 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. While you're listening, you might want to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, The Weird Darkness Store, streaming video of horror hosts and old horror movies, plus you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness. When Lottie Chettle identified herself to the court and gave her occupation as Barbara, a rather astonishing thing happened. People laughed. Why? The story is a strange one. Sometimes the sour attitude of a mother-in-law can not only break up a marriage, but it can lead to murder. We'll look at a murder that was described quite well in an editorial in Truth Magazine, saying, There have been murders in the hot blood of passion. Assassinations prompted by wrong, by jealousy, by greed of gain, but this is none of these. It is simply the crime of a vile-tempered, billious wretch, far too many of whose like are still at large, perpetuated not only on a victim who had more case to feel aggrieved at them than he at her, but perpetuated with every suggestion of premeditation. Why did William Syndrome murder Catherine Crave? There have been so many accidents and mysterious disappearances on one particular stretch of road in Australia, it has earned an ominous nickname, The Highway of Death. We'll look at the infamous length of asphalt named Flinders Highway. UFO stories are a dime a dozen. Even stories of UFOs crashing have become humdrum for many. But what if I were to tell you that there was a UFO crash in Missouri that was so fantastic that a local pastor was asked to come and pray over the three dead alien bodies found at the crash site? But first, what people sometimes don't get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained, said an astrophysicist at MIT. Turns out he was referring to unidentified flying objects. We begin there. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the weird darkness. Notice in Roswell, New Mexico flashing lights over New Jersey. For decades, people around the world have looked up at the skies and reported mysterious, unidentified objects – UFOs. But are these sightings signs of alien visitation? And are they truly unexplained? A recent New York Times investigation found that the Pentagon had for years funded a program to answer just that question. The program found several reports of aircraft that seemed to travel at high speeds and have no signs of propulsion, the Times reported. While the vast majority of UFO sightings, when investigated, have turned out to be the result of ordinary earthly phenomena such as weather balloons, flares, or rockets, some still leave experts scratching their heads and looking to the skies for little green men. From white tic-tacs to flashing lights, here are some of the most mysterious UFO sightings out there. The Times investigation highlighted one of the most intriguing UFO sightings which was captured on video. In 2004, two Navy F-18F fighter jets, also called Super Hornet or Hornet, encountered a mysterious flying object near San Diego. The object seemed to be traveling at high speeds, was surrounded by a glowing halo, and was rotating as it moved. According to audio from the event, one of the fighter pilots exclaimed, there's a whole fleet of them. One of the Navy pilots who witnessed the bizarre event commander David Fravor recalled what the object looked like, a white tic-tac about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet or 12 meters long with no wings, Fravor told the Washington Post. As his plane approached the UFO, the mysterious object accelerated faster than I'd ever seen anything in my life, Fravor said. Fravor, for his part, is convinced that the source of the object was extraterrestrial, he told the Washington Post. In 1981, a 55-year-old farmer in Transen Province, France reported hearing a strange, high-pitched sound before seeing a flying saucer nearby. The lead-colored UFO took off almost immediately, he said. What makes this sighting unique is that the farmer immediately contacted local police, who took soil and plant samples according to a report of the incident. Experts from France's UFO-investigating body said the chemical evidence was consistent with heating of the soil and pressure from a heavy object. They also found traces of zinc and phosphate and evidence of abnormalities in the plants nearby. However, skeptics said the smushed plants could have been caused by tires and cars had been heard traveling in the area around the same time as the farmer's sighting. Because there was a military base nearby, another explanation is that the French military was testing an experimental craft. In general, some of the most reputable or credible sightings come from those who are in the skies all day long, pilots and members of the military. The National UFO Reporting Center, New Fork, logged one such sighting in 2013, Vice reported. Late in the evening in 2013, the man, a former commercial pilot, fighter pilot and astronaut, was looking at the sky with his family in Athens, Texas, when he noticed what looked like an orange glowing fireball. When I looked up into the sky, I saw a fairly large orange glowing orb moving rapidly overhead at right about 90 degrees of elevation, the man reported to the New Fork. After a few minutes, a group of three similar objects followed the same flight path. Three minutes later, two more objects flew along that same route. The objects gave off no sound and seemed to glow from atmospheric heating, the man reported. He and his family attempted to record the objects using their iPhones, though the grainy, dark video was difficult to decipher, he said. They moved much faster than orbital satellites, International Space Station, for example, or airplanes, but much slower than meteors and did not change brightness as a meteor would upon entering the atmosphere, the man said in his call. I have no explanation for what we saw. Another report from the New Fork came from an airline captain who was flying between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, when he noticed glowing blue lights over Mount Shasta in California that appeared much brighter than the stars typically do in the area. The two lights were approximately an inch apart in the wind screen and the size of normal stars the captain noted in a report. Then one of the stars just dimmed out over about a 10-second time span followed by the other one dimming out completely in about 10 seconds also. The lights were stationary so they were not falling stars or satellites, he said. We were flying in crystal clear skies and were not flying through any clouds whatsoever. These two lights were not following the typical West to East orbital path as most satellites do and were just sitting there, kind of like ships hiding in plain sight, the captain reported to the New Fork. The lights also appeared to be far above the level of the plane which was flying at 38,000 feet or 11,580 meters. For every unexplained sighting there are dozens that turn out to be military flares, weird cloud formations, weather phenomena or elaborate hoaxes. For instance, Geppans, France's group for the study of unidentified aerospace phenomena, their database suggests that only 7% of all supposed UFO sightings are truly unexplained. In the 1940s the US Air Force began investigating UFO sightings and that program called Project Blue Book logged more than 12,000 reported sightings before it was shuttered in 1969. Most of those Project Blue Book sightings were ultimately explained. While a few remained unexplained, the people involved in the program were skeptical that these cases were true alien sightings or completely unknown physical phenomena. If more immediate, detailed, objective data on the unknowns had been available, probably these two could have been explained, a report in a Project Blue Book archive noted. However, the fact that human factors are involved, in particular, personal impressions and interpretations rather than accurate scientific data, it's likely impossible to eliminate all unidentified sightings. It's usually easy to comment on the validity of UFO crash cases, as there is an inherent problem with almost all of them. The problem is that if there was at one time physical proof, as in the often discussed alien bodies, the evidence was either quickly scooped up by the military or carted off by some other governmental agency. One case that reads like a great sci-fi script allegedly occurred in 1941 in Cape Gerardo, Missouri. The case was originally brought to public information by investigator Leo Stringfield in his book UFO Crash and Retrievals, The Inner Sanctum, which I will place a link to in the show notes. The crash details of this case are very much like the Aztec New Mexico crash of 1948 and were sent to Stringfield by Charlotte Mann who had received a confession from her grandmother on her deathbed. Her grandfather was Reverend William Huffman, who was pastor of the Red Star Baptist Church. Huffman claimed that he was summoned to pray over crash victims outside of Cape Gerardo, Missouri in 1941. Huffman was driven to the woods outside of town, which he recalls as being a 10-15-mile trip. The scene was surreal. Policemen, fire department personnel, FBI agents and photographers, the mass of emergency crewmen were all viewing what appeared to be a crash site. He was soon asked to come over and pray over the dead bodies. As he moved through the scene, his attention was drawn to a strange craft. Huffman was shocked. He was looking at a disc-shaped object. He quickly took a look inside and first noticed what appeared to be hieroglyphic like writings. He could not understand the meaning of the strange writing. Even more strange were the bodies, not human as he expected but small alien-looking bodies with large heads, big eyes, only a hint of mouth or ears and totally without hair. He was sworn to secrecy by military personnel after performing his Christian duties. As much as he tried, Huffman was not able to keep the details of what he had seen from his wife, Floyd and his sons. This family secret would be kept for quite some time until Charlotte heard the story from her grandmother in 1984. The details were given as her grandmother lay dying of cancer at Charlotte's home. Charlotte had heard parts of this family secret before but never had gotten the whole story until her grandmother related the account to her over a period of a couple of days. Charlotte was intent on getting all the details of the cases, it being her last chance to do so. Her grandmother was undergoing radiation therapy and was living her last few days. Charlotte would be surprised when more details of the crash were given to her from a member of her grandfather's congregation. The gentleman thought to be Garland D. Fronnebarger had given Reverend Huffman a photograph taken on the night of the crash. The photograph showed one dead alien being held up by two men as they posed it for the shot. I saw the picture originally from my dad who had gotten it from my grandfather who was a Baptist minister in Cape Gerardo, Missouri in the spring of 1941. I saw that picture and asked my grandmother at a later time when she was at my home fatally ill with cancer so we had a frank discussion. She said the grandfather was called out in the spring of 1941 in the evening around 9.930 that someone had been called out to a plane crash outside of town. The case of the Cape Gerardo, Missouri crash is certainly interesting enough. If the validation of the crash rested solely on the shoulders of Charlotte Mann, the case could be called authentic as Charlotte is well respected by all who knew her and she has sought no financial gain. Yet more details and corroborating testimony would be extremely important to finally put the crash case in the authentic category. Up next, the murder of Catherine Crave. Why did William's syndrome murder her? And when a woman took a man to court and told the judge what she did for a living, everyone laughed at her. We'll tell you why when Weird Darkness returns. I'm a man of habits. Okay, truth be told, my bride says I'm boring. I like the same stuff and that's what I stick with and that includes what I eat. Even for breakfast I used to opt for a leftover pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers. Did I mention pizza? Anyway, now that I'm trying to lose weight and cut back on the carbs, I've had to make changes for breakfast. Now, instead of a big heavy breakfast, I just grab one of my built bars, the best tasting protein bar on the planet. Built bars satisfy my hunger with up to 19 grams of protein and also satisfy my sugar craving, despite being less than 3 grams of sugar. And at only about 150 calories per bar, if I'm really hungry in the morning, I can grab two of them and still feel good about it. Try replacing your dessert or even a meal like breakfast with a built bar. You won't even know it's not really a candy bar. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built promo code WeirdDarkness. In January 1881, Adolf's syndrome was a border at the home of Mrs. Catherine Crave on Charlton Street in New York City. Catherine was the second wife of a Frenchman named John B. Crave and gladly took over the responsibility of mothering his five children. She was a kind woman, loved by the children and esteemed by all who knew her. The house on Charlton Street was larger than the family needed, so they took in borders and lodgers. Adolf's syndrome, one of her borders, approached Mrs. Crave to ask if his brother William could share his room. Adolf was an amiable and agreeable young man, well-liked by other tenants of the house. He told her that William worked as a printer as he did. She thought Adolf's brother would be a welcome addition to the house and agreed to let him share the room with an appropriate increase in the rent. But William's temperament was the opposite of his brother's. He was irascible and sullen by nature with a tendency to become irrationally violent. He had once assaulted his father with a knife, and later, after his father's death, he broke into his mother's house and stole some money. He was completely self-centered, spending most of his time concocting schemes to make money without working. At Charlton Street, he was surly and disagreeable to all who lived there. He was also behind in the rent. The last week in January, 1881, Catherine Crave told William he had a week to either pay up or move out. Instead of trying to raise the rent money, William spread stories about Catherine, impugning her morals before she married John Crave and accusing her of swindling him. The stories came back to Catherine bringing her to tears. She sent her son Emil to evict William immediately. William packed his bag and left. William was back the following day, and as he stealthily climbed the stairs, he attracted the attention of Catherine's daughter, Henriette, who thought there was an intruder in the house. When she saw who it was, she told William to leave. He told Henriette to shut up and pull the revolver from his pocket. Catherine heard the commotion and started downstairs to ask William what he wanted. Come down and I'll show you what I want, William said. Run upstairs, mother! He has a pistol and he's going to shoot! Henriette shouted. Catherine ran upstairs, opened a window and shouted for help. William followed her upstairs, and when he got close enough to touch Catherine, he raised the revolver and shot her in the temple. She fell to the floor, and William ran downstairs and outside. Catherine's calls for help had attracted a crowd, and a bystander caught William as he ran out and held him for the police. Catherine, still alive, was taken to the hospital, where the doctors said she had no chance of recovering. The people of New York City were appalled by this unprovoked attack on a good woman. An editorial, in truth, summed up the crime this way. There have been murders in the hot blood of passion, assassinations prompted by wrong, by jealousy, by greed of gain, but this is none of these. It is simply the crime of a vile, tempered, bilious wretch, far too many of whose like are still at large, perpetuated not only on a victim who had more case to feel aggrieved at them than he at her, but perpetuated with every suggestion of premeditation. Though the physicians who treated Catherine Crave were correct that her condition was fatal, she remained alive for another five months. During that time, William D. Syndrome was held in the tombs, and that July, following Catherine Crave's death, he was indicted for first-degree murder. Syndrome's trial for murder was not held until December. While awaiting trial in jail, Syndrome wrote at least 10 letters to John Crave and to District Attorney Lyon. The letters to John Crave were quite offensive and hurtful with statements such as, Right to me, how your dear wife felt when the coroner told her she would have to die. She was a wicked old hag. To the District Attorney, he wrote that he would absolutely not be pleading insanity because he did not want to be compared to Charles Goutier, who assassinated President Garfield in September 1881 and claimed he was insane at the time. Syndrome also told the District Attorney that he did not fear the gallows and would therefore disappoint the public, which had no interest in a hanging when the victim was not afraid to die. Taking insanity off the table, left Syndrome's attorneys with very little to work with. They could not deny the murder, but tried to reduce the charge to manslaughter, claiming that Syndrome had not planned the murder but acted in a fit of passion. The District Attorney argued that Syndrome had gone to the house armed with a revolver intending to kill Catherine Crave. The letters, which would probably be used by the defense if insanity were the plea, were read by the District Attorney as evidence of Syndrome's character. The jury had little trouble returning a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. William Syndrome was hanged in the yard of the Tomb's prison on April 21, 1882. True to his word, he went to his death without fear and remained stoic to the end. On the 28th of February, 1894, a case was brought before Court No. 9 of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in the Strand. The plaintiff, Charlotte Lottie Chettle, a young woman in her early twenties from Swansea, was bringing a claim against Arthur Wicks, a self-styled barrister for breach of a promise of marriage. She was hoping to recover damages. When Lottie identified herself to the court and gave her occupation as barber, a rather astonishing thing happened. People laughed, and the urgent question, why did they laugh, is the subject of this story. Before the Victorian era, the female barber did in fact feature in London lore. Her image, though, was not especially flattering, at least not if the popular 17th century ballad of the five mad shavers of Drury Lane, all women and all guilty of violent and disorderly conduct, is anything to go by. And although girls of respectable families are known to have been apprenticed to barbers, it is likely that they were hoping to find husbands by freely consorting with their gentlemen customers. Certainly in the early years of the 19th century, the woman who shaved for money was a lowly and disreputable figure, and using her services tended to raise eyebrows. The antiquarian John Thomas Smith, in his 1815 work on the Sights of the Capital, relates how he had once crept into the dark interior of seven dials in order to be shaved by a woman who plied her trade in Great St. Andrews Street. The experience obviously made quite an impression on him as he recalled a slender woman with a strapping soldier of a husband who sat smoking a pipe and keeping a watchful eye on what was going on. The writer definitely felt that he had taken a walk on the wild side. Conservative Victorian tastes must have found the whole business fraught with suggestions of indelicacy. More robust sensibilities probably worried less, which is why the female barber was a common sight on the stage. No doubt, Ms. Fitzwilliam, who played the pretty barber-sharp at the Lyceum in Wellington Street, and was dubbed a figaro in petticoats by a daily news theater critic, and Ms. Cooper, who played a similar role at St. George's Hall in Langham Place, had the men in their respective audiences in raptures. And so it was that when Lottie Chettle announced in court that she was employed in a barber's shop, there was laughter. Women like Lottie, even as late in the century as 1894, were still regarded with amusement, as if only a man was even capable of shaving another man. The attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of Edward Cleathing Bell, a solicitor who, finding himself about to be shaved by the widow of a recently deceased barber, spluttered in protest that he would never submit to be taken by the nose, a technique for raising a face to meet the razor by a woman. Later, a close shave in Mr. Bell was forced to concede that his tormentor had in fact discharged the office uncommonly well. How condescending. Other examples of Victorian men surprised by the dexterity of women with razors abound. Arriving in London from her native Wales in the early 1890s, Lottie had been employed by a Louisa Gross, the proprietess of the Lady Barber's Association at 65 Chancery Lane. This late Victorian salon enjoyed a degree of celebrity, the original owner, a man by the name of William Thornton, had started the business by advertising for respectable young women willing to learn a trade that would earn them between 17 shilling and a guinea a week. He received over a hundred applications and whittled these down to three. Along the way, he had to deal with an outraged mother who would allow her daughter to be a barmaid but couldn't see the morality of her getting her living as a barber. Mrs. Gross' establishment was in a tenement, new stone buildings which comprised business premises and solicitors' offices. Located in the heart of legal London, the address sounds decidedly grand. In fact, it was rather dreary and we know this because when Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor was living there in a top floor flat, a Russian writer friend described the dim gas light of the endless staircase which had entirely preserved the Dickens spirit of commercial slums. Working in this unprepossessing building, poor Lottie Chettle became entangled with the unscrupulous Arthur Wicks. At this point we could tell an interesting story of cynical deception and empty promises of marriage that ultimately caused Wicks 300 pounds in damages. However, the real point is that nobody other than Lottie's prosecuting counsel, Edward Abinger, took her seriously. Such was the fate of the Victorian female barber. But an even sadder story is that of little Nelly Wick. No connection with Lottie Chettler's seducer. His name ends with an S. Born Ellen, she was the daughter of a professional barber, Edward, who made a name as a public performer. Calling himself Professor Teddy, he entertained audiences with his prodigious speed and dexterity. In 1887, at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster, there was a music hall of sorts. He won 100 pounds by shaving 11 bold individuals in 3 minutes 30 seconds, seeing off a rival by a margin of only 5 seconds. Then in a bravura solo display, he shaved another three wearing a blindfold. In later years he would go one stage further by shaving with a blindfold and with one hand tied behind his back. Nelly had two brothers and really one wonders what sort of childhood Professor Teddy allowed his offspring to have. They worked alongside their father and their mother who was also a shaver at his globe toilet saloon at 418 Kings Road in Chelsea. Even the youngest, a three-year-old boy, was employed lathering the customers. But it was Nelly who was most readily exploited, for in addition to her precocious technical skill, she had a childish feminine appeal. Certainly the reporter for the Paul Mulgazette, who was sent to write a piece on the Professor, found himself spellbound. Lil Nelly is a sweet-faced mischievous-eyed little bird of Thor with hair the color of old gold and eyes as blue as the Neapolitan sky and with a joyous laugh that charms the heart of all her acquaintances. But other details are more obviously disturbing. Nelly's fingers, the tools as it were of her trade, were tiny and plump. She had to stand on a chair to reach the face she was shaving. She had a favorite pair of razors with tortoise shell handles. She had been taught such professional phrases as, hold your head over, sir, please. And that's right, sir, thank you. The Gazette published its article in August 1889, by which time Nelly had already stunned London by shaving five men in 12 minutes at the globe toilet saloon. But the bigger stage was the royal aquarium. And alongside assorted adult entertainers, she wielded her razors to the accompaniment of a band playing the voice that breathed over Eden, which, as the Leeds Times pointed out with ill-concealed irony, was a hymn for marriage and not for shaving. Interestingly, in order for Nelly to perform at the aquarium, her father had to get a permit from a local magistrate. The years went by and Nelly continued to perform. She traveled, if not the world, then certainly England and Wales. Inevitably, she was used to endorse products. As the following advertisement printed in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News in 1920 demonstrates, Rapid Shaving. Some years ago, Lil Nelly Wick shaved 10 men in 10 minutes with a MAB. This remarkable feat would have been impossible with any other razor. For safe, rapid and easy shaving, try the little keen-bladed MAB. 25 years' reputation, MAB Company, 73J Newhall Street, Birmingham. Her young life was an odd blend of stage-haul fantasy and mundane reality. Another reporter, hoping for an interview, found the chatty little father but knocked the young lady herself for the very good reason that she was at school. The professor had nothing to say about his daughter's education, but he proudly told the reporter that she was in the shop every evening shaving her regulars. There was a future for her in shaving, he said. Manning a barber with a good connection would give me three pounds a week for her services now, he went on. And as for tips, well there. But in fact, the wretched Nelly had no future. For in 1907, her career came to an abrupt end. The family business had moved to Wellington Street in St. Pancras, and Nelly lived around the corner in Arlington Road. And there she succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis. She died in a hospital one winter's day, or night, in January, and was buried in the Paris Cemetery in a common grave. She was 21 and had been shaving men for the best part of her short life. Adolf Stein was a 35-year-old Polish immigrant living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when he met Lizzie Loring, a widow with two little children, and $30,000 in assets. After a whirlwind courtship, the two were married in June, 1880. Stein had been prominent in political circles in Cedar Rapids, but earlier that spring he was indicted for illegally selling liquor. He decided to move his new bride to Iowa City and open a saloon there with his wife's money. Lizzie's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hess, packed up and moved to Iowa City as well. Before long, the marriage turned sour. There were several opinions as to what had gone wrong. Lizzie's mother, who was always present, had never liked Stein and Lizzie began to share her mother's opinion. Together they made Stein's life miserable. The saloon had acquired a bad reputation and Stein took to drink. Some said that Stein had been determined to marry money and had only married Lizzie for her $30,000. He treated her badly and when he turned violent, she left him and moved back with her parents. Stein was determined to get Lizzie back and a few weeks after she left he attempted to abduct her. He was caught trying to force her into a carriage against her will. Lizzie filed for divorce then and the police ran Stein out of town. Before leaving, Stein said that he would not live without Lizzie. Lizzie's divorce became final on November 4, 1881. The following morning, Lizzie's mother, Mrs. Hess, ran from her house screaming with blood running from a gas in her throat. Dr. Schroeder, who was across the street on another call, saw her come out the door and ran to her aid. He bound the wound with a handkerchief and left her in the care of others while he went into the house. As Dr. Schroeder entered the front door, Adolf Stein came into the room from the kitchen door with a revolver in his hand. He raised his arm and said, It's all over now. Without paying any attention to him, Dr. Schroeder rushed past him into the other room where he found Lizzie on the floor dying. She had a terrible gash in her throat and multiple stab wounds in her chest. As the doctor knelt to help her, she took a few short gasps and breathed her last. From the front room, he heard Stein fall to the floor, and at first he thought Stein had turned the revolver on himself. He found Stein lying dead on the floor of the front room, but he had no wounds. A postmortem examination determined that he had poisoned himself with Belladonna. The horror of the deed threw a chill over the entire city, and the remembrance of it will not pass away for many years, said the Chicago Tribune. When Weird Darkness returns, there have been so many accidents and mysterious disappearances on one particular stretch of road in Australia it has earned an ominous nickname, The Highway of Death. Central Massachusetts is a land of oddities and apparitions. Stories of the strange and paranormal have been passed down from generation to generation, and only the local populace has any idea of just how vast and deep their superstitions run. The world around you is much more than you can touch, taste, smell, see, and hear. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, but all of them give you a taste of what it's like to be from the oddest part of the United States. You can't have a region of the country that has been settled for centuries without getting a few odd tales out of it. Open up a whole new world of fact and fiction that'll leave you with a deep appreciation for the strange and bizarre ghosts and heroes await, and the only thing they need to live on is you. Slightly Odd Fitchburg by Ed Sweeney, now available on Kindle, paperback, and audiobook versions on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Meandering across a portion of Queensland in Northeast Australia is a stretch of road called Beflinders Highway, which spans 500 miles between Townsville and Mount Issa. The highway passes through some phenomenal scenery and some desolate expanses of the Outback, and it seems like just any other secluded remote road. Yet this strip of road has accrued quite a sinister reputation for the large number of accidents and mysterious disappearances that have occurred here, earning it a more ominous nickname, The Highway of Death. The spate of high-profile unsolved murders along this slasher forbidding road began in 1970, when two young girls, 7-year-old Judith McKay and her sister Susan, were raped and murdered by stabbing and strangulation at Antill Plains Creek off the Flinders Highway. In 1972, two teenage girls named Robin Hoynville Bartram and Anita Cunningham mysteriously vanished in the area, and Robin's body was later found under a rail bridge at Sensible Creek, near Charter's Towers, with bullet holes to the head. No sign of Cunningham has ever been found, despite intense search efforts, and she remains listed as missing. The deaths and disappearances did not end there. In 1975, a young 18-year-old woman named Catherine Graham was found dead at a place near the highway, also at Antill Creek, raped and killed by blows to the head with a rock. A few years later, in 1978, the bodies of three people, Karen Edwards, Gordon Twaddle and Timothy Thompson, were found with gunshots to the head, not far from Mount Isa, and in more recent times there have been vanishings here that have left authorities completely baffled. One of the more well-known such strange vanishings along Flinders Highway is that of a Perth native named Tony Jones, who in 1982 was out backpacking and hitchhiking in the area of Antill Plains Creek as part of a six-month hiking excursion across Australia when he simply stepped off the face of the earth for no apparent reason. His last known communication was a call he made to his father and girlfriend on November 3rd from a phone box in Townsville, telling them that he was on his way to Mount Isa. He would never arrive. All activity on his bank records ceased, and no trace of Jones has been found since. In the following years there were some leads, such as an anonymous letter to police from a writer claiming to know where the body was, but these led nowhere. There was also a prisoner at the Townsville Correctional Center by the name of Michael James Laundice, who claimed to have brutally killed a man near Mount Isa at around that same time. But no connection or evidence were ever found, and Laundice died in prison to take any secrets he had to the grave with him. There was also a witness who claimed to have seen Jones with another man and even gave a description for a police sketch, but the mysterious individual remained unidentified, and this lead has also hit a dead end. Interestingly, there was a conspiracy that the sketch looked an awful lot like a police superintendent, Mervyn Henry Stevenson, suspected of corruption, but this was never actually substantiated and he was never officially questioned on the disappearance. In later years, we come to some other strange disappearances near a town called Charter's Towers, just off the Flinders Highway. The first was in 2017 when a 26-year-old Rhys Carney stopped at a gas station to fill his motorcycle and then drove off down the highway to never return. Then there was the case of Jaden Pino Tomsett, who vanished into thin air at Charter's Towers in January of 2018. Jaden had just been passing through on his way to Cairns on New Year's Eve, along with his friend Lucas Tattersall, and they decided to visit a place called the Puma Roadhouse along the way. When the two left, Jaden was described as being very agitated and unruly, cryptically saying that there was a warrant out for his arrest and the two men got into an argument, after which Jaden pulled the car over on a back road and stormed off into the night. This would be the last time he would ever be seen. An extensive search was mounted, but this was somewhat stalled by the fact that Tattersall was unfamiliar with the area, and the monotonous outback scenery meant he was not totally able to identify the exact area where Jaden had gotten out of the car with confidence, but authorities believe it was a place called Stock Route Road. Tattersall, who was the last to see Jaden alive, was not found to be suspicious and has never been considered a person of interest in the case, but other than that, there has been no headway made on the case at all, and Jaden Penotomsit has never been found. In total, there have been 12 such killings and disappearances along the highway of death, all without resolve, but in later years there have on occasion been some tantalizing leads in some of these cases. For instance, in 2014 a known incarcerated killer by the name of Andy Albury allegedly confessed in prison to a killing spree along the highway between 1970 and 1980, but there was no evidence to corroborate these claims. There was also the confession of suspected child serial killer Arthur Stanley Brown, who was charged in 1998 of murder and was long thought to be possibly connected to the rape and murder of Judith and Susan McKay and was implicated in a string of other unsolved killings. Unfortunately, he died in prison in 2002 at the age of 90 and we will never know for sure. In total, at least 12 vanishings and deaths have occurred along this stretch of rural highway, none of them solved, despite the leads and clues leading to whispers that it is actually cursed. Interestingly, the highways also said to be a magnet for traffic accidents, although this may or may not have any connection at all. As of yet, none of these crimes have been conclusively solved and whatever killed or took these people remains shrouded in darkness. With its long stretches of wilderness and nothingness, the road is perhaps a fitting place for such macabre counts and a perfect playground for a serial killer. Yet for now, the killings and vanishings seem to have stopped and we are left to wonder whether the killer or killers have all been apprehended or if they are just biting their time waiting for a chance to pounce again. In the end, we are left with a very beautiful yet spooky expanse of highway that holds to it a series of strange deaths and mysteries that may never be solved. If you made it this far, welcome to the Weirdo Family. If you like the podcast, please tell your friends and family about it however you can and get them to become weirdos too. And I would greatly appreciate you leaving a review with the podcast app you listened from that helps the podcast to get noticed. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true, unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Unsolved UFO sightings is by Tia Gauch for Live Science. Cape Girardeau UFO crash is by Billy Booth for Live About. The Victorian female barber in court is from London Overlooked. A Day of Blood and Shot Down Remorsely were both written by Robert Wilhelm for Murder by Gaslight. And Highway Vanishing's Down Under is by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe. And now that we are coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 9 and 10. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. And a final thought, an Irish proverb. A good friend is like a four-leaf clover, hard to find and lucky to have. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.