Hello. It's Richard mclinsmith here, very excited to announce that this May I'll be heading to Crime Con twenty twenty six in Las Vegas, the world's number one true crime event, and I'd love to see you there. From May twenty nineth to the thirty first, thousands of true crime fans, investigators, journalists, podcasters, experts and survivors will gather at Caesars Palace and Las Vegas for an unforgettable weekend of live talks, exclusive panels,
deep dives, and behind the scenes conversations. I'll be appearing throughout the weekend on Creator Row, so please come and say hello, and if you'd like to join me for my live session Treasure, Betrayal and Death in Vegas, the Ted Binyon Mystery, I'll be speaking at ten twenty am on the Saturday morning. To get tickets, head to Crimecon dot com and use promo code Unexplained for ten percent off.
Hope to see you there. It was late on the night of February twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine, on a desolate stretch of Route fourteen somewhere in southwestern Utah in the United States of America. The highway stretched into the darkness, a dark ribbon of frosty asphalt with no apparent end, just barely illuminated by the headlights of a single car.
The conservation officer knew this road well. It was part of his regular patrol route as a fish and game inspector, and he was trained to be on the lookout for anything unusual. Just then, a gleam of silver upperhead illuminated in his head lights caught his eye. It was a car parked up by the side of the road. The officer eased his foot off the accelerator and slowed down. A part car was an unusual sight out there, to
say the least. It was far enough from any town or tourist landmark that the only reason somebody would stop there was if their car had broken down. Only this Chevrolet in Parlor looked to be in perfect condition. As the officer's car got closer, the beam of its headlights revealed a single word on its side, painted in black. Stop, so the officer did. At first, he just stayed inside its vehicle, with the engine idling as he weighed up
his next move. Years of working in remote, isolated areas had taught him caution, but with the Chevrolet kept firmly in the patrol car's headlights, he could see there wasn't anyone else out there for miles around. He flicked on his flashlight and scanned behind him too, but there was nothing there either, just an endless stretch of snow covered scrub.
Satisfied it was safe, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the freezing night air with one hand on the butt of the pistol holstered on his hip, its boots crunched on the frost covered as he ambled cautiously toward the vehicle. Just as he thought, there was no obvious sign of damage, certainly no sign of a collision, and no driver either. He angled his flashlight through the window and spotted something resting on the steering wheel. It was a note. The car's doors were unlocked, so he
just reached in and grabbed it. Possible plane crash, it read, Please call law enforcement. What the hell, thought the officer as he looked up and scanned the surrounding scrub with his torch. The land beyond rose into uneven hills and shallow ridges, their shapes hard to distinguish against the night sky. But even in the dark, he was fairly certain there hadn't been any plane crash nearby. Angling his torch at the ground, the officer spotted a set of footprints heading
off toward the higher ground beyond the ridge. Instinctively, the officer followed the prince into the dark, then suddenly thought better of it. This was the high desert, where temperatures could drop well below freezing overnight. It wouldn't help if he got lost too. He needed back up. The inspector drove straight to the nearest law enforcement office, the Cedar County Sheriff's Department. Once there, he informed the county Sheriff, Otto Fife, about everything he'd found and handed him the
mysterious note that he'd found on the steering wheel. Sheriff Fife was concerned. There were only two likely possibilities, and neither of them good. Either there really had been a plane crash somewhere out in the wilderness, or their missing motorist, possibly drunk, had seen something that wasn't there and wandered away from his vehicle in the pitch black, freezing night. There was every chance he could now be lost in the high desert and in real danger of dying from exposure.
The sheriff quickly gathered a volunteer search party, and together they drove out to the isolated spot on Route fourteen, and, just as the officer had done before them, they soon found the abandoned chevy. Fife ordered the volunteers to spread out and form a line. Then, under a near full silver moon, they moved into the snow covered brush beyond.
Beams of flashlights scanned the ground from left to right as Sheriff Fife led the way, meticulously scanning the dirt, the horizon, and all the subtle variations in the terrain. Then he saw something not clearly at first, just a shape that didn't quite belong. He quickened his pace and called out to the others to follow him. It was a man lying on his back in the light snow, completely motionless. Five sprinted over and crouched down beside him.
Thankfully he could see he was still breathing from the faint rise and fall of his chest. Can you hear me? Asked the sheriff, but there was no response. There were no obvious injuries, but the man's clothes were disheveled and dusty, and his face pale. Beneath a thin sheen of sweat, and in some indefinable way, Sheriff Fife couldn't help thinking he looked broken. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
McLean Smith. The unknown man was swiftly taken to Cedar City Hospital and was still unconscious when he was brought in. As the doctors worked frantically to figure out what was wrong with him, nothing seemed to make sense. He wasn't cold enough to have lost con sciousness due to exposure, there were no visible signs of head trauma, and no drugs were found to be in his system, and yet he still wouldn't wake up. For almost twenty four hours,
he stayed that way, lying motionless beneath thin hospital sheets. Then, finally, on the evening of March first, the man began to stir. His fingers twitched, his brow furrowed, then his eyes opened, suddenly wide and unfocussed. Darting around the unfamiliar room with a sharp inhale of breath, he pushed himself up as panic flickered across his face. Were there any survivors, he demanded to know, his voice strained and urgent, but the
nurse had no idea what he was talking about. A call was quickly put in to Sheri A. Fife, and he arrived soon after. The man had calmed down a little. He seemed by then to understand where he was, and he was no longer asking about survivors. He told the sheriff his name was Jerry Irwin, or rather Private first Class Jerry Erwin. He was a twenty three year old soldier currently assigned to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
But when Fife asked him to explain what he was doing in the desert, it was clear that the man was still very confused. But bit by bit he tried to recount his last known movements. This is what he remembered. It spent the last few days on leave visiting relatives in Nampa, Idaho, and was making his way back to Fort Bliss. He'd driven non stop for eighteen hours, hoping to get back to the base in time to catch
a few hours of sleep before the day began. But all alone on the open road, struggling to keep his eyes open, it started to regret his decision not to get a motel for the night. His car radio had started to crackle a few hours into the drive and gave out completely. By the time he got to Utah. He couldn't tell if it was broken or if there
was simply no signal. Either way, it left him with the monotonous, soporific hum of the engine as his only company in the vast, dark landscape he was driving through. In an effort to keep himself awake, as he drove, Jerry tried to concentrate on the next day's work. He was a weapons technician, specializing in maintaining surface to air missile systems. This relatively new technology was a crucial part of America's Cold War defense strategy, and Jerry loved his work.
As a child, he'd been terrified and fascinated by the broadcasts he'd seen about World War II, and he'd grown up determined to serve his country any way he could. Just outside of sus, a city in Utah, a light snow began to fall as Jerry turned southeast onto Route fourteen. At some point he remembered the sky suddenly seeming unusually bright. As Jerry later told it, he figured it was just the moon appearing from behind a cloud, but then he
realized the source of the light was moving. Looking up, he instinctively tracked the glowing object, thinking that it moved too smoothly and too deliberately to be anything other than an aircraft, and it was heading straight toward the ground. Struggling to make sense of what he was seeing, Jerry pulled the car over. He watched as the glowing object continued on its way toward the earth. Just before it disappeared below the horizon, it seemed to hang in mid air,
suspended for a moment. The next thing he knew there was a blinding flash of light, so bright that it washed out the sky. Jerry turned away, shielding his eyes against the glare, but after a few seconds the light faded. When he opened his eyes again, everything was still and seemed completely normal. Either side of him, he saw nothing but the snow dusted scrubland stretching out for miles, while above a few dim starts hung in the pitch black sky.
For a moment, he just sat there as the engine idled, hands still on the wheel, trying to guess at where exactly the light had come from. After close to three years in the army, Jerry was trained to keep a cool head in a crisis. No matter how alarming or strange the situation seemed. His job was to assess the facts, decide on a plan of action, and execute it. The most likely explanation for what he'd just seen was that a plane had crashed. Judging by the brightness of the light,
it most most likely exploded on impact. Since he was probably the only person out there for miles, he felt it was his duty to try and help, so he pulled some paper and a pen out at the glove compartment and scribbled down his note. But as he set off toward the apparent crash site, he had second thoughts. Nobody passing by would have any reason to stop. They'd just see a parked car on the shoulder with no signs of an emergency, which meant there was a good
chance that nobody would even see his note. So he dug a can of shoe polish out at the trunk and used it to write a single word on the side of his car stop, and with that he set off. The place where Jerry believed the light had descended was hidden just beyond a ridge, but according to him, there
was still a residual glow. Face ain't but undeniable As he set off toward it, he recalled how before long the terrain had begun to rise unevenly, the ground felt rough beneath his boots, scattered with loose stone and scrub. But what he really remembered was how at some point the air seemed suddenly different, as if it were charged with something he couldn't identify. Then he suddenly realized he wasn't cold anymore. In fact, despite the temperature, by then
being below freezing, he felt strangely warm. It made him feel uneasy, and the deeper he got into the brush, the more he felt the strong, almost overwhelming impulse to turn back. He had the sense that something was terribly elementally wrong, but Jerry forced himself onward regardless, determined to offer his help to whoever might need it. As he climbed toward the top of the ridge, the glow seemed to get brighter, but there was no smell of smoke
or any flickering flames. The light was steady, almost uniform, as if it were being cast by a huge fluorescent bulb. Finally, he reached the top of the slope and looked over the ridge into the vast wasteland beyond. He squinted into the light, trying to make out any identifiable shapes, but there were none. The air around him seemed to be pulsating now, while an incessant buzzing sound rang out in his ears. He took another step forward. Suddenly the light swelt,
engulfing everything around him. Blinded, he felt himself leaving the ground, his stomach lurching, and then he felt nothing at all. The next thing he knew, he was in hospital. It's fair to say that when Jerry finished his story, Sheriff Fife didn't quite know what to think about it. By then, he'd confirmed that no aircraft were thought to anywhere near the area that night, let alone crashed in it. Then Jerry asked him where his jacket was, but the Sheriff
was confused. As far as he could remember, Jerry hadn't been wearing a jacket when they found him, but it had been dark, so maybe he was misremembering. But when he asked the other members of the search party, they confirmed it too. Jerry hadn't been wearing a jacket, and they hadn't found one in his vehicle either. Yet Jerry was adamant he'd been wearing it when he was driving. I have to find that jacket, he kept saying, his voice frantic. There was something important in it, although he
couldn't remember what it was exactly. In fact, as it was later claimed, the harder he tried to remember, the more the image of the jacket seemed to slip through his fingers like sand, his mind supposedly an echoing chasm full of terrifying gaps where his memory should be. After spending another night in the hospital, Jerry Irwin was determined
physically ready for discharge. However, his doctors were reluctant to let him go, concerned about his mental state, but Jerry had access to high level information about some of the US military's most important missile systems, and they wanted him back. Understandably, his superiors didn't like the idea of him being at a civilian hospital while not in his right mind, who knew what he might say, so he was transferred back to Fort Bliss and admitted to the psychiatric ward there
for observation. The psychiatrist on the base was just as baffled as the doctors in Cedar City. Jerry had no known history of mental illness, and his record on the base was impeccable. Yet somehow during that long drive back, he must have slipped into a kind of disassociative fugue. He thought, a psychic state usually triggered by extreme stress or trauma. It was the only theory that came close
to explaining Jerry's amnesia and loss of time. After several days of intensive psychological evaluation, his psychiatrist couldn't find anything else wrong with him. All in all, Jerry seemed perfectly cogent and in touch with reality, except for his inability to explain what had happened in Utah. However, the authorities at Fort Bliss had never had a case like this before. They didn't want to let a good private go, not
when he hadn't done anything wrong. But they also couldn't take the risk of allowing him back to his old position, not yet. So in mid March of nineteen fifty nine, Jerry was cleared to return to duty, but without his security clearance. It was framed as a temporary measure to let him ease back into things, but Jerry knew exactly what it really was the demotion. His colleagues tried to welcome him back, but he could see the unease in
their eyes. They didn't know exactly what had happened, but they knew enough to treat him differently, like he was fragile. And it was true, Jerry wasn't the same. Maybe it was just the embarrassment of the demotion that caused him to retreat inside himself. Or maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe Jerry had been changed in some fundamental way by whatever he had experienced out in the desert, and soon his mind began to fracture. At first, Jerry seemed to
be on the mend. Then just a few weeks after the incident, on March fifteenth, nineteen fifty nine, he went into town to run some errands. One moment, he was walking out of a hardware store, the next he stopped suddenly in his tracks. According to onlookers, he seemed to freeze for a second, as if he'd seen something alarming, then just crumpled to the ground like a puppet cut free from its strings. When paramedics arrived, they found him
unconscious and quickly rushed him to hospital. He didn't wake up until the following morning. When he did, he had no idea where he was, and again he kept asking the same question were there any survivors. With Jerry once again calmed down, a doctor arrived to administer a basic cognitive test. He started by asking Jerry what the date was and the last thing he could remember. It was February twenty eighth, he said, and the last thing he remembered was being in his car out in the high desert.
Jerry was apparently stunned when the doctor told him that two weeks had passed since then, and seemed to have no memory of his most recent time on the base. It was as if the last fourteen days of his life had not been stored in his brain. Declared fit enough to leave, however, Jerry was transferred back to the hospital at Fort Bliss and placed under observation on the psych ward again. This time they kept him in for a full month as they tried to get to the
bottom of what was wrong. They ran neurological tests but found nothing wrong with his brain aside from the memory loss and the episodes of disassociation. For all intents and purposes, Jerry seemed completely sane. He was polite to his doctors but didn't talk much. He spent most of his time sitting in the day room, gazing out at the window at the sky. After a month, Jerry was released and deemed well enough to return to his duties. His first
day back on base was uneventful. On the morning of his second day, Jerry woke up at four thirty a m. As usual, He made his bed, washed and shaved in the communal latrines, and was in the mess hall for breakfast by five a m. He'd always been a good soldier, efficient and quick to follow orders. None of the other men noted anything unusual in his movements or his demeanor
as he completed his tasks that morning. After breakfast, Jerry was due to report for duty at seven a m. Instead, he walked straight out at the barracks and off the base. Jerry Irwin walked all the way to al Paso, which took him more than two hours. There, he jumped on a Greyhound bus headed for Cedar City in Utah. Arriving at the bus station some time later, he started walking again. He didn't need to consult a map, so somehow he
knew instinctively where to go. He walked all the way back to that desolate stretch of freeway where he'd pulled over just a few weeks ago. It was getting dark by the time he got there, but somehow this made it easier to retrace his footsteps. Then it's claimed that he found his missing jacket crumbled on the ground not far from where he'd been found himself. Tucked into one of the buttonholes was a pencil with a piece of paper wrapped tightly around it. Jerry took the piece of
paper and stared at it for a moment. Then he pulled out a match book from his pocket, struck a match, and set it on fire. He watched as the paper's edges curled and blackened, the flames consuming it until all that was left was a small pile of ash. For a moment, he felt at peace, knowing that he had fulfilled his task, and then, without warning, Jerry's mind went dark once again. On the evening of April nineteenth, Jerry
Irwin turned himself into the Cedar City Sheriff's department. He was confused and agitated, with no memory of how he'd gotten into the city. Sheriff Fife was stunned to see Jerry again, but Jerry clearly didn't recognize him at all. When quizzed about why he was back at the Sheriff's department. Jerry could only reply was that the last thing he remembered was being in his car driving home from leave when he saw a sudden, bright light in the sky.
Once again, it seemed his mind had reset itself to the evening of February twenty eighth. Eventually, he was transported back to Fort Bliss and spent the next few months in and out of hospital, undergoing numerous psychological tests, but still the doctors couldn't make any sense of his symptom. In time, Jerry's mind began to heal, its memory lapses stopped, and he was able to return to light duties on
the base. His fellow soldiers were given strict instructions not to ask him about the Cedar City incident and not to talk about it among themselves. One day, Jerry failed to report for duty. When a colleague was sent to look for him, they found his bed empty, but all his belongings still in the barracks. The entire base was searched,
but they found no trace of him. They questioned locals in El Paso, trying to figure out whether Jerry had retraced his steps from last time, and got on a bus they alerted the Sheriff's department in Cedar City, hoping he might show up there again. A month later, on September one, nineteen fifty nine, Jerry Irwin was officially listed as a deserter. As far as the pub record goes, he was never found. Speculation about extraterrestrial visitors had been
running rampant across the United States. Reported sightings of flying sourcers and other mysterious objects in the sky made headlines across the country, and although the craze had begun to die down by the late nineteen fifties, there were still plenty of enthusiasts convinced that the US government were covering up the existence of UFOs. Many believed that Jerry Irwin had an encounter with one on the night of February twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine, and that it had been abducted
by aliens and subjected to some kind of experimentation. It was this, they believe, that caused his amnesia and bizarre behavior. But there is another popular theory about Jerry Irwin that is no less disturbing. During the nineteen fifties, the CIA developed a secret human experimentation program under the code name mk Ultra. The goal was to develop mind controlled techniques that could be used in the fight against Soviet forces.
Mk Ultra is now infamous thanks to the numerous dangerous and illegal experiments that are now known to have been carried out on unsuspecting test subjects. Victims were drugged with psychedelics and nerve agents and subjected to hypnosis and other brainwashing techniques. In some cases, the psychological damage was devastating. Many of the test subjects were soldiers who volunteered with
no idea of what they were getting into. If Jerry Irwin was one of them, it might also account for his sudden mental collapse, but will likely never know for sure. Voluntarily or involuntarily, it seems Jerry dissip appeared before he was ever able to speak for himself on the record. As such, the true explanation for what really occurred to him all those years ago remains to this day unexplained. This episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by
Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained as an av Club production podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
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