From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today's episode is about a disappearance, and it's a It's a disappearance that you may or may not have heard of before. We learned about it through an early edition of Listener Mail, and as you know, we flag some of these topics when they warrant further investigation. The thing about disappearances is that they happen around the world all the time, every single day. There are probably, if you look at the entire human population, there are a couple of people that are disappearing in the time it takes you to listen to this episode. And the thing is, while these tragic, unexplained disappearances aren't uncommon, the question changes depending on the context. Like it's pretty easy even in the age of cell phones and surveillance, It's it's alarmingly easy to disappear for a little while in the US. But how do people disappear when they're on a heavily populated, isolated, continually monitored thing like a cruise ship. How do people disappear on cruise ships? Why does so many of these cases remain unsolved. We'll get to those answers in part in today's investigation of the disappearance of Rebecca Quarium. Here are the facts. Yeah, So, who is Becca kore um Uh. She was born on March eleventh, nineteen seven, in Chester, England. Um had a pretty you know, unremarkable for for the purposes of this story childhood. Her parents, Mike and Anne Marie, who was known as Anne, raised Rebecca with her biological sister Rachel and two foster brothers. Yes, and like a lot of the other kids who grew up in that area in Chester, she worked at the local zoo. What how cool would that be to work at a zoo? And she at least worked there for a time that we're aware of. When she was you know, in her teenage years, she joined up with the British Army Cadets it's kind of like the r OTC or the junior r OTC here in at least the US. And then after high school she went to a place called Plymouth University. She was studying sports science, and this was this is something she was very much interested in. She was good at athletics and interested in athletics. She studied that further at of her Pool Hope University, and she ended up teaching sports abroad in Maine in the United States, And eventually she graduated at a different university, Exeter University, with a degree in sports science. So she clearly had a track that she was going down. Wouldn't sports science be the equivalent of that we would call sports medicine here, like um, you know, kinesiology or something like that, or you know, to be like a sports massage therapist or in some way like a medic or what the physical education's right, Yeah, because their sports education might be another equivalent. It's almost like this reminds me a lot of the careers of pe teachers we call them here in the US. So shout out to any of any teachers of hours listening to the show. I can't believe he's stuck with us through grade school, so um so. In two thousand and ten, Rebecca Quarium takes an opportunity that comes along every so often. Disney Cruise is interviewing people, and they're interviewing hundreds of people. Quarium is hired. She's got the bona fides and the experience they're looking for in the position of youth entertainment, someone who kind of is on the cruise ship taking care of the kids and engaging with them so the parents can go to the bar, you know, whatever they're doing. Yeah, it's kind of a glorified babysitter, but I've heard it referred to as almost like a counselor situation, where there's like activities and crafts and things like that. And apparently this was Rebecca's dream job. She was a big Disney fan and love working with kids, and you know, her parents have said that she was thrilled to to land this gig and and just to put it out there, that position also requires a good amount of performance ability to to enter tame the kids, to keep them, you know, excited, because the one of the main things about Disney cruise ships is to keep kids in that magical spirit at at all and adults, but just to keep that flowing at all times. Yeah, that's a good point. You have to always be on This is a demanding job. I wouldn't I would not call it, uh remotely like glorified babysitting because they're just like I don't think they can just turn on a movie and and leave the kids with some snacks. But rights spoke there, that's what that's what this guy is doing right now. I and I say that having never worked on a cruise ship. So this this is like you said, no, it's her dream job. And right when she's hired, she is flown out to the headquarters to Florida and she's there for four days for her intro onboarding training, and then she's off to the Disney wonder. There are a couple notes we need to make here, as we've established in of your episodes, after hearing from a lot of people working in the cruise industry, life on a cruise ship could be a little bit debaucherous, it could be a little bit spicy, which will will we will definitely be important later. Hold on, Ben Ben put a link into the outline here, So I'm just gonna go ahead and take a moment. Oh oh oh, okay, that's how you're supposed to hear spicy. It's a it's a clip from Stefan I believe from SNL Okay, we'll continue, Okay, So this this will be important later, the to the duality of the two lives, that every crew member is living the life as as you guys said, the life in front of the the passengers, and then the life below deck or on the crew pool, which is the only place that could really hang out unobserved. Yeah, and then that just that is not to describe every crew member's experience. That is just something that we have noticed, right right exactly. So, after she works for four months on cruises throughout the Bahamas, she goes back to the United Kingdom for two months off, catches up with friends, catches up with her family. She's very close to her family, talks to them regularly through the phone and electronic means uh. And then when she comes back, she's on board the Disney Wonder and it's based in Los Angeles when she embarks. Correct and while she was working on the ship, she would often sail in the Mexican Riviera, which passes through the Panama Canal. And when her father passed away, quoi um came back to Chester for two weeks. Uh and that would be the last time that anyone in her family ever saw her alive, imperson at least right correct. Uh So, let's talk a little bit about the cruise ship in question. Um. You know, we've we've talked about some Disney conspiracies and the idea that you know, no one can actually be declared dead at Disney World, or that's not true. But there's a lot of interesting things that this company goes to great lengths to maintain a squeaky clean image. Is very important to Disney, especially when it comes to their theme parks. The idea that no cast member can ever be seen without their head on, their costume on or whatever, because it would disrupt the illusion and um could potentially traumatize kids. Uh So, let's talk a little bit about the Disney Wonder. This is huge. It's a massive, massive cruise ship. She was one of about nine hundred and fifty crew members on this ship and that's just you know, a portion of the twenty four hundred passengers that it can carry all told. Um, the ship's n six four feet long and has eleven public decks with you know, all the all the bells and whistles that you would expect on a cruise ship, because the idea of a cruise ship is just supposed to be able to unplug completely. Everything is taken care of, no expenses spared, it's all inclusive, as people like to say. Um. And the ship began service in August of nine, so it already, you know, put in some some miles on the high seas when Koreum started her her tenure there. And like many of the younger people who were working in the cruise line industry, we got to keep in mind Chorium was only twenty four at this point in your life. She found romance. You know, you're you're working these crazy hours. I mean, the folks and these crews are working seven days a week and it doesn't matter if you're off your shift or whatever. If a passenger sees you, you're back on immediately. So it's stressful and you form close bonds with your colleagues. She found romance beginning a relationship with colleague named Tracy Medley. Tracy Medley was US resident who was also working on the Disney Wonder. Medley will later become the one of the last known people to see Rebecca Quarium alive. This is this is a little dark, but we're not at the crazy part yet, so stick with us. Six weeks after returning to the Wonder, Quoium sends a message to her parents via Facebook, and this is on March two thousand eleven, and she says, you know the stuff you say to your parents when you're far away. I love you, I hope you're okay. I'm going to call you tomorrow. On March, the Wonder was off the coast of Mexico and was heading toward Puerto Vieta and Cabo Son Lucas. Quoium misses the start of her shift, so people start searching for She's not in her cabin, she's not anywhere. She doesn't respond to calls, and the ship's p A system and people start to escalate the search, right because like you, like you guys said, the Wonder is a world class ship, and part of being world class means you have a lot of security. Right, So they start scanning the CCTV so they can see if they can get a b on her whereabouts, and they find something pretty troubling. Yes, they caught her on camera at five in the morning, so this is actually March two, not March one, I guess chronologically. If you're looking at the time stamp and it's in the morning, it's very early. And in the video you can see her on the phone, and you know, this is only gleaned from body language that you can see in the video. It's not gleaned from audio, but it appears that her body language it would show that she's upset for some reason, or she's a little out of sorts. There's a young man that can be seen on this video that approaches her and he appears to ask her a question of some sort. It seems like he's he's asking about how she's doing, like whether or not she's okay. And again no audio, so we don't we don't know exactly what he said. Um. She then appears to just give the affirmative like I'm fine, everything's okay, then hangs up the phone and walks out of frame. Two things, though we can see her face visibly when she says yeah fine, so you can you can. Lip readers have looked at this and they know we know what she said. And she's also dressed in baggy clothes that look like a dude's clothes, maybe not what she would normally wear. Yeah, there's a still frame in an article that I am looking at that is she's kind of got her head in her hands, like very distraught looking. She pulls her Her parents have identified the two two physical things that she does after the call, which is to pull her hair back and put her hands in her back pockets. That is something that that's something that she does often. So it's definitely her. And she does appear, as you said, Matt, she appears to be agitated. And but when they find that tape, let's be clear, that's all they find. Uh, according to the official story, A court, Yeah, there it is. According to the official story, there's also a pair of flip flops found and then later moved back to her room by Disney. But the search intensifies. Disney does the you know, the right chain of escalation. They contact the U. S. Coast Guard, They contact the Mexican Navy. They say, hey, we were at international waters, these coordinates where we're heading. And so these two organizations searched the path of the wonder and just in case there would be a trace of as horrible as it is to think of it. There might be a trace of someone going overboard, and they also don't find anything. That alone is troubling just thinking that anyone could fall off of a cruise ship and the crew of the ship would be unaware, the people who are monitoring cameras, the people who are you know, running the ship. It's if she did in fact fall off in that moment, just that nobody saw it, nobody heard anything. It just happened and she was gone. If that's what occurred, that's pretty terrifying in itself. But then it gets even weirder as you go deeper into this thing, because then you look at what kind of investigation can occur when something happens on international waters and who gets jurisdiction. Is there some kind of special police force that looks at, you know, matters of disappearances on international waters? Police? God, No, they don't, um the Yeah, I don't. I don't know. Maybe the aquanauts could come out and help. And it makes me think of that story we I think we covered it on this show. At some point of the scientists at the research stations and Antarctica um and there was like a murder or a death, and and there was this huge kerfuffle as to who had jurisdic action over that because it was like between two scientists from different international research stations. Um. And this is not exactly the same, but it's it's similar in that it's a super sticky question as to you know, where the jurisdiction lies when you're international waters, because who knows when the actual event happened, and maybe that jurisdiction could shift since you're in motion, right and you're traveling through different jurisdictions. And the case has been made often by you know, folks who claimed that cruise ships are a really great place to commit the perfect crime. That this is exactly why that's the case. The problem is complicated to in a way that might seem counterintuitive. Despite the fact that Disney is a US company, This boat is registered in the Bahamas under something that's called flags of Convenience. It's kind of a thing for tax purposes. Uh, and it's very common. But this this complicates the investigation immediately and it goes directly to that jurisdiction question. And just really quickly last thing to your point, the whole flags of convenience I hadn't heard that term. But it's the same argument that came up when the cruise industry just took an absolute nose dive when COVID hit UM. The argument that they shouldn't be given bailout money because they don't pay taxes to the United States. Well there you go something to think about. Well, in in the in the case of the wonder, it is, like we said, registered in the Bahamas. So a detective from the Royal Bahamas Police Force, a man named Paul roll r O l l E. Flew all the way from the Bahamas over to Los Angeles to investigate once the ship arrived at port there, because that's where that's where it came back to. UH. And this was three days after the initial disappearance. And presumably it's not like they moored the ship instantly after finding that she had disappeared. Now they kept on keeping on UM. And also korey ms parents also flew out to l A and I saw an interview with them. I'm sure you guys caught this one too. Is the dateline episode UH British Dateline UM where her parents are interviewed extensively and they said they were shocked to find out that the FBI would not be involved, and that this uh detective from the Bahamas was flown far out of his jurisdiction to quote unquote investigate and to interview people on the ship. Apparently he just spent a day on the ship interviewing a handful of people, like the very definition of you know, phoning it in. Yeah, no, uh, no forensic evidence collection. He interviewed six crew members again, the approximately nine and fifty or nine hundred and forty nine if you want to be brutally accurate, and he didn't interview any passengers at all whatsoever. Uh. The parents also started taking issue with some of Disney's act shifts. And this this is not us accusing Disney of anything yet, this is what the parents said. They said they were kept in a car with all blacked out windows, and they wanted to go and talk to passengers, right, and they had wanted to talk to crew members, but they were not admitted to this ship until all the passengers from that cruise had disembarked and left, and then they were kind of ushered in through a little used side entrance. They met with the detective, They met with Paul, and they met with the captain. The captain expressed his profound condolences, and then the captain is the first one who floats the theory. And this is before the investigator does anything, because the investigator has to, you know, finish a report and make conclusions. But the captain says something along the lines of, you know, I it's heartbreaking to say it, but I've been thinking of this and the only thing that could have happened was that your daughter, Rebecca Quarium, was washed overboard by a high wave while she was out by the crew pool on deck five. As I mentioned earlier, the crew pool, and you can see pictures of this. The crew pool is isolated from the rest of the public decks and it's, uh, it's one of the only spacious places where the crew can hang out without being at work, you know. So that's a place where a lot of people spend their free time. And this is a thing, I mean, it's called a rogue wave. It's this idea of a very very um large wave that picks up momentum you know, on the open sea um and can be really really dangerous even for large fortified cruise liners like this. But it would I would think it would register on some instruments, or there would be proof that such a thing happened, or it would be you know, on the surveillance tape. We see her on the surveillance tape shortly before disappearance. You would think if such a wave happened, they would have footage of that too, or it would you know, make a real mess on the deck. Yeah, veries two interesting points. This didn't seem plausible to the Quarium family. They noted they were physically at the area. They noted that the pool was surrounded by high walls over six ft tall, so they had questions, and these questions just became more profound as time went on. The number one question was and is what happened to Rebecca. Quarium will explore this after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, the theories about Okay, the official investigation concluded the same thing that the captain said to the parents. The official investigation by the police in the Bahamas said that quarium went overboard accidentally, possibly due to a rogue wave, sometime between the hours of six and nine am on March But the quariums and their legal team and the private investigators that they worked with later never received a copy of this final report, despite the fact that that detective did promise them what British detectives received a copy of this report, but they said it's horrible. They said it's botched. It's not like, it's not meeting the bare minimum of detective work. And furthermore, they said they couldn't release it to the quariums because it contained restricted personal information about that's personal. I guess you just to add on to this. We're talking about the possibility that Rebecca Quarium went overboard sometimes between the hours of six and nine am on that day, right. Uh, they last saw her just before that, then it seems that that's when she would have gone. I just want to talk about the speed of the Disney wonder when you're just imagine this in your head. You've got a cruise ship traveling along, perhaps a wave comes up and wash somebody in, Like how far away do you get? How how quickly is that cruise ship moving away from a person that is then in the water. Uh, The the operating speed, the service speed is what is known as is around twenty one and a half knots, which is about twenty five miles per hour, or about forty kilometers per hour. So that's how quickly this massive ship is moving away from you. If you happen to fall into the water, you can't swim to that. You cannot swim to that. And also they would be they would be gone rather quickly. Well, and that also means that this would have to be the most monster of rogue waves ever for it to not just kind of pass it by, right like if you're moving at and this massive weight like it's it's I don't know, like it's just waves crash pretty slowly, you know what I mean, Like, I don't know. It would have to be it would have to be big, and I mean it would just have to be huge to the point where there would have to be video evidence of it. If if you know, all of these cameras were in service, which they appeared to have been, that's a that's another question. We're getting to it right right now. At least one British politician takes explicit issue with the official story and has gone on record against the official explanation. Labor MP Chris Matheson, who since has represented the city of Chester. Oh we didn't mention that Chester for New one is not familiar. It's like a little bit south of Liverpool, so that's where it's located. He believes that Quarium did not go overboard and accident. He believes that she was a victim of crime and possibly assaulted or murdered, and said, the more you look into this, the more it smells rotten, the more it smells like a crime has taken place. And those kind of statements or these sentiments rather were shared by many people. That's why the quariums hire a private investigator named Roy Ram, which is a great name. Uh. He's a former specialist of Scotland yard. He knows, he knows his way around. And they also sought the aid of that MP Matheson. They also sought the aid of the former Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Prescott and rams investigation reveals several key pieces of information that don't They don't conclusively prove what happened to Quarium, but they do, and I tried to put this very diplomatically, they do challenge the official explanation from both the Bahamas and from Disney the mouse. So first that rogue wave question, here's the answer. Any wave capable of washing a person of quarium's size and think of her as like average person size overboard from that that deck five pool. That wave would have to be at least a hundred feet high, you would notice when it hit. Uh. Secondly, the weather and sea conditions in this part of the ocean where they're at at the time. If you look at all the monitoring done by various agencies, it there wasn't a storm, like what what would have made this wave of cur a wave of this size? Yeah. And you know, perhaps even more damning, in my opinion at least, is that the CCTV footage that was accessible to both the investigation from our our friend there from the Bahamas, as well as what was known to be aware to the family, it seems to have been cropped to obscure the time stamp UH and the location and some of the information that would actually be embedded into that footage. That is, that's weird. That shouldn't happen. There should be a raw file that is, you know, given to any investigator looking. Yes, I mean even knowing what we noticed about Like the way video recording works, it's like you you it's either it's either gone or it's like it's supposed to be like this detail is very troubling, like someone and it's also odd, like a weird way of trying to obscure something to go in and crop the footage as opposed to just getting rid of it and blaming it on a glitch. You know what I mean. It's very strange, very unusual. And also you know, I was trying to think through the possibilities, just like chain of chain of custody for this footage. Did Ram get this directly from Disney or did he get it directly from the detective in the Bahamas, or did he get it from British law enforcement? And depending on where the what the providence of it was, it is possible it is possible that somebody between Disney and this p I had done something with the tape, but Disney would like twenty Around this time, it was a little more difficult than it is now to just bring in a piece of video to an editing software or export a piece of video and do it correctly without messing something up. When it turns to aspect ratio, I'm serious, Like, no, you're totally right. No, yeah, man, I was there with you when you were doing this stuff. I just mean especially if you're not a power user. It's it's more difficult to get it completely correct. So that is a possibility. So we're being overly fair. That is a possibility, but Disney's story makes it suspicious. First, I want to describe a little bit about these cameras and we'll we'll get we'll get further into this, but uh, these cameras are disguised so that the passenger, like everything is about maintaining that magic feeling of the magic kingdom on the deep blue sea. So the closed circuit TV cameras are hidden in things. It's like they're hidden in these long tubes on deck five. But they also they blend in with the outdoor nautical and safety equipment. You have to be purposely looking for them to find them. And this so Disney says, Okay, this footage. We have the screenshot we've described in that phone conversation that happened inside or on deck five, but Rob and other investigators now believe it was shot on deck one, which is nowhere close to deck five. The family has been denied access to copies of the video as well as the final report. They saw the footage, they were not allowed to have a copy of it. Got it? Got it? Okay, okay, So there's a bit of a almost a Cinderella trope here to there are they're forgotten shoes or in this case sandals, flip flops might call them, depend on what part of the world you live in. This was allegedly discovered on deck five, and officially the ship's management concluded that this sandal belonged to Rebecca Quarium. However, it had the name and cabin number of a different person, and both the Quarium family and members of the crew who were friends with Rebecca said the sandal was first off, not her style at all, not her vibe, not something she would wear. And then secondly, it was the wrong size. They got the wrong shoe. Because again there's not any investigation of the disappearance until at least three days afterwards. The sandal gets moved by The sandal gets moved by management of the ship, and they return it with the rest of Rebecca's things to her cabin and her family. Like when her family gets there, one of the things they do is collect her stuff from the cabin. Can I I just point this out? That is something that goes down on a lot of cruise ships, even if a person hasn't officially disappeared or anything like that, if there are any personal personal effects that are anywhere else on the ship, especially if they are a crew members and they are specifically UM marked as so, they will be returned to the cabin of that crew member UM, which can make it very difficult to trace things when an investigation needs to occur about a person who in fact has gone missing. Yeah, and this so these answers are already UM They're not proof of a cover up, to be clear, but they're they're disturbing, and this prompts, this prompts a flurry of speculation and prompts some some really great investigative journalism, which especially like to shout out John Ronson over at The Guardian. He sailed aboard the Wonder as a civilian about seven months, I want to say, after Quarium's disappearance. Yeah, and while he was on this, while he's on the cruise, he started, you know, quietly befriending and talking to the crew about this. And this is when he hits a little bit of a stone wall with some chinks in it. We do also want to want to shout out Ronson in particular. He's done some great work with the Builderberg Group as well, and he appears on one of our peer podcasts that that just came out called Labyrinths, made by a friend of the show, Chandler Mays. Did you guys check this out? The sound design is top notch. It's excellent. Yeah. I actually had the fortune of working with Chandler to make it. Kind of early nineties hip hop sounding track that was used in an episode of the show. Um, but it's top notch stuff Amanda Knox and her partner investigating kind of stories of people getting lost and found. Um and Ronson also was the guy who wrote The Men Who Stare At Goats If you remember that film with George Clooney about kind of like this almost a remote viewing type program that was in the military, the one that we've spoken about many a time on this show Stargate. I believe, well, we should speak about that more again. You know what we should do. We should get a goat and stare at it. We always talk about it, but we never get together and do it. We got to just put our money where are But but you're right, you're right. Uh, we we like labyrinths and there's a great interview with Ronson about his surreal experiences, uh investigating the Builderberg Group, wherein he interviews one of the co founders too in that process. So do check that out. That's out now, you can check that out now. Yeah, listeners, first, but how interesting is it that Amanda Knox is a host of a show we we've we've spoken about her, I believe once or twice on this show, just with her ordeal that she went through. Um makes sense story of like you know, kind of people going through transformative events and perhaps uh coming coming back out on the other side, which definitely happened with her. So we just wanted to let you know Ronson has his bona fides. Yeah, he's not just some guy who is like, what's an interest theme thing I can do on this cruise. He was there on a mission for a reason. He had a motive. So there's this. You can read the article in full. We wouldn't give you some some of the pivotal moments of his investigation. So he's talking to a bartender I believe it was a crew member, and he asked, hey, what about that quarium disappearance? And this person ends up saying at first they say, oh, it didn't happen. Sorry, you know, that's what I have to say. And so he doesn't have luck with that person. He goes to another crew member and one crew member is talking to him about that phone call. Right, the phone call is a big mystery or was for a time. And this crew member says, Disney knows exactly what happened that phone call she had. It was taped. Everything here is taped. There's CCTV everywhere. Disney has the tape. Yikes. You can imagine, right, you'd think that a company like Disney operating a cruise ship would want to have, you know, evidence of everything just in case they're going to get sued for one reason or another. You you've got it on tape, You've trained your employees there. You know you're probably not going to get into an issue with an employee, you hope or you believe, right, if something goes wrong on your ship that costs millions of dollars to operate, um that you've got so much investment in of your image and everything, you'd want to be able to prove that the the person who was on your ship, who paid to be there, did something wrong and it wasn't your employee or something to that effect, right, just to cover yourself. Yea, it makes sense. So logically you'd think, just like this person is saying that there would be CCTV of every inch of that place. Yeah, of course, I mean, can you imagine the liability alone, like this can end a cruise ship if the wrong thing happens and it's not our noval, so it can it can end up company. I mean if it's well, okay, fair enough. Fans of the HBO series Succession might remember a plot line, and that's about a giant company that's sort of a multi lateral company that has theme parks and obviously big television and film interest and also a cruise line. Um and there's a story about kind of a cover up involving a sexual assaults and falling overboard of a passenger. Um and and in the show, this is not a spoiler really, um if it is, maybe fast forward ten seconds. They have copious evidence of all of these things that they do keep. Yeah, and this and there's no reason that fiction, uh that that uh fiction show might not have at least partial basis in real events. So Ronson reaches out to Disney directly, uh. And it's in a conversation with a spokesperson for the corporation, and when Ronson asked the spokesperson whether or not that telephone call is taped, he gets he gets a very weird reply. They say that pertains to specific details about the investigation, and so it's not appropriate for us to share that kind of information, which is a matrix dodge. That's not that's not even that's like, I can't that's not even a question that can exist in this conversation. Maybe yes, that's not yes. But then the spokesperson adds, we wish we knew what happened as much as anyone. So there the implication there, or the way you're supposed to feel from that statement, is that, uh, Disney is on board with learning the truth. They just they can't. Their hands are tied, is what they're arguing, which is maybe not completely accurate. So they He also found Disney claims to have no footage of quarium go overboard, and while they admit they have cc TV right, they refused to disclose the number of cameras or their locations anywhere on the ship for security reasons, which I understand. I understand that's something you don't want people to find with a quick Internet search or whatever, but you would think law enforcement should be able to get that information, right. Yeah, you know what you would do. I mean you would have you would have Disney Wonder export every moment of CCTV footage from every camera on the ship and from the hours of five thirty am, maybe even five am, until the moment that she was found to not be on the ship. That's what you would do, and you could you could comb through every moment of it as a you know, a third party investigator, and you could find out what happened to her in all likelihood. I mean, that's all it would take. I think. Yeah. And maybe I mean maybe it's the thing where they feel they should have more cameras and don't want people to know how few they actually have. I'm not sure, but Ronson's conclusion is that the only way quarium could have fallen is from a jogging track the deck below on deck four. Uh. He said that the railings everywhere else, just like the quarium's parents pointed out, the railings everywhere else are just too high, and he says maybe after this early morning phone call, Uh, quarium went on a jog, which checks out. She's an athletic person, and maybe she slipped and somehow fell overboard. While he was on the Disney wonder he explored deck four and he found four different CCTV cameras, two on the port side, too on starboard, and so he thinks there was something. But every time he asked crew members about the disappearance, he received some version of the same answer. She fell overboard from deck five at the crew pool. There's nothing darker, sinister, they say, not here at Disney. But what else did the crew say, you know, when they got comfortable, I'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Before we left, we were discussing just the fact that the crew told John Ronson that the same story right, that she fell somehow overboard and on that deck five by the crew pool. That is again, if you believe that the only way that she got off of the ship was by her own volition, by falling off or jumping off, rather than being pushed or you know, someone forcing her off um or even as dark as it is, her body maybe was thrown off. That's a possibility. We have to keep all of these things as possibilities as we go on. So let's get into some of the other crew speculation that Ben alluded to. Right before we left, there was a single crew member, one of Koreum's friends, who says that Koreum was having a fight with her romantic partner. That person that we mentioned earlier, Um, I believe it is MS Medley. There's another crew member that disputed this claim. Uh this this other person was saying that Coreyum was on the phone with a mutual friend of Quarium and Melodies and not not Melody herself. But again, that's kind of a one person said. The other person said, so it's difficult to know what to believe there. But there's another another crew member that stated that after this phone call, Choreum may have taken a walk. Well, we'll get into a little further about why this person believes that maybe she had taken a walk. And at this point, this person says, perhaps she wasn't pushed over or or swept away by some wave, but by the wind. A possibility. But again, it just it's tough to belief, but it's at all that's excuse in the book, it was only the wind, you know, yeah, and they have a they you know, you can you can read in full their quote, but there they're saying that they know the deck by the crew pool specifically was very windy and slippery, and that management had called everybody to get inside and not be on deck, and that Disney took this very seriously. One guy violated that and he got sent home. So that's that's their argument that there was something to the wind, But many crew members believe the company is not sharing everything it knows and may also be actively covering something up. At this point, we have to say rumors abound in this kind of work environment, you know what I mean, There's there's a lot of drama. There's a lot of intrigue going on, uh, from everything from like preferential treatment to who is party and too hard to who hooks up with whom? You know. So it's not at all strange that something we might call a conspiracy theory could arise or Germany in this soil. Anyhow, outside of the crew, people like Stephen Moseley, another MP over in Britain, also came out and said that they had problems with the investigation. Mostly said specifically that Disney seemed more interested in getting the ship back to sea than in the case of a missing crew member, and also noted it is appalling that only one policeman from the Bahamas and authority internationally recognized these are his words, not ours, as almost toothless was called to investigate this crime. And it is it is weird to your to our earlier point, there was a law passed after the passage of Rebecca Aquarium that gives the FBI jurisdiction for cruise ship investigations if it's a US resident who has gone missing, her murdered. So that's some kind of progress, But the flag of the convenience countries, you know, the odds are stacked in favor of the cruise line in this case. You know, the lawyers that they have and the interlinking jurisdictional territorial things. Matt, you mentioned the you mentioned the girlfriend. We mentioned the romantic partner a couple of times, but she was silent about this for about six years, and then she came forward and shared some new information that cast the disappearance in a bit of a different light. Yes, her name is Tracy Medley. That's a romantic partner of Choreum. She stated, that she and Korium had apparently had a threesome with another person working on the ship, another crew member, a man named Devin Hyde. And there you know through these private investigations that that happened after the disappearance. They claimed that this alleged threesome took place um in this man Devin Hides Cabin, who by the way, was a married a father and a married man. Um And this was quote the first time Miss Quarium had had sexual relations with a man, which apparently, according to this investigation, left her quote distraught and traumatized. This certainly is a wrinkle in something like this. And we know that crimes of passion a lot of times, you know, occur quickly. And you know, we've talked about this many times in the past. Um when there when there is a sexual relationship involved in any form, it increases the chances that that person perhaps is involved in a disappearance. When you know, when disappearances occur, you very often the romantic partners are looked at as the prime suspect. It's that it's always the husband, yeah, and sometimes the wife or the you know, whoever else it's it's gonna be, it's gonna be someone who knows you statistically. But the other wrinkles that this kind of puts in the in the story is that Um Medley has come out and spoken relatively recently on on the matter. And Um, she's now married and uh and and it has a child. And she denies that she had anything to do with the disappearance and believes that Rebecca was actually like depressed and was taking drugs and was suicidal and had made claims or threatened to to jump off the side of the ship, which would hold up given how much effort it would have taken to to do that, you know, knowing how high those walls were, and how it's absolutely unpractical. It seems for like a wave to have lifted somebody up, or the wind or whatever. So this this definitely tracks. And she believes this because the night that she and miss saying chore, Um was incredibly upset with Tracy, was drinking heavily and was telling her girlfriend that she quote felt like a failure because she wasn't brave enough to jump off the ship. Um and you know after the threesome. Um, and I'm not being flipped here, but threesomes are complicated too, Uh, they're very complicated, and if they if there are already emotions at play, and you do it, maybe because you think it will make someone like you better or you feel put on the spot, and then you do it, and then there's a shame factor. I'm not speaking from personal experience. That just it makes sense, you know, but it's true, like it's a thing where all of a sudden, now you've compounded your insecurity and you've complicated the matter even further emotionally. Yeah, that's that's part of the issues. So the implication here is that Medley and chore Um had a bit of inequality in what they wanted from their relationship. Tracy met Lee was being casual, you know what I mean, why be constrained. I want to be free, which is a very understandable thing. Uh. And she had a relationship with his fellow David Hyde, who was a married father by the way, She had a relationship with him before things got romantic with Rebecca Aquarium. And while Hide is on shore leave, this romance kind of sparks, right, and Rebecca Aquarium is saying, you know, I want to take this the next level. I wanna let's let's commit to each other, and Tracy Medley saying, hey, let's not put chains on ourselves if we don't have to. Essentially, and when Devon Hyde returns, I may have said David earlier, but it's definitely Devon Hyde. When Devin Hyde returns h to work as a bartender on the ship, Tracy says, Okay, this is the guy I was dating, and he's back, so I'm gonna keep doing this. And uh, there's a strong implication that Quarium felt as you as you alluded to an old Quarium felt somehow pressured into this sexual act because she thought it was the only way she could continue a romantic relationship with Medley. Uh. And so after You're right, the night before the disappearance, she did say that she felt like a failure because she wasn't brave enough to jump. When the Wendy threesome occurs the next evening, Quarium asked Tracy, Hey, I'm will you go out a walk with me? And Tracy declines, but she says, hey, you're coming back, right, And Devin gives Quarium clothing to wear, some of his clothes. That's what she's wearing in the CCTV footage of that phone call. And they leave the door unlocked in case, you know, Quarium wants to come back to that cabin after she takes a walk, but instead she goes, makes a phone call, walks away, and disappears from history. There's a big question, though, who was she talking to on the phone, Matt you mentioned earlier. One of the crew members said it was Tracy Medley, but that doesn't make sense necessarily. I mean, it's an internal phone system, right, so maybe, but it's somebody else. Came forward one Tracy O'Brien from Liverpool, and she said that Quarium was calling her, and furthermore that Quarium kind of always called her in these situations. Yeah, she was almost the go between um And this is what Ms O'Brien told investigators. She said she called me crying. She said they'd asked her to do a threesome. I told her not to go back to them and to go to bed O'Brien and continued saying she stopped crying. I told her I had talked to Tracy about it in the morning, as I always had to talk to her when they were arguing with each other. So essentially just acting as a friend as you would if you're supporting Rebecca Quarium there and also supporting Tracy and just being a go between. Um. It's really interesting to me that a lot of this information, or some of this information at least comes from a man named Mark Rotheram, who was the I think head of security on on Disney Wonder at the time, I think at the time. But he he is the one who is giving that, you know, or is giving us that quote of Quarium. The only way the Choreum was to be able to be with her girlfriend was to have a threesome with Mr Hyde, and that she was very uncomfortable with it, but she did it anyway. I think this is her first time sleeping with a man. It's interesting to have that person whose security on the ship giving us that information through this investigation. I mean, I guess he'd be the right person to do it, but that feels like that feels like a very important piece of information to have, and you know, it feels like something you would continue to dig into a little bit further, maybe rather than taking it a face value. But well, there's so many things that should have been dug into further rather than taking it face value. In this story. I think that's the biggest uh trouble with the whole thing, and it just seems like Disney was not being above board. And let's pivot back to the parents perspective, um, because you gotta think, I mean, it's just like your child is vanished, Uh, you know, promising young woman you know who had, like you said at the top of the show, Matt had a real career path and goal oriented and all that stuff. And obviously just like the love of their life to just be kind of strung along in the way they seem to have been and not really given any answers and for there to be all these loose ends, I can't imagine. And in the uh dateline piece that I saw, they said of this that it never gets easier. In fact, the more time that goes by it they feel like it gets harder because they just ruminate on all these questions and this, this official story is just just doesn't feel right. Yeah, it might be official, but it's does and feel legitimate, does it? So Yeah, from the parents perspective, there's I would say, there's one thing that we've been alluding to, but we haven't we haven't called head on into yet because it's very painful um an harrowing subject, not just for this case, but for a lot of us listening along at home, wherever home is. And that is the question of suicide. Could it be possible that Aquarium, distressed, traumatized, chose to take her own life in those early hours of March twenty two. She's athletic enough, she's in good enough shape that she would have been able to climb over anything preventing someone from falling off the ship. But her parents do not believe this is possible. To them, their daughter always seemed upbeat, positive, very family oriented. She had recently bought them tickets so they could all go to Disneyland Paris together. When they take that as evidence that you know, she was looking forward to the future like she had she had plans. Uh. Some of the crew members argue that the parents were not aware of the extent, maybe of Quarium's partying, and said that you'll see a quote often that says they felt she was sunny and cheerful, but haunted by an underlying sadness. However, I would I would argue the truth is this applies to most people. The truth is that we are so many different people at any given time you know the person, the the you that your parents know is not the you that your friends know. And there's a good argument to be made that we are only stories we tell ourselves. Matt, I think I'm plagiarizing my own story from thirteen days, but it's true, it's true. I'll stop over using that line. So after she went missing, something happens that further convinces the quariums, to your Pointnell, further convinces them that something is amiss here. Two of her friends that she was hanging out with UH. When she went back to the UK for a while, two of her friends visited the quarium parents and they said while she was hanging out with them, Rebecca had voiced fears of being UH assaulted, sexually assaulted, or attacked while she was on the ship, and that led the quariums now to their stances. They well back when they could still talk about it. That's the twist at the end here. UH. The quariums strongly suspected that Rebecca was murdered following an attack of a sexual nature. And this is something echoed by other professional investigators like Bill Anderson. Yes, Bill Anderson is a thing called a maritime investigation coordinator. But you'd think that would be like the jurisdiction of a maritime investigation coordinator and police boom exactly. Uh. And he is one of these in the UK who has been assisting the kore Ums in their case, in their in their search for for the truth, and he says he is fully convinced that a sexual assault took place and that they were aware of it on board the vessel. Um. It's a heavy claim. It's a heavy claim and it and it makes me again, all this stuff is conjecture at this point. Um, well, well, well we'll get to the next step. But I do feel like the episode or the theme in um Uh Succession was definitely based on this exact case because it's a similar type of company to Disney the the Dynasty represented in that show. Um. I would just say, no, there are so many cases like this. No, it's true. I think it's the Disney angle um and the type of company that is in that show that makes me kind of think that they're they're looking at this one. Um. But there is a settlement. Yeah. I do want to say it's like the SVU game. Prenny. Fans of Law and Order SVU. I watch it. I'll admit it. There's no shame in it. But uh, one of the games you can play with s view as you watch the episode and you think, Okay, what real world case is this loosely based on? And it gets it gets increasingly surreal as U s V. You gets more and more on the nose with their responses or with their episodes. But you're right, no, there is. This is what we're talking about when we say the quariums had this view before, back when they still could talk about it, because now they can't. In twenty Disney and the Quariums settled out of court were an undisclosed amount, and this settlement seems to have ended any legal challenge in the US, but there are you know, there are multiple countries involved, right, so there could still be in question inquiries in the UK. As a condition of this settlement, the quariums are prevented from discussing the case. That's crazy, right, You can't talk about your daughter's disappearance anymore because here's some money. Yeah, and I mean to be Devil's advocate. They had to agree to it. You know, they could have kept pressing it and not received any money. But I mean, I guess, I mean, money is no resolution, but it certainly makes it, I guess easier to go on with. I don't I would have a hard time if my this is Please no shade or any judgment on on the Korean family. But I think I feel like maybe if my child went missing and then I accepted some money and it changed my quality of life, I think I would always kind of the back of my mind associated with this horrible event. I was thinking about this too. It might have been this is terrible, but it may have been an economic necessity. Remember this is this is a family. There's two people going up against one of the most powerful corporations. That's a really good foe, which makes it even more ikey, doesn't it at least four years after they disappear. That's like we've bankrupted you and fighting us, and now the only way you're going to be able to call your way back is if you settle with us, and then we make you sign a gag order. I'm not saying that's what happened, no, but I think that's really that's smart. Then I'm saying it's it's possible. We're being very careful not to get the mouse on us. Nobody wants the mouse after you. Nobody wants the mouse he found us. Uh, Well, then let's get this through before we have to before we end um and go officially on the run from Disney. Uh, aquariums disappear. It that that's where we're at now, there's been a settlement signed. Uh, the official explanation is still washed overboard by a rogue wave on deck five near the crew pool. That official explanation, as I think we've proven, it doesn't add up for a lot of people, but it also takes us to a larger phenomenon. You see, the disappearance of Rebecca Quarium is unfortunately far from the only example of people going missing on cruise lines, passengers as well as crew members. How many people did Superior and cruises? What happens out there in the gray area, you know, not just the gray area of the deep blue sea, but that legal no man's land of international waters, flags of convenience, the halls of corporate power. You know, it's bizarre. If you go back to the Guardian article that was uh, that was written by Mr John Ronson. Yeah, he mentions that it was something like a hundred and seventy one disappearances across all cruise lines from two thousand until two thousand what eleven so eleven years a hundred and seventy one roughly disappearances on all cruise lines. That's not a ton if you think about the number of human beings that are traveling on all of these ships. But it's way more than zero. Yeah, and and of course you know, we're not trying to vilify cruise lines because the open ocean is a dangerous place, and a lot of times people who are not familiar with the risk. Looking in passengers who are not you know, who are maybe a little too confident ignoring the rules that are there for a reason, can land you in, uh, in a dangerous situation very quickly. Or passengers who take advantage of the now widely available packages where you can drink everything you want on the ship. That's right, You just pay a little fee there and you've got open bar while you're at sea. Uh yikes. But also gay well I wanted to say too, like, you know how the cruise ships sort of gently trying to come back to life. I saw a commercial for it that was very COVID center without actually saying the word about how like everyone needs an escape mall, that's like language. At the end they're I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at the plight of of a major industry. But at the end there was in the fine print like free open bar for any ticket holders. So they are really doubling down with the open bar thing and trying to attract people back to cruise ships. And perhaps we end on a note for the survivors of these tragedies, the quariums and all the other relatives and friends who have a who now have an absence in their life. Several relatives of people have gone missing from cruise ships have formed a loose community of sorts monitoring disappearances, pushing for investigations where they think the original investigation doesn't add up. But here we are now years later, and several cases, multiple cases like Rebecca Quariums, have official conclusions that don't seem to tell the whole story. We want to know what you think. Is there a cover up of foot If so, what and why? How did How does a place with with a lot of CCTV footage, how does it miss you know, footage of someone slipping overboard? How likely is a wave is it possible that someone knew where there were holes in the CCTV footage when something went downs putting out there. We've discussed that as a possibility in other cases where somebody was aware of of you know, cameras and where they were located. Is there a situation where the FBI could get involved or is that really kind of just the nature of the beast with this type of travel. Yeah, it can. Again to to reiterate, there was a law passed after the disappearance of Quarium that allows the FBI jurisdiction for investigations in these kind of disappearances so long as the person who disappeared is a US resident. But it so it wouldn't have helped in this case because this is a UK wrestle. That's true, but that's still a big step in the right direction. I've glossed over that entirely been Thanks for reiterating that. By the way, that we mentioned a group, you know, people have been affected by disappearances on cruise ships. We've gotten together. 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