 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. If you're new here, welcome to the show and if you're listening to the podcast or on YouTube, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you're already a Weirdo, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen too. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show and while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find all of my social media or drop me an email. Coming up in this episode… In 1944, Dorothy Forstein came home from shopping and was attacked by an intruder, beat with an inch of her life. Nothing was stolen, no fingerprints left, no clue as to how the person entered the house to begin with. Dorothy recovered from her injuries but years later she found her grim fate wasn't done with her. SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is continually scanning the heavens on the lookout for life elsewhere in the universe. But is it possible that somewhere on another planet out there, those beings are doing the same thing and could actually be watching us? Scientists say not only is it possible but they suspect it could be over a thousand extraterrestrial space stations are watching our every move. 18-year-old Ellen Lucas was to be married on October 3rd, but the evening of October 2nd she went out with her fiancee, never to be seen alive again. Did a horrible accident destroy the chances of this couple's happy life together? A random act of violence? Or was it something even more sinister? She seemed the perfect American, even born to a U.S. military doctor graduating from a prestigious American college and working tirelessly, doing her part to serve her country as a military analyst. What could cause this seemingly patriotic citizen to become a spy for the enemy? But first, some of the most unsettling of urban legends can take place in some of the happiest places on earth. Ghostly children swinging in a playground, phantom-like warriors coming out at night in beautiful Hawaii. But there's one I never heard of until just this morning while planning for this episode. I had to look it up. It has to do with a boy, a theme park, and a man with horns. And begin with that story. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. What are the most unsettling urban legends in Sydney, Australia concerns the place where happiness is, Luna Park, Milsons Point. On the 9th of June, Jenny and James Godson were taking their two boys on a family vacation to Sydney. Having already visited Taronga Zoo, they caught the ferry to Circular Quay in order to get to Luna Park at Milsons Point. It was whilst they were there that they encountered a busker, dressed in animal skins and a great horned headdress, and the infamous photo of Damien Godson was snapped. With the horned man's arm around him, it was the last photo that would ever be taken of the boy. Later that night before leaving Luna Park, the Godsons realized that they had extra ride tickets left and the boys wanted to ride the ghost train with their father. Jenny, for some reason, had a craving for ice cream and decided to give the ride a pass. Shortly after, when Jenny returned to the ghost train to meet with them, she was confronted with smoke and flames erupting from the ride. Although they tried, firefighters could not adequately combat the fire. In the end, having to pump water from Sydney Harbor itself, and seven people died in the blaze. James Godson and his two sons were among the dead. They were found huddled together into a corner of one of the tunnels where they had been burned alive. Today, there is a plaque and a statue that marks the spot and the lives lost. But that's not where the story ends. It's where the urban legend begins. Questions began to arise about the fire and how it started. Claims that ranged from sabotage to faulty wiring, although it was demonstrated that the ride's wiring was not the source of ignition. Some, including his niece, say that the owner of the park at the time, Abe Saffron, started the fire deliberately. But why? Some of the theories are that he owned several organizations in Sydney, a large amount of money, and was looking to claim insurance from the event, not expecting anyone to actually be in the ride at such a time of night. He was charged with criminal negligence, though for failing to follow through with a variety of safety recommendations regarding the ride, not causing the fire to occur in the first place. What is perhaps the most interesting theory revolves around the last photo that was taken of Damien Godson before he was tragically burnt alive, the picture of the horned man. People have drawn startling similarities between what occurred on the night of the 9th of June and ancient rituals of child sacrifice to the Canaanite god Moloch. Although most dismiss this as pitil-paffle, the similarities between what occurred and Canaanite ritual sacrifice seemed to feed the flames of conspiracy. It was said that children would be led into a large kiln with a single entrance, then burnt alive inside. Irrally enough, of the seven victims of the fire, six were children. Albeit the disaster struck at a theme park. So was it coincidence that children happened to be involved? Or was the placement of the fire chosen deliberately? Not only that, but the busker himself was dressed in cowhide and horns, reminiscent of the bullhead of Moloch. Coincidence? Even now people who live near the park have reported hearing the blood-curdling screams of children and smelt the stench of burning plastic, even though the night is clear and the park is closed. Maybe they never left the ride at all. Sometimes the last person one would expect winds up being a great unexplained mystery. Our story here begins in 1944 with an otherwise unassuming and well-liked housewife and mother of three by the name of Dorothy Cooper Forstein, who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Magistrate Jules Forstein, who had brought to their marriage two children he'd had with his previous wife. She also had an infant son with Jules and by all accounts Dorothy was quite happily married and had no known problems with anyone around her whatsoever. Dorothy would have been by all appearances to have been just another upper middle-class housewife and there would have been no reason to suspect that she was going to go on to become the center of one of the strangest vanishings there is. On the evening in January of 1944, Dorothy dropped her three children off at a friend's house and went off to do some shopping. She came home at around nightfall and nothing seemed to be amiss at all as she let herself into her home and began to unload her groceries. Considering that this was a very safe neighborhood with no crime, there would have been no reason for her to even suspect that she was in any danger at all. Unfortunately for her, she was not as alone as she had thought and from the shadows crept the form of a menacing stranger who proceeded to pounce upon her and begin to savagely beat her. At some point in the melee, a phone was knocked from the wall and the operator on the other end heard the struggle and alerted police. When authorities arrived, they found Dorothy Forstein crumpled unconscious upon the floor and she was found to have suffered serious injuries including a broken jaw and nose and a fractured shoulder as well as a concussion and myriad scrapes, scratches and bruises. When she was questioned on the attack, she was unable to give any description of her assailant as it had been too dark and she had not gotten a good look at him as she was ruthlessly beaten to within an inch of her life. It would be found that oddly nothing at all had been stolen from the house and there were no fingerprints of the mysterious trespasser to be found anywhere, nor was there any evidence as to how the intruder had gotten into the house to begin with, leaving authorities quite baffled as to what was going on. The best anyone could come up with was that it may have been carried out by a person with a grudge against her magistrate husband, but no one had any real clue, there were no suspects and no arrests were ever made. Indeed it is still unknown if this assault has anything to do with what would happen next. A few years went by and although Dorothy recovered physically, both her and her husband were still considerably troubled and shaken by the unsolved crime. They had never really gotten quite back to normal, but things were about to take a turn for the bizarre and make their paranoia justified. On the night of October 18, 1949, Jules Forstein was away on business for the evening, Dorothy at home with her two youngest children, as her then 19-year-old oldest daughter was out with friends. During this time the evening was allegedly quiet and uneventful and the neighbor would even later say that she had spoken with Dorothy on the phone and that nothing at all had seemed strange. At around 11.30pm, Jules came home to find quite a sight awaiting him. The house at first seemed to be empty and he could not fathom where his family could have got off to at that hour. Going upstairs he would find his two youngest children hiding in their bedroom, cowering in fear from some unseen threat. When asked what had scared them so badly, they allegedly could only say, Mommy's gone over and over again. When they calmed down they would allegedly tell a very curious series of events indeed. According to the nine-year-old daughter, Marcy, they had heard a noise and when she had looked to see what it was there had been a stranger wearing a brown peaked cap and a brown jacket carrying their mother's unconscious body over his shoulder down the stairs. The girl claimed that she'd asked the man what he was doing and that he'd simply kindly patted her on the shoulder and calmly told her, Go back to sleep, little one. Your mommy has been sick but she will be all right now. After that he had continued on his way down the stairs and out of the house, oddly making sure to lock the door behind him. It would be the last time anyone would ever see Dorothy Forstein again. Most surprisingly this had apparently all happened only 15 minutes before Jules had arrived at home but there was no sign at all of where the man and Dorothy had gone. There was a massive search carried out for the missing Dorothy Forstein with police checking all over Philadelphia including hospitals, nursing homes and even morgues all to no avail. Philadelphia police captain James Kelly of Philadelphia's Detective Bureau sent out 10,000 notices to police departments and institutions all over the country but no trace was discovered. No sign of either her or her alleged captor has ever been found and indeed it is not even clear as to how accurate Marzy's accounts of events is. In the end we are no closer to figuring out what happened to her than we were back in 1949 and it looks to be a disappearance that will never be solved. Oddly there have been some strange little details surrounding the mysterious case in the years since. One is that while the case was very widely covered in the news at the time, the story quickly went out of circulation and was sort of swept under the carpet. From around a week it was all over the news then nothing. Currently there is very little information to be found on such a weird case which seems odd to say the least. There is also the rather bizarre claim that articles written of on the case seem to be shut down by Forstein's own family which was claimed by author and researcher Troy Taylor who said of the drop-off the radar and subsequent cover-up of the Forstein case thus. For decades no further word of Dorothy Forstein appeared in print. Then in 2003 I featured the story of Dorothy Forstein on my website and soon after I received a letter from an attorney from the Forstein family asking if the story could be removed. The letter was not threatening, it merely made an appeal for the privacy of the family members and asked if I would consider removing it out of consideration for their grief. I agreed to do so and I later learned that several sites that had also featured my article on the disappearance had received a similar letter. Why the secrecy about a 50-year-old disappearance? No one could say and to this day no one is talking. This is one part of the mystery that seems to be almost as intriguing as the case itself. Why would someone want to suppress this story after so many decades? And is it even someone who is really in the family at all? Is there some sort of cover-up going on and if so why? It's hard to say, but if this episode suddenly disappears you know where to look. It at the very least adds a new sheen of the weird to an already strange case. In the end the case of Dorothy Forstein is a curious one that is hard to really unravel. Why did she disappear and who took her? Was it the same person who attacked her years prior? Where did she go and was the child's account true? There are so many questions and few answers, leaving this another odd unexplained disappearance doomed to forever lurk in the realm of speculation. When Weird Darkness returns, scientists say it's possible over a thousand extraterrestrial space stations are watching right now. Plus what happened to Ellen Lucas on the night before her wedding that snuffed out her life and any chance of happiness? Those stories are coming up. Here it comes, my favorite part. Have you ever noticed that when George Bailey is on the bridge it doesn't start snowing again until after he says aww man the power is out? 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Have a merry little Christmas, not a scary little Christmas. Visit fourpatriots.com slash weird for the Patriot Power Generator, the Patriot Power Cell CX and more. That's the number four Patriots dot com slash weird. Many of us watch the night skies and wonder if anyone is out there. Are extraterrestrials on distant planets curious about us humans? Could they be looking for traces of other alien civilizations in the same way we look for evidence of their existence? Scientists say there can be over a thousand extraterrestrial space stations watching us right now without our knowledge, of course. How is it possible and how did researchers come up with these numbers? In a paper, Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transisting Exoplanet, published by the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists discuss which stars can see earth as a transiting exoplanet. According to Lisa Kultenegger, Associate Professor of Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and Director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute and Joshua Pepper, Associate Professor of Physics at Lehigh University, scientists have identified 1,004 main-sequence stars similar to our sun that might contain earth-like planets in their own habitable zones, all within about 300 light-years of earth and which should be able to detect earth's chemical traces of life. If observers were out there, searching from planets orbiting these stars, they'd be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our pale blue dot, and we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes, Kultenegger said in a statement. As Mike Wall over at space.com explains, astronomers have found most of the more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered to date with the transit method which detects the tiny brightness dips caused when an orbiting world crosses its host star's face from the observer's perspective, soon researchers will also be able to scan the atmospheres of some nearby transiting planets for potential signs of life. Currently we really have no clue who is out there, but it's never wrong to speculate, and we may soon have better numbers to consider. As Space.com reports, the new results deal only with stars. Scientists don't know how many planets orbit the 1,004 suns flagged by Kultenegger and Pepper, let alone how many of these systems host worlds that may be conducive to life as we know it. In order to detect if planets are harboring life, however, scientists must first determine what features indicate that life is or once was present. Over the last decade, astronomers have expended great effort trying to find what traces of simple forms of life known as biosignatures might exist elsewhere in the universe. But what if an alien planet hosted intelligent life that built a technological civilization? Could there be techno signatures that a civilization on another world would create? Could such types of signatures be seen from Earth? And could these techno signatures be even easier to detect than biosignatures? Extraterrestrial watchers may indeed be out there, but it's possible they do not wish to have any contact with humans. There are many problems on our planet, and it's understandable if advanced alien species avoid us. If you were a member of an alien race, would you think it's wise to initiate contact with humans? Could humanity handle contact with extraterrestrials? According to scientists, extraterrestrials are deliberately waiting for the right moment before they reveal themselves to Earthlings. In a recent study published by the Astronomical Journal, scientists have tried to shed new light on the Fermi Paradox and the Aurora effect by investigating the existence of alien civilizations on other planets. We model the settlement of the galaxy by space-faring civilizations in order to address issues related to the Fermi Paradox. We're motivated to explore the problem in a way that avoids assumptions about the agency, i.e. questions of intent and motivation of any exo-civilization seeking to settle other planetary systems, researchers write in the study. Scientists started by considering the speed of an advancing settlement front to determine if the galaxy can become inhabited with space-faring civilizations on timescales shorter than its age. They included the directed settlement of nearby settleable systems through the launching of probes with a finite velocity and range. In addition to this, researchers also considered the effect of stellar motions on the long-term behavior of the settlement front which adds a diffusive component to its advance. The results of these models demonstrate that the Milky Way can be readily filled in with settled stellar systems under conservative assumptions about interstellar spacecraft velocities and launch rates, according to scientists. The Fermi Paradox, a concept presented by physicist Enrico Fermi regarding the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, has intrigued all researchers searching for alien life. According to the Fermi Paradox, due to the number of planets and stars in the galaxy, there should be another world teeming with intelligent extraterrestrial life. If this is true, then Earth should have already been visited or at least contacted by aliens. However, since humans have not yet come across evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, many doubt the existence of alien civilizations. Researchers of the recent study say that it's possible extraterrestrials are in close vicinity to the Earth, but they're simply waiting for the time when Earth or the solar system gets closer to their homeworld before sending out a probe or launching an expedition. If long enough is a billion years, well then that's one solution to the Fermi Paradox, Carol Nellenbach told Business Insider. Habitable worlds are so rare that you have to wait longer than any civilizations expected to last before another one comes in range. Every system could be habitable and could be settled, but they wouldn't visit us because they're not close enough, he added. Most people believe that humans will, sooner or later, establish open contact with aliens, but it's possible certain requirements must be met before this meeting can take place. Science fiction authors and some scientists sometimes say humans will be invited to join the Galactic Club, but when this will happen is unknown. According to David Schwartzman, a biochemist at Howard University in Washington, D.C., there's a reason not to give up on SETI. Schwartzman thinks aliens are out there, despite the fact that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has only found silence. He also outlines what we need to do for Planet Earth to be initiated into the Galactic Club. Our world will change completely once we enter the Galactic Club, he said. I submit that if we want to enter the Galactic Club, the challenge lies in reconstructing our global political economy. A few minor side benefits should result like no more war, no more poverty, a future for all of humanity's children with a substantial proportion of biodiversity intact. We should not expect the Galactic Club to save us from ourselves. Ellen Lucas of Bridgeport, Connecticut was to be married on October 3, 1874. The typically happy 18-year-old was somewhat anxious the evening of October 2nd, repeatedly looking at the clock as she hastily ate supper. Ellen changed her clothes and left the house at 7 telling her mother that she would not be gone long. Mrs. Lucas watched her daughter walk to the corner where she met her fiancé, James E. Latin. Ellen never came home that night, and early the next morning her family and friends began a search for her. The search ended when two workmen found her body, based down in a stream in a secluded spot called The Cedars near Berkshire Pond in Northern Bridgeport. At first, suicide was suspected, but the water in the stream was only a few inches deep, and Ellen had shown no signs of depression and had been enthusiastically preparing for her wedding. A hasty post-mortem examination verified that she had not drowned, and the only mark of violence on the body was one small bruise on her forehead. The doctors also discovered that Ellen had been six months pregnant. Foul play was suspected, and her fiancé, James Latin, became the prime suspect. 26-year-old James Latin was a tall and good-looking butcher's clerk with a terrible reputation in Bridgeport. He had been married once before when he was 19 and his bride, 15. The marriage lasted three months and the wife filed for divorce. He was convicted of theft and had served a term in the New Haven Jail. He became engaged once again to a young woman who died mysteriously shortly before their wedding day. A gruesome story told by several people in Bridgeport said that Latin had, at least once, cut the paws off a dog and dipped the stumps in turpentine to see the dog squirm and hear him howl. Ellen's parents had objected to the marriage, but Ellen was deeply in love with Latin. It was likely that her parents knew of Ellen's pregnancy, and despite their opposition, they hastened the wedding day. Investigators learned that Latin had purchased poison from a Bridgeport drugist on September 29. They found Stricknein in an old shoe in the stable where Latin kept his horse. With this new information, the police exhumed Ellen's body and gave the stomach to a chemist for analysis. But he found no traces of poison. The stomach did contain grains of sand and vegetable matter consistent with the stream where her body was found. Latin said that he had not been with Ellen that night, but had been on board the schooner Josephine, which was captained by his cousin. His alibi did not hold. At the inquest, Amos Bassett testified to seeing him with Ellen earlier that evening near the train depot and heard Ellen say to him, Now you'll be there, won't you? If you're not there, you know what the consequences will be. At seven o'clock he was seen going toward Ellen's house. At eight thirty he was seen along in Bridgeport by Ellen's two sisters. A crew member of the Josephine testified that Latin had slept on the schooner, but had not come aboard until late that night. A woman named Maddie Smith testified at the inquest that Latin had asked her if she knew of any medicine to produce abortion. He did not want to marry because he had some other girl he was paying attention to. He said he was engaged to a girl who was with child and he wanted to get rid of it. Though the cause of death was still unknown, the coroner's jury ruled that Ellen Lucas had died by violence at the hands of James E. Latin. The murder generated great excitement in Bridgeport, and it was reported that the murder scene was visited by hundreds of people daily. When the trial began on February 23, crowds gathered early at the courthouse. By ten a.m., the courtroom as well as halls and stairways were packed with spectators. The sheriff barred the front door with two long ladders to prevent any more from entering, and detailed two extra police officers to maintain order in the hallways. Believing that a fair jury trial in Bridgeport was impossible, Latin's attorneys took advantage of a statute recently adopted in Connecticut and elected to be tried by two judges instead of a jury. The trial heard by judges Beardsley and Sanford went on for two weeks. After the final arguments, the judges deliberated and returned a verdict of second-degree murder. Judge Sanford explained their reasoning in great detail. While the judges were satisfied that Latin killed Ellen Lucas, the circumstantial evidence did not meet the standard of proof required for first-degree murder. They sentenced James E. Latin to state prison for the term of his natural life. A Sanford advocate summarized the crime this way. The details of this diabolical crime place Latin in the light of a merciless brute who, feigning love, a commodity of which his soul is incapable, did this unfortunate girl, gaining her confidence and having accomplished his unholy purposes enticed her in the midst of her trials to an out-of-the-way ravine and deliberately took her life, committing a double murder. Coming up, she seemed the perfect American, even born to a U.S. military doctor, graduating from a prestigious American college and working tirelessly doing her part to serve her country as a military analyst. What would cause this seemingly patriotic citizen to become a spy for the enemy? The story of Havana Ana when Weird Darkness returns. Over the world, but photographic evidence is lacking, as is any scientific proof, but he still exists and is still seen. And now, you can search for Bigfoot every month in the Find Bigfoot calendar by Timothy Wayne Williams. Each month, you'll be captivated by an original Timothy Wayne Williams painting, beautiful and captivating, but within each painting hides a monster. Bigfoot is hiding, somewhere in each painting. Search for Bigfoot and invite others to do so as well with the new Find Bigfoot calendar, available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. The fictional world of espionage will often depict James Bond or Jason Bourne fighting off a gang of hulking goons before scaling a skyscraper and then driving a sports car off a bridge. Their downtime will consist of lavish drinks and beautiful women. The reality is something far more subversive and far more mundane. Real-life spying requires a patience and slow, exacting nature that is far removed from explosions and fistfights. Spying, after all, is a dirty trade of dirty lies and dirty secrets. Bond creator Ian Fleming said so himself. This is the story of Anna Montes, a mild-mannered, shy and retiring intelligence analyst working tirelessly for the American government. It would take a long time before anybody cottoned on to the fact that Anna lived a secret life as a Cuban double agent. Anna had access to the most sensitive of data of the American military and shared it with her Cuban cohorts. Anna seemed like the perfect American. On paper, she was even an army brat. She was born in West Germany to a United States army doctor. She was educated at the University of Virginia and then obtained her master's at John Hopkins. Anna was a bright, intelligent and seemingly patriotic American. The mind boggles at how somebody so ordinary could even become a double agent for a hostile foreign nation and how a top intelligence analyst within the American government managed to live on a pyramid of lies. Beyond the lies and secrets that Anna kept while in the office, Anna also had a quiet private life that her colleagues barely knew about. She was totally conspicuous, the way a double agent should be. The damage that Anna did to her home nation wasn't just in telling harmless office tales. Things are never that easy. Anna knowingly put American troops and civilians into harm's way until her arrest in 2001. And it's impossible to know the full extent of how much damage she caused, but lives were lost from Anna's dirty work. Cuba is not a great military threat to the United States in terms of sheer military force, and it's hard to really imagine the potential physical damage Cuba could do to their giant neighbors. Instead, Cuba is the best in the world at selling secrets. They've made a niche out of selling U.S. military secrets to other nations, such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And this is how the Cuban government tries to combat their enemy. While Cuba often looks like the smaller, beguiled nation living just outside of America's shadow, they operate with their own cunning and ingenuity. The Del Castro was, after all, a genius at politics. The Cuban intelligence directorate, commonly known as G2, were initially trained by the KGB upon their foundation and throughout their 40-year history. They have operated in Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua and Vietnam, but surely their greatest ever coup was putting an agent deep in the American DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Montez's recruitment into the G2 and her relationship with Cuba evolved out of Montez's anger at U.S. foreign policy while still a student earning her degree in foreign relations. Her ire and American foreign policy drew the attention of talent-spotting Cubans and sought to recruit Anna. This was all the way back in the mid-1980s, before she even got a job in government. Montez's anger was likely a result of her Puerto Rican ancestry and the feelings against America's constant intervention in Latin America. Just after her recruitment, Anna applied for a job within the DIA in a clerical function. This meant that Anna would handle matters of defense and the most classified of military secrets. Anna was an award-winning member of the DIA. One of the core reasons Anna was never caught for so long was the fact that she never took any documents to her home and worked with a tenacity and ambition within the office that sought admirers instead of enemies. Anna memorized all of the information she got her hands on and would later type them up on her personal laptop. She would then transfer the information onto encrypted messages for her Cuban handlers. Anna received all of her own instructions by the Cuban handlers on a short-wave radio. Montez tenaciously managed her double life. A rising star in both Washington and Havana, with Fidel himself having been aware of Montez, she was a prefect analyst by day and at night she was frantically typing up the memorized messages to Havana. During this period of intense spying, the quiet, resolute and ambitious Anna managed to rise through the ranks of the DIA. Anna was considered a model employee and would often be given as an example to follow for new starters of the agency. Anna eventually became the Cuban expert, nicknamed the Queen of Cuba within the DIA and dealt intensely with Cuban affairs. The only suspicion that her colleagues had on her were the potentially more left-leaning political beliefs that Anna held. However, even with this, Anna managed to pass a polygraph during a round of questioning and keep under the radar for almost 20 years. The most incredible thing about Anna's activity was that she was not even paid for taking such risks, the motives being solely politically motivated. This is in contrast to other agents that were paid in the millions for selling secrets, greedy double agents such as Aldrich Ames that took home sacks of cash. The DIA had strong beliefs that there was a Cuban mole in their midst. In 1996, the Cuban military shot down a plane piloted by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban resistance organization based in America. The Americans claimed this was an act of aggression against a civilian plane, but the Cubans stating the opposite. This incident alerted suspicions into how the Cuban government were so prepared for the plane before the shooting and if they had been tipped off. Questions were raised into the possibility of a double agent. While called to consult at an internal meeting at the Pentagon after this incident, Montez broke protocol by failing to remain on duty until dismissed. This raised suspicion within the agency. Scott Carmichael was an investigator that took an immediate reaction to Anna and soon others were alerted. Was her sparkling record just too good to be true? What about the trips Anna made to Guantanamo Bay? Why was Anna always so willing to go to Cuba? Counterintelligence Officer Scott Carmichael said, after meeting Anna and carrying out a search for all DIA employees and potential moles, the moment I saw her name, I knew. The gut reaction that any intelligence agent will tell you overwhelms the facts and evidence and proof they may have at the time, the instincts you hone over years and years of talking to people, you just know. Carmichael was positive he had his woman after profiling Anna. The FBI soon joined forces with the DIA to actually catch Montez in the act of spying. The two agencies tapped her phones, staked her out, they followed Anna intensely and they noticed her patterns for four years. They found the pay phones around Washington DC where Anna was stopping to make calls and traced the numbers to pagers in New York which were linked to suspected Cuban agents. The most ingenious sting of all was to set up an urgent meeting at work with Anna during which they could access and search her purse which she left at her desk. It was inside her purse that they found encrypted notes that Montez was passing to her handlers. From 1985 until 2001 Anna Montez had managed to live a double life of working in the higher echelons of national defense and for the Cuban government at the same time. Anna Montez was arrested just 10 days after 9-11. It is impossible to really know the full extent of Anna's spying and in 16 years you can never find out all of the state secrets that she managed to sell. Perhaps Anna herself doesn't even know. Anna made a plea bargain in avoidance of the death penalty in a plea agreement with the prosecutors and was then debriefed by the U.S. government. But despite this it is impossible to know just how much she gave away to an enemy state. Carmichael believes that Montez's secret sharing led directly to the death of an American soldier operating in El Salvador in March of 1987. Montez had only recently visited El Salvador that year and knew the precise location of the camp where special forces were operating before being attacked by rebel forces. Once the gig was up the Cuban government washed their hands of the agent and left her out to dry. Anna was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison, a lenient sentence for high treason. Anna may very well be a free woman by the year 2027. This is subject to five years probation. Anna's own lawyer Plato Cacheris said the espionage was a moral crusade against the evils of American imperialism. Anna felt so strongly that the Cubans were subject to American strong arbing for too long. Being a Puerto Rican it is arguable that the imperialism against her own nation may have lit the fuse of revolt. The fact that somebody who was working completely under the radar of any investigators for such a long time and can climb to the highest ranks of the U.S. defense is an eye-opener for anybody that works in state security. Anna maintained a double life and worked with a Joan of Arc-like commitment that went far beyond money and greed. The mystery remains as to how many other operatives are now as of the time of my recording this episode selling the secrets that keep Americans or any other nation safe. After all, Anna Montez wasn't even the most famous Anna to be caught spying against America. There would later be the Russian spy Anna Chapman caught nearly 10 years later in a major Russian spy ring. It is often the case in geopolitics. The enemies walk amongst us. Thanks for listening. Feel free to email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Again, Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. You can also find all of my social media and a link to the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group on the contact page of the website. If you're listening to the show via podcast or YouTube, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already done so and leave a review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. And if you're already a weirdo, please take a moment today and share Weird Darkness with somebody you know who loves paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or mysteries like you do. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website 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. Damien and the Horned Man was written by Jacqueline Vessie Wells for Medium.com. The disappearance of Dorothy Forstein is by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe. Are We Being Watched by Alien Space Stations is by Cynthia Mackenzie for Message to Eagle. The Bridgeport Tragedy is by Robert Wilhelm for Murder by Gaslight. And Havana Anna the Cuban Spy is by Kieran W. for Mystery Confidential. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Galatians 5 verse 13. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather, serve one another humbly in love. And a final thought. Never apologize for how much love you have to give. Just feel sorry for those who didn't want any of it. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. This video is someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.