that I was predestined to grow up having an obsession with unsolved mysteries.
Wait a minute, you're telling me. If I type in October twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, your birth is not noted as more important.
Maybe one of these days, maybe when we do this podcast a few more years, it'll be the most historic thing to happen on that date, But for now, it's a UFO story. How ironic.
That's so interesting. Okay, So what blows my mind here is that I'm like you, I'm interested. It's still is always very neat to hear stories of UFOs. It's one of those things where I'm like, I don't know. Some of the stories make you pretty convinced they exist, and others, you know, don't seem as convincing. But this one's really bizarre because it's someone who's also in the air, in an aircraft, right, who's reporting seeing something hovering near him exactly.
Yeah, Like he gives this final cryptic radio communication talking about a flying object and then it just suddenly cuts off and he's never heard from again, and they've never found him or his airplanes. So under the circumstances, you can see why even skeptics would fake was he abducted by UFO?
Yeah, it's very bizarre because he's in air with him. I've never heard of that. I've heard of people saying, oh, they were taken, you know, from their car, or they were taken from a field or from their house or whatever.
But to have someone who would be like on an equal plane field with this this spacecraft or this unidentified object really fascinating and very bizarre, Like you said, never find any remnants of the airplane, which if he was abducted, the airplane would like crash unless they also took his airplane with them for information purposes. It's a very very interesting bizarre case. No wonder it shows up as the most famous event on that date.
I find this case so interesting, And there's numerous accounts of pilots who've seen things that are some type of UFO. They aren't another plane. This isn't something that a lot of pilots like to come forward and talk about, because especially like now, it's more i would say more accepted.
There's plenty of governments who have come forward talking about UFOs and their airspace and confirming this, and a lot of people do believe that there are aliens or these aircrafts are some kind of UFOs, and anyone who's been listening to our podcast for a while knows I personally believe in aliens. Our story begins in Australia in nineteen seventy eight. Our central figure is twenty year old Frederick Valentiche, who hails from an attack family and has numerous siblings.
Valentich lives in Melbourne and aspires to have a career in aviation. He spent three years as a cadet in the Royal Australian Air Force Air Training Corps and is currently employed by Southern Air Services in the Melbourne suburb of Morobin. At this point, Valentich, who has one hundred and fifty hours of total flight time and a class for instrument rating. He has a private pilot's license and is studying to obtain a commercial pilot's license so that
he could become a commercial airline pilot. At six nineteen pm on the evening of October twenty first, Valentich climbed into a single engine Cessna one eighty two L light aircraft and takes off from the Morobin Airport for what was supposed to be a two hundred and thirty five kilometer training flight. His plan was to travel west alongside the Australian coast for about forty minutes before turning south
at Cape Otway. He would then head across Bath straight for about a half hour before arriving at King Island on the surface. This seemed to be nothing more than a routine, straightforward flight. However, at seven oh six pm Vlentiche was flying over baths straight in near Cape Otway when Steve Roby, a flight service officer at Melbourne Airport,
received a radio call from him. Here is a recreation of that conversation based on the original transcript, where Robin will be Valentage and I will be Roby.
Is there any known traffic below five thousand feet? No known traffic, I am seems to be a large aircraft below five thousand.
What type of aircraft is it?
I cannot affirm it is for bright It seems to me like landing lights. The aircraft has just passed over me at at least one thousand feet above.
Roger, and it's a large aircraft.
Confirm er unknown due to the speed it's traveling. Is there any air Force aircraft in the vicinity?
No known aircraft in the vicinity.
It's approaching right now from due east towards me. It seems to me that he's playing some sort of game. He's flying over me two three times at speeds I cannot identify, Roger.
What's your actual level?
My level is four and a half thousand four or five zero zero?
And confirm you cannot identify the aircraft. Affirmative standby.
It is not an aircraft.
It is Can you describe the aircraft.
As is flying past? It's a long shape. Cannot identify more than that. It has such speed. It is before me right now, Melbourne.
And how large would the object be?
It seems like it's stationary. What I'm doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me. Also, it's got a green light and sort of metallic like it's all shiny on the outside. It's just vanished. Would you know what kind of aircraft I've got? Is it military aircraft?
Confirm the aircraft just vanished? Say again, is the aircraft still with you?
It's now approaching from the south the west. The engine is rough idling. I've got it set at twenty three twenty four and the thing.
Is Roger, what are your intentions?
My intentions are to go to King Island, Melbourne. That's strange. Aircraft is hovering on top of me. Again, it is hovering and it's not an aircraft.
So eerie, okay, So literally, this is not something that he's just glancing over and seeing. He's having a full blown, lengthy conversation with air traffic control and letting them know that he has details odd behavior and flying patterns that they're like playing a quote sort of game with him, and then all of a sudden they lose contact with him.
Correct, Yeah, that is correct.
Oh my gosh. So this is really really scary because he's describing this unknown object, but he's telling them it's not an aircraft, it's something hovering around me, playing a game with me, and then we never hear from him again. I got chills when you were talking because I thought it would be a very quick radio conversation. He has plenty of time to observe what's happening, and then we have no idea what happened to him.
Yeah, Like, this is very iconic, this final radio transmission, because it's something you'd expect to find in a movie or something where someone says these cryptic final words it is hovering and it is not an aircraft, and then you never hear from them again. And we're going to talk about this, But the actual radio transmission of this has never been released publicly. No one has ever heard the actual audio, so this is based just entirely on the transcripts. But I can only imagine how weird it
would have been. For Steve Roby just having to have heard this and then just suddenly losing contact with Valentage and then finding yourself right in the middle of like one of the most infamous UFO mysteries of all time.
I wonder if this UFO had like a cloak of invisibility, or if they're like some kind of interdimensional time travelers were going through this rip in the fabric of space time like a wormhole, and so like they're going in and out of visibility.
I mean, that could be an explanation if he really did see an aircraft, and because what he's saying is just you can tell that Valanchich immediately thinks this is not an earth bound aircraft anything to do with the air Force. This is like unlike anything I've ever seen before.
And theoretically, if aliens were going to come here, they would likely have to use something like wormholes, because the time that it would take to get from any sort of I guess other planet in which there could be aliens would take so long that you wouldn't be able to get to Earth unless there's some type of technology or a way that you can get here instantaneously, and likely that would be or has been theorized to be through the use of wormholes.
Yeah, that would make sense because in so many sci fi stories, whenever people travel from Earth to faraway planets, it takes them years and then they have to go into cryo sleep to be able to make that distance without going through all their supplies. So I've always wondered if aliens did travel from a faraway place to Earth, they use a wormhole to get here, so they could get here quicker.
Yeah, and the time it would take you to get through our layers and to an actual place where you're able to abduct humans, there'd be so many ways to cite you, right, and to see you and to follow you. And so that makes sense, Jules, good wormholes.
It's the wormholes, I'm telling you. So.
Valentage's transmission ended at seven to twelve PM with what sounded like seventeen seconds of metallic, scraping noises. Now, like I just said, Even though the transcript of Valentage's final conversation is available everywhere, the actual audio of his transmission has never been released publicly, though you'll find plenty of reenactments of it online. However, audio excerpts of the strange metallic scraping noises were played on a TV show called
The Unexplained Files, which aired several years later. Anyway, this radio TRANSMISSI would turn up to be the last time anyone ever heard from Frederick Balentage, and quote it's hovering and it's not an aircraft would be forever etched as one of the most infamous final sentences of all time. The Sessna never arrived to King Island and Valentage's final
radio transmission escalated into a distress situation. Twenty one minutes later, a massive air and sea search was performed a bas strait between Cape Otway and King Island, but it failed to turn up any trace of Valentage or as missing aircraft, as there wasn't even any wreckage to be found. The search came to an end in on October the twenty fifth, four days after Valentage went missing.
You would think, even though it's nineteen seventy eight, that there'd still be ways to track if a plane just disappeared or went down, And because they did act so quickly it became an emergency within twenty one minutes, you would think someone else who was in the air at the time. Air traffic control or at least remnants of the aircraft would be present in the water or on land,
and it's not. So it is really really disturbing when you think about, how did he have this conversation that got cut off off, has these odd metallic scraping noises as part of the end of that recording, and then he's just vanished, and so has the aircraft. That's the part that really blows my mind. If he vanished, it's one thing. If the whole aircraft vanishes, that's really difficult to explain in any other way because of how quickly everyone acted.
Yeah, I first became familiar with this story when they featured on Unsolved Mystery sometime during the nineteen nineties, and it wasn't until years after that where I finally watched the Unexplained Files TV show, which was the first time they had ever released the actual audio of the metallic scraping noises. And that was pretty chilling to hear, because, like I said, the radio conversation is always reenactments, but you're hearing the real thing, the actual audio, and you're like,
what is going on here? Is this is aircraft? Is this hovering aircraft? Scratching against Valentage's plane and then just all of a sudden, it's silenced. So you're thinking to yourself that it actually like beam the aircraft into the ship, and that's why it's disappeared.
I really feel for his family here, because you have a missing loved one who's unaccounted for. And I think because of this disturbing transmission with such an iconic line right before he disappears and then there's no trace of Frederick, you have family members who see all of these like kind of sci fi elements and alien abduction elements overtake the fact that this person that they love hasn't been seen since that day, and I think that can be a hard thing to grapple with.
I also think when you consider what the explanations are for his disappearance, there'd be a lot of trauma and grief complication too, because when people, especially in nineteen seventy eight, were to say, oh, you think he just disappeared or just spanished, that doesn't happen. Oh you think it's a
UFO though they aren't real. There would just be a lot of kind of shame and frustration and embarrassment and a difficulty get the support and the kind of advocacy you would need for your family member who's just vanished. And I think there'd be a lot of ridicule and kind of speculation going on about everyone's sanity and kind of how grounded this family is when really they're just grieving a loved one and going help us find him.
And one of the explanations is it's possible that that aircraft truly was not an aircraft and could have been a UFO. I just think about at the time and even now, how much backlash there'd be for that kind of explanation being parallel with your missing loved one.
So what could have been the meaning of Alenticche's final transmission and what was this hovering object that he was referring to? Well, as you probably guessed, UFOs would immediately enter the discussion, and reports would come pouring in from witnesses who claimed they saw strange objects or lights in the sky alongside the Australian coast on the night of
Alenticche's disappearance. But one eyewitness account really stood out. The witness's real name has never been disclosed publicly, but an article published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration refers to him by the pseudonym Ken Hanson, so that's what we'll
call him. So that's what we'll call him here. Hanson claimed that on the evening of October twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, he was traveling to his home in Apollo Bay after an outing with his wife and two nieces when they saw a lime green light flying through the sky near Cape Otway. According to Hanson, the light appeared to be about one thousand feet above an aircraft and seemed to be performing a steep dive at a forty five degree angle. The light moved ever so closer to
the aircraft before they both disappeared from view. While this sighting would have taken place around the approximate time as Frederick Valentich's final radio transmission, Hansen did not disclose this sighting publicly until years after the fact, when he shared his story with a policeman who subsequently put him in touch with Valentich's father, Udo Valentich.
Okay, so, one of the things I'd want to know is did his wife and his nieces also see something? Is there a way that the whole feeling can validate this? But when you do hear his story, and you have this hovering object and then you have this plane and they both disappear at the same time. It just gives
you chills up your back. If Ken is actually telling the truth, and he's not just gathering information from news stories or you know, trying to be part of this story, then what he's describing is exactly what you guys are saying happened. That it's possible a UFO was hovering and then literally just vanishes, absorbing this plane and the pilot with it, And how you explain that any other way is just crazy. If Kin's telling the truth.
Yeah, Ken Anson is the only one who's ever done interviews, even though he has maintained anonymity and never released his real name. But as far as I can tell, even though his wife and two nieces had never spoken publicly about it, they did tell the authorities that we saw the exact same thing that he did, so they have backed up his story. So when you have foreign independent eyewitnesses saying that we saw these lights coming down at an angle towards what appeared to be an aircraft, you
have to think that the story was true. But you also wonder does that mean that they saw it a UFO abducting fred Ralentage's plane.
I think in this case it almost adds more credibility to the story. The fact that he held this information back. He wasn't looking for attention from the media, He wasn't looking to go on and do these interviews. He just seemed to in passing tell this to a police officer.
And I think it comes back to exactly what Ashley had said earlier about how the family might have been feeling in that you would be dealing with as an eyewitness who saw pretty much exactly what Frederick said he experienced, you might deal with a level of ridicule and scorn from the public and the non believers. So to come forward and put your face in your name out there
something that would be really scary. So the fact that he held this back and the information seems to be corroborated by the other family members makes it a pretty strong account for me personally.
Oh definitely, because some people, once they see UFOs, they want to be like at the center of attention with the media and see how much money they can make and how much attention they can receive. But the fact that he has never released his real name to this day makes me think that he did not want the publicity and only shared this story because he wanted to
help the Valentich family. So six weeks after Valentich's disappearance, there was another interesting development involving a plumber slash amateur photographer named Roy Manifold. He was also president at Cape Otway on the evening of October the twenty first, and took six photographs of the sunset, approximately twenty minutes before
Valentic's radio transmission well. Manifold claimed that he didn't see or hear anything unusual at the time, but when he developed the photos, he was surprised to find some strange anomalies. The fourth photo appeared to show what looked like a dense bla black lump on the water, which gave off the impression that something might have been rising from it. While the fifth photo looked normal, the sixth photo had what appeared to be a strange black mark in the sky.
According to Manifold, he had taken thousands of photographs throughout his life but had never seen anything like this. He ordinarily would have attributed it to nothing more than a developing air, but when he realized the photos were taken on the same night that Frederick the Lentage disappeared at
approximately the same location. He had the negatives delivered to the chief photographer of the newspaper The Australian, who believed the anomalies were authentic and not a developing air The photo of the black object in the sky wound up running on page one of the paper, but the Royal Australian Air Force wasted no time at stepping in and dismissing the object as nothing more than a cumulus cloud
in its dying stages. The photo was eventually sent to a UFO group in Phoenix called Ground Saucer Watch, who performed a computer analysis and determined that the strange mark was not actually dirt or damage to the negative, but was something which was actually present in the sky well the picture was taken. They believe this black mark was a solid metallic object located about a mile from the camera.
It was likely moving through the sky at a speed of approximately two hundred miles per hour and was enveloped in a cloud of exhaust. However, many years later the photograph was given a second analysis and it reached the exact opposite conclusion, believing that the mark was nothing more than a developer's error. Wow.
Okay, So when you talk about the military immediately dismissing it, I always wonder, you know, like, gosh, they've got such cool advancements, and there's so many things in technology and aircraft and all kinds of innovations that come out that I don't think we are aware of, and if they were exposed as possibly being linked to something that occurred to someone's detriment, I don't know how quickly the military would be to claim, right, oh, yeah, that's our aircraft
or unknown aircraft we're testing, or something like that. So when the Royal Australian Air Force just quickly dismisses the object and won't go any further into explanation, I'm always dubious of that.
I don't know.
I always question that because I think you can't admit to everything that's coming out as new technology and weaponry and things like that. But when you talk about this photographer getting these pictures, I bet back when he took them he assumed, you know, this is something that's actually coming from the water and in the sky. A UFO group surely is going to cling to that and go, look,
there's proof that what we've been arguing is existing. But I would assume advances in technology would be able to show whether it was a developer's error or items, so I in this case, I would probably lean more towards
it being a developer's error. But I don't think that the Royal Australian's Air Force dismissal minimizes my assumption that this very well could be a UFO right, So for the picture may but denial by the Air Force, I don't think that really detracts from the UFO statement whatsoever.
We've all watched the X Files. We know that the government in the military does not like you claim responsibility for anything, and even if it comes down to being their knowledge of something extraterrestrial, so I too will side with I don't really think that them denying it really means much. They would deny it whether they knew or they didn't, in my opinion. But with regards to the technology,
I don't know. I'm split on if the second analysis is done many many years later with better technology, or if it's just an expert coming to another conclusion, which we often see dueling experts looking at any trial to give reference to that.
Yeah, that second analysis I think took place sometime in the late nineteen eighties or early nineteen nineties, and I haven't heard anything about a new analysis being performed with today technology on the photograph, which could probably determine with
more conclusiveness if it was a developer's error. But at the same time, it is kind of surprising that the Royal Australian Air Force would have this explanation of a cumulus cloud rather than a developer's air the moment that they saw it in the paper, because as far as I know, they weren't consulted ahead of time before this
photograph ran. So how could they just look at the photograph in the newspaper and just say, oh, that's not a flying object, we know exactly what it is without getting all the facts, Like they weren't out there that night, so how could they be certain that it was just a cloud? So I could definitely see how this looks like they're just kind of chiming in and trying to give off plausible deniability right away even though it might not be accurate.
Like they doth protest too much exactly? Well, what added an extra level of intrigue to the whole UFO angle, was it. Valentice himself was a major flying saucer enthusiast who told people he'd seen a UFO on another occasion prior to his disappearance, and even express can about UFOs possibly attacking him someday. At one point, Valentage told his father that he had seen classified material at a Royal Australian Air Force base, which confirmed his belief that UFOs exist.
Only six days before he went missing, Valentiche had a conversation with his girlfriend in which he mentioned the possibility of encountering a UFO and told her quote, if a UFO landed in front of me right now, I would go in it, but never without you. But even without the UFO angle, there were still a lot of things about Valentich's disappearance which didn't add up, such as why he was making his flight to King Island in the
first place. Valentiche gave two conflicting stories about the purpose of his trip, as he told his superiors at Morobin Airport that he was picking up passengers at King Island and even brought along four life jackets. However, he told his family and his girlfriend that he was going to pick up some crayfish, even though there was no record of him placing any orders and crayfish were not even
available on King Island on this particular date. Even stranger if Alentach never even told anyone at King Island Airport about his flight, meaning that there wouldn't have been any lights on the airport if the Lentage had actually arrived
that night. If all this wasn't weird enough, the Lentage told his girlfriend that he was going to meet her at seven thirty pm that night, but given that his plane didn't take off until six nineteen pm, there's no possible way that he would have been able to fly to King Island him back again by seven thirty.
Okay, what is going on here? When you hear all these conflicting things where he won't tell the real reason why he's going, the fact that he brought four life jackets along is very bizarre. And then you have him saying, hey, listen, I didn't even contact the airport, and I told my girlfriend i'd be home at seven thirty just an hour, and you know, ten minutes after I take off. That just doesn't add up. So it's almost like he was
preparing for something. But again, they acted twenty one minutes after this call into the air traffic control, so they were very quick to respond, and they couldn't find any sign of him. They couldn't find any sign of the aircraft. It would seem like he didn't have enough time to pull off. Even if he had planned something more extravagant and try to get away with it, it just doesn't seem like twenty one minutes would give him enough time
to do so. But all these actions seemed like he knew something no one else did before he even took off that night.
Yeah, you brought up the life jackets. And in case you're wondering, they never did find any passengers who were able to confirm that, yes, Valentiche was going to show up in King Island and pick us up on that night, So it seems pretty obvious that this was some sort
of cover story. We'll talk more about this later on in I think part two, but I know that a theory that has been pushed forward is that because Valentich was such a UFO enthusiast, that he may have taken that flight for the express purpose of searching for a UFO or something, and by pure chance he could have put actually right into one, because like you said, there's no way he could have made that route and been
back again by seven thirty to meet his girlfriend. But if he was just going out there in a casual flight to look for something, he may have came up with these cover stories because he didn't want to tell anyone he was searching for a UFO.
We can't dismiss the possibility that he was in contact with aliens and he'd come up with his plan to meet them at this time. And when he told his girlfriend that he wouldn't go on to a UFO without her, maybe he was just trying to make her feel better.
Yes, that's a partner you want to will assure you that they won't go into a UFO without you.
Absolutely, yes, true love.
In nineteen eighty two, a coronial inquiry was held into Valentitch's disappearance, but since there was no conclusive evidence to indicate what happened to him, they were turned an open verdict. Valentage was listed as missing and presumed dead, and he was eventually declared legally dead on May sixteenth, nineteen eighty three. An eroded engine Calflap was found ashore on Flinders Island, which is located in the Straight, approximately three hundred and
twenty kilometers from Cape Otway. The Bureau of Air Safety investigation concluded that the flap came from a Cessna one to eighty two and it had a number on it which matched one of the serial numbers from Valentage's missing aircraft. The current in Bass Strait was very strong at the time of Lentage's disappearance, so it's not inconceivable that a piece of his plane could have floated over three hundred
kilometers away. However, it's worth noting that the flap washed up near the Flinders Island airport, and there were two Cessnas which had lost parts during takeoff from the airport during the preceding years, so it was possible that the
flap could have come from there. Valentage's family have wanted to perform modern tests on the flap to determine if it might have been in the baths Straight salt water for five years, but it looks like the flap might have either been lost or scrapped since it cannot be found today.
But didn't the serial numbers actually match his aircraft?
I just wanted to be number.
Oh okay, okay, okay. It had a number which matched the SERIALE, so not as convincing. I was thinking the serial numbers match. I was like, well then it's a match.
Okay.
I'm with his family. I wish this was one of those cases where when an item had washed up on shore and you're not sure which aircraft it's from, that they had kept that piece of evidence, but clearly it got destroyed or has been misplaced because the family can't get what they need. It would be fascinating. Now that was nineteen seventy eight, and it wasn't until nineteen eighty three that this washes up. Now in twenty twenty four, it'd be fascinating to know. Could test be performed in there?
Could you see where this might have originated from before it made its way to where it was discovered.
In nineteen ninety eight, Valentiche's family erected a memorial plaquet k pop Way commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his disappearance, and it was unveiled by Flight Services officer Steve Roby, the last person to ever speak with him. For his part, Roby's always maintained the Valentice founded genuine about what he
was seeing during their final radio conversation. An interesting PostScript to the story, which not many people know, is it only five days after Valentage's disappearance, Roby had a similar radio conversation with another light aircraft pilot who was flying through East Sale. The pilot reported being passed three times by a bright light traveling at jet speed, and it grazed by him so closely that he decided to lad his aircraft. Another interesting development took place in twenty twelve.
For over thirty years, anyone who wanted to delve into this case was told that the official three hundred and fifteen page file on Valentage on Vlentage's disappearance had been lost or destroyed, But by complete chance, it was discovered by a researcher named Keith Fosterfield, who found a digital version of the entire file in an online index of the National Archives of Australia, so anyone from the public can now go to their website in order to view it.
In spite of what you might think, most people don't believe that a deliberate attempt was made to cover up the file. In all likelihood, it was the result of simple bureaucratic sloppiness, as someone probably just digitized the file and transferred it to the website without realizing its significance. Regardless, even though the file sun availability reinvigorated interest in the case, forty six years have now passed and there's still no
answers about what actually happened to Frederick Valentich. So I guess you could say the path went Chile.
What's so hard here is that you have a family who literally said goodbye to their family member or their loved one, sent him off on something he did on a routine basis, which is go on a quick flight, and he just disappears. And so it has been forty six years. But that's forty six years that not only we don't have answers, but his family never had answers, And it's just confusing. I feel like there's some I
don't know, some just unanswered questions. When you listen to what Frederick had said he was doing that night and then his action, how they didn't really line up with a plausible story. But then he just simply vanishes and most likely we haven't seen any elements of his aircraft
are covered there's no recovery of his body. How is a family you move forward, even with the presumption of death from the courts, how you actually move forward as a family with no concept of what happened and that overwhelming feeling that there could be something that's abnormal, such as a UFO involved. It just hits me as something that'd be very, very, very complex and very traumatic for the family who's grieving Frederick.
Oh, definitely, because I've never seen any other missing person cases like this, like this is one of the only ones on record where there is a genuine belief that the victim could have been abducted by UFO. And to be one thing, if they searched the bas Strait and they found some sort of wreckage or any evidence whatsoever that suggested that the luggage might have crashed, because then they could think, Okay, we may not find his body, but at least we'll have a pretty good idea what
happened to them. But they have found nothing aside from that calflap, which was found over three hundred kilometers away five years after the fact, and they've still never been able to conclusively determine if it belonged to Frederick's plane. So it is the worst kind of nightmare because not only are you losing a loved one, but you run the danger of being mocked by people who think, oh, yeah, you got kidnapped by aliens, when this is the one
case where you just cannot write that off completely. And if that's what really happened to them, then what can you do? What resources do you have to find out what happened? So this would be a good time to bring an end to part one, So join us next week as we present part two of our series about the disappearance of Frederick Valantage.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the trailment Cold Patreon.
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patrio. If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon. And if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollar Tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawd Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Path Went Chili, which are always over an hour, so they're not very many, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
We'll link them in the show notes.
So I want to thank you all for listening and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated. You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy