Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 172 - The Mysterious Missing Fausto

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

LIVE SHOW! OCTOBER 25th! LA! TICKETS ON SALE http://www.chilluminatipod.com/ Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/chilluminatipod BUY OUR MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Special thanks to our sponsors this episode ButcherBox - http://www.butcherbox.com/chill TalkSpace - http://www.talkspace.com/chill Promo Code: Chill Honey - http://www.joinhoney.com/chill SOURCES: https://imgbb.com/WnTj9Z https://imgbb.com/TPNQgz https://cronicasdesanborondon.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fausto-16.jpg https://cronicasdesanborondon.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fausto-29.jpg https://imgbb.com/8c8zqLv https://cronicasdesanborondon.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fausto-17.jpg https://imgbb.com/5xKvhMn https://cronicasdesanborondon.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Fausto-22-copia.jpg https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/8tbc62/the_mystery_of_fishing_boat_fausto/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft End song - POWER FAILURE - https://soundcloud.com/powerfailure Video - http://www.twitter.com/digitalmuppet

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Rev it up at Toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by the Sklar Brothers of LA. Whoa, hey. Jesse and Alex. Whoa, okay. Oh, deep cut. Deep cut, right?

Sklar Brothers. What? Are you Randy or are you Jason? Is the question. Me? Uh, it doesn't matter. I'll be real. It doesn't.

It doesn't matter at all. I'm trying to dig deep, but maybe these aren't like as deep as I assume they are, just because I don't know who they are. Maybe it doesn't mean that you don't know who they are. The real deep like lore is like where the fuck. What is the rubric by which you are choosing these fucking duo? I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos and has been going to the list ever since.

I can't give away the secret of this. I can't be given away the secret of the sauce. This is from a Wikipedia page. I'm sure if we cared enough, we can look it up and just follow along with you. I will. I will firmly say if anybody tries to find the list I'm using, you'll fail because there is no. Yeah.

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. I'm also saying, guys, we have a live show coming up in like three weeks, October 25th. I know it's a Tuesday, but it's like Halloween week. So just take it off anyway. Tuesday. You got sick.

More like booze day. You know what I'm saying? Like it's spooky. It's Halloween. That's the day you want to come out. What if we sweeten the deal? Let's say it's Tuesday and you're like in LA. What if we said like what if we all like hung out for a little bit at Grand Central?

We like got tacos. Taco Tuesday. Like put it out there. We're giving you like ways to come be goofy on a Tuesday. Bang. So you're saying before the show, we'll do a little fan meet and greet, hang out, eat some food, drink. I'm putting the possibilities there.

Anybody to come. Anybody. Nobody. You don't need a ticket for that. But if you have a ticket. I will. I'll smooth you a little bit. That could be good for us though.

Also. Beyond that, that could be good. Is I saw this on Reddit is you guys should make sure when you come out to see us at Grand Central, we're sitting out on the patio and joining our taco Tuesday. Hold your things out and make sure they get as much sunlight onto them as possible. Your plastic vampire fangs because if you don't, then Alex's big smile won't be the blinding light show that I want it to be one minute into our show when I bring it up and come out on stage.

You know what I'm saying? Hashtag Alex's big smile. Find him on Amazon. Find him at Target. Find him at Party City. It's going to be huge. It's going to be huge. I'll see you guys there.

Actually, you can just go to the Halloween store thing that opens up Spirit Halloween. It'll be open. There you are there. Exactly. It will. It literally will be. Yeah. I'm super excited, man.

I love doing these live shows and a little taco Tuesday will be a lot of fun. Plus there's other things besides tacos there. It is truly a beautiful little spot in the city. Plus it's pretty close to where the show is. And the show is going to be great. I promise you won't regret, especially that first half. It's going to be so good. Especially the first half.

Second half, you'll be half asleep anyway. So don't even stress it. It's Tuesday. You got work in the morning. The second half is all, you know, I'm going to make the second half weird as I possibly can. You what? Hey man, I found an alien who got buried with Christian rights in Texas from the 1800s.

All right. Like we can, we will find something. LA is full of weird shit. You don't even have to, we can just bring someone in from outside. Yeah. Exactly. Especially if we were near. Exactly.

Especially if we were near where we were last time. That was like not the greatest zone. You mean the place where Jesse's car got robbed while we were performing? Crazy. You know what was nice about that? It was very thought, it was a thoughtful robbing. They didn't take anything that they like, they were like, we don't need that. We don't, they, all they took were clothes I was going to give to Goodwill and my sunglasses,

which I'm upset about the sunglasses. They were prescription, but everything else I'm totally fine with. And then they closed the car back up. The only reason I recognized it was broken into is because papers were like on the floor. They didn't put the papers away. Crazy. That's fucking hilarious. And that was, it makes for a good story, but that night, you know, frustrated, certainly

frustrating. Very frustrating. What else is frustrating is my hand off to Alex for the Patreon. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you know what, check it out. If you go to that website, patreon.com. Not only do you get to listen to this show more because, you know, that's literally

the main way that we continue to do this is through support on Patreon. Yeah. Patreon is the lifeblood of the show, everybody. You have no idea how much it means to us. Yeah. But also, as you support on Patreon, you can watch us grow with you and add things to our show. Like an entire new show called Rotten Popcorn, which is about movies that Mathis probably

hasn't seen before. I haven't. And something that like, the way that the movies that we've been watching are weird goes beyond anything that I could have ever imagined already. And we've only done what? Like six? I'm excited for the next one. I've been waiting to watch this damn movie for the last month and I'm very excited.

Yeah. It's going to be lit. Yeah. Jesse's got, this is your second, this is your third choice, Jesse. Your third pick. We did pay the ghost. We did pay the ghost. That was a good one.

And we did the alien documentary that was like all too good. That was Alex. That was me. No, that was me. The one that made you guys cry. This is my second one. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought that was Jesse. No, I would never be like, oh, okay. Let's watch the alien documentary that is, that I've never heard of before. That really. Oh, but then we did do the ghost hunter's OG documentary. That was also Alex. That was great though. That was hilarious.

Well, the next one's a good documentary supposedly. So I'm excited. It'll be exclusive on Patreon. All, all rotten popcorns are exclusive on Patreon for six months. So if you jump on, you're going to get like five right out the gate. Plus, every time you listen to one of these episodes and it's new, you know, that also hanging out on our Patreon is a brand new mini so that you can go listen to. Not to mention, you get presale tickets.

You get presale merch. You get art. Like everything that we do is so dope and the portal to get you there is patreon.com slash shilluminati pod. And I like it. And frankly, I'm a fan. Yeah. And without it, we wouldn't be paying Dean.

So thank you, Dean says. We got a whole team over here. Busted. We got a whole little team. We got a little team going on. Shout out to Dean. Oh, last thing. You loved our Moffman plushie and you want more.

You have to go over to the shilluminati page on the Yeti and put a notify me things. The only way Yeti said they told me that they'll make more is if there's basically enough of a demand for a third wave. So if you are one of the people tweeting at us like, I missed it, go sign up. That's the only way. So it'll hopefully get us a third wave of those suckers because they're fucking adorable. I want my Modman plush. You know what?

It was a good attempt. Good attempt. I lost steam half way through. You could have gone with I want shilluminati. That would have worked a lot better. Yeah. You could have done a whole thing. I was ready between the two of us.

Rock solid idea. If we could have had this plan down today, everybody is a treat. People really enjoy these. They come so so rarely. So infrequently always so uncomplicated shooting star across the sky. That's actually a UFO, which we'll be talking about that fucking government shit in the Minnesota. By the way, I'm losing my mind about that crap.

I love how obsessed you are because it's still on their server. They didn't delete it off the website. It's just still sounds like lazy bureaucracy to me. But like, what was the point? Why two days of it? Why upload an unfinished one? And then a day later, switch it to a finished one and then two days later, remove it entirely. Fantastic question.

We'll talk about the government agency that used a old timey 1950 UFO 1950s UFO on its logo later. God. Okay. Anyway, it's a Jesse episode. Everybody. It's a Jesse episode. Buckle up.

Gentlemen. This is a story and I guess listeners, but I'm looking at you right now. So I'm going to say gentlemen, but ladies, gentlemen, boils and ghouls as we approach the start of October and month long Halloween fun time. The launch of hocus pocus two. I can't wait. I wanted to bring up a story today that immediately you listening at home, the two of you are going to be like, Oh, I know where this is going, but I promise you, you have no idea.

This is a story that I've been sitting on for almost four years at this point. What? It has been, I know this is a story that I've had in my back pocket that I've just been kind of like one day I want to do something with and this podcast just sort of happened. And as I discovered recently, I probably have mass super ADHD. And so this has just been in my folders of like saved things I want to look at one day. And the other day I was going through and I found it again and I become obsessed with it.

And so I was like, I need to do this episode. I need to do this episode. And so I want to bring to you the story of the El Fausto or the Faust, the El Fausto. This is a story that I originally picked up from Reddit and ran with it. Huge thank you to Hello Lurker here on Reddit because this is a story that is vastly, vastly, almost all the source documents, everything is in Spanish, not English. So to have a person out there who already compiled everything in like a, it's English for you baby way.

You're my hero. Shout out to you. Honestly, that was when I did the alien jizz episode a while ago, like all in Spanish. That shit is, that puts you in, that's a slow mo climb. So kudos to them. And what's great about it is it gives us access to a story in this case of the El Fausto that I guarantee not many people are looking up or know about. And this is one where I absolutely have tried to search things online.

There is very little about it. Again, because I think most of it's in Spanish and, you know, Google or whatever I'm using to search for stuff, isn't like, give Jesse Johnny English over here, the Spanish website. Johnny English. So Jesse English, his cousin, his American cousin, Jesse English. Thank you to ButcherBox for sponsoring this episode. And with ButcherBox, what you're getting is premium deals on premium cuts of high quality meat and seafood.

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meat free on that first order and $10 off your first box. That's butcherbox.com slash chill. Today we're going to travel to La Palma Island, which is the westernmost island, well, one of them of the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco and to the west of Western Sahara and Africa. Literally, like a place I would love to be right now, right? Right. Yeah.

Give me a break. Feel free to look it up on your phone or computer. I got one nearby. It's like beautiful and rocky shores and like it's just it looks like a fucking JRPG over there. Like it's it's it's not a great way to explain it. It looks like it's five graphics. Like it's fucked up over there.

Yeah, it's truly beautiful and describe reality in the terms of something that's just not quite able to do it yet. It's so colorful. It's so shiny. It doesn't look real. That's what I'll say. It looks like a piece. It's got PS5 graphics.

Yeah. Fucking good ass graphics, bro. And being a good ass graphics island in the middle of the Atlantic, it relies on boats to do almost everything it does. All shapes and sizes. It keeps the industry going. It's how things work. And so we're going to talk about it's getting what I said the mayor is a boat.

It's a right. It's a good. It's a terrible bit. Don't even worry about it. And so today we're going to talk about one such boat, the El Fausto, the Faust. It's a 14 meter, 20 ton vessel used for shipping and fishing, you know, but not like huge things which I'm like hauling fruit or veggies or meters is like the Millennium Falcon of boats. You know what I mean?

We're not talking about a huge boat. Well, I actually have a photo of it for you right here so you can see exactly what it looks like. So you don't have to rely on my description. Yep. That's a boat. Yep. Okay.

So when you think small sailing boat, that's kind of the image that most people probably conjure in their head. If you think of the phrase to toot and you're in relation to a boat, this is what you're going to think of. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely fits like a bunch of guys, but it's not huge in any sort of sense of the word and it is just like they go out and they fish and it's got a motor and potentially

maybe you could put a sail up there, but no, there's no sail. And so this ship was one of many in the area at the time operating doing its thing. And in 1968, the ship was owned by Raphael Acosta, who had it crewed by basically family and friends. So on the crew of the ship was Ramon and Alberto Hernandez, and then their cousins Miguel and Viterbo, I can't get this name right ever, Viterbo or Viterbo Acosta. I love that. And yeah, it's a great name.

And here's the thing, just to set this all up, they're all in their forties. They're all experienced sailors. They all have families. They all are total like sea badasses. This is not a one time family vacation to the lake. This is daily routine type stuff is what you're saying. Absolutely. These guys are professional sailors.

They know what they're doing. So on July 20th, 1968, during the early evening hours, the El Fostos in port, and they're going to head to El Jero Island, which is like 50 miles or 80 kilometers south, like directly south. And they're going to carry some explosives, which I always thought was weird. They're going to carry explosives there to be used for agricultural purposes on the island. I assume they're blowing up mountains or rocks or whatever. And what year was it again?

What now? It's 1968. It's the year. Okay. So, old bombs for agriculture. Yeah. You know, they were going to just blow up some stuff. And at the moment, only three of the crew could attend because Viterbo was going to

be part of like a local festival for some reason. I guess he was very important in that like role of help facilitating the festival. I guess he was like one of the organizers is like, sorry, guys, I can't make it. But you know, the three of them are like, dude, easy. This isn't even like a hard trip. So the three that are remaining, Ramon, Ileberto and Miguel, they jump in the boat. They head south, carrying the explosives. And several hours later, the El Fausto arrives at Frontera, which is a town in the northern

part of El Hero. And there they drop off the explosives. They load in roughly 20 pounds of fruit. And just because I thought super fascinating, here's a photo of those three men so you can even like see what they look like. Yep. Those are those are three sailors in suits. This is like, it almost looks like like like a movie photoshopping somebody into like an

old picture. How like, yeah, totally generic. These guys look speaking of PS five game, it does look like a photo you'd find in the PS five game. Yeah. Weird characters. And to investigate, use the stick to turn it over. Yeah.

Like vaguely scary on the back, like she will know the secrets. Well, I can't, I can't wait. So, so, well, all this is going on. There's a man on the island named Julio Garcia and Julio missed the last boat back to La Palma. Apparently there was a, like a ferry that travels between the islands and he received a call from his wife earlier that day that his daughter was ill and he wanted to get back as soon as possible to see her.

And sadly he missed the last boat off and he was told it's going to be two days before the next boat arrives. God. So unwilling to even like wait, he runs down to the dock sees a boat come in and he's like, guys, please let me on your boat. I need to get back to La Palma to see my kid. And the three men that you just saw were like, dude, it's chill. Come aboard.

We're not going to charge you a damn thing for the trip. Don't worry about fuel or whatever. It's totally fine. And this is a photo of that man. This is Julio. Who's this baby? One of his kids. I think he has a daughter and a son.

I think the baby looks sus of everything. It looks like he's going to be the king one day. He's ready. Guy looks very generic guys wearing linens. He looks like he's wearing like salary clothes, like ocean-y side clothes. He just looks like a normal dude to be honest. Like nothing about this is in front of a giant UFO for some reason, but it does seem like a giant metal something, like a camper, like an old skyliner or whatever those are called.

And so finally at 2.30 a.m. on the 21st of July, 1968, all four men set sail for La Palma, which again is directly north and are never seen again. Yo. All right. I was waiting for one of those. Here you go. This is the map of where they were going from. So the bottom is El Hierro and they're going to La Palma, which is directly north.

A fucking straight north line. Yeah. Like literally it's just a line straight drawn between two islands. That's literally obvious. Absolutely straight north. Yeah. Absolutely. There is no way anyone could get lost doing this.

So the Fausto is expected to arrive at 10 a.m. How big of a distance is that? 50 miles. So you could maybe even, maybe you can't see it, but you can like, if see it pretty soon after you leave. Yeah. I mean, like it's, it's, it would be, every time I think about 50 miles to think about when I lived in Dayton, Ohio, driving to Cincinnati, you'd be like, I don't know, by car, like

an hour. Yeah. It's like driving to Disneyland. Yeah. Yeah. And so at 10 a.m., they're expected to be there. They do not show up. And Raphael, the guy who owns the boat assumes, hey, there's probably a delay.

So and the reason why you thought there was a delay is because that morning there was some mist in the area. It wasn't like making it hard to see, but they might have slowed down as to not hit the island as they approached quickly. You know what I mean? Right. And so he thought maybe there was a delay. So because he had a little bit of a doubt, he said, all right, well, maybe the engine

broke, but you know, my employees know what they're doing. So all right, I'm going to send another boat to follow the exact same route, which they had already said what they were doing. So like this straight line, they knew where they were going to go. So like, okay, I'm going to send a boat out and it's going to take, I don't know, maybe six, seven hours for them to do this. And they went up and down. They saw nothing.

They radioed back, no trace of the ship. It was not there. And now he's a little bit more worried. And so he calls the authorities about a missing ship on July 22nd. An emergency message is radioed to all ships in the area and to the West, uh, in the Atlantic proper, the Fausto is missing at sea. And then at noon from Grand Canaria, a plane takes off and heads West to search the Atlantic. And you know, despite the search, having optimal weather conditions, it's sunny.

There's no cloud. There's no visibility. The plane screw comes back and they're like, we got nothing. They hadn't spotted a single ship that even looked like it. Um, and all the other searches that had happened on the water found nothing at all either. And they spent more and more time looking and nothing happened. And as time passed on, the worry was like, look, all they have is 20 pounds of fruit, no water, and within days they'll be dead.

So if the ship didn't sink, they're, they're most likely going to be dead within the next 24, 48 hours anyway. So like if we can't find them now, they're, they're lost at sea. They're done. Damn. That's awful. Being lost at sea is such like a horrifying thought right up there with like buried alive for me.

It's not, it's just the thing that's yeah, the crazy thing about it is that it's such a short distance. Like normally when people go missing, it's like Amelia Earhart was like, I'm going to fly around the world, you know, or some shit like that. Like it doesn't look like a distance, but also like how very quickly I bet you lose sight of the land and suddenly you're just all you can see is water. I'm just saying it's crazy that they are gone and that there is no sign of them. Like it's, there's no, well, that is until July 25th, three days later, like July 20

and shortly after midnight, 1968, three days later, shortly after midnight, the Maritime authorities received a radio message from the British Reefership, the Duchess. And if you're curious what a reefership is, if you're curious what a reefership is, it is not what you think. It stands for refrigeration. It's literally a big ship that carries things. You never make a search enough where I can buy a ship. I'm naming my ship the Reefership.

Yep. Great. I'm here for it. I'm naming my ship the Duchess. What are you talking about? Are you kidding me? And so this ship calls in saying, hey, we are coming from South America en route to the Netherlands and we spotted a fishing boat seemingly adrift in the Atlantic.

Here's the thing. The boat's crew is using a flashlight to signal us. Should we approach them? What should we do here? It's 120 miles west of La Palma, way off of the route. And here is the photo of where this signal was saw, seen. What the fuck were they saying? Oh my God.

It's so far. They went into straight line the other direction. Yeah. They are so completely off track. And so after... They did like a 90 degree turn and then just went. They're like headed out more into the Atlantic now, which is bizarre considering this is a series of islands.

You figured they would know directions, compass, like if they're experienced 40, like the oldest guy's 47, the youngest guy's 41. So they're all in their 40s and they know what's up. So you would figure they would be able to do this. Anyway, that's... I mean, and again, this is why this ship is like, what is this? But a flashlight's signaling to them. So they're like, okay, let's get a closer look.

And they discover, yes, it is 100% the Fausto. They're told the Fausto's missing. And so the Duchess confirms, yeah, it's the Fausto. Here's the thing, Ramon, Alberto, Miguel and Julio are all alive, all on the top, like on the deck, waving and signaling to them, they're dehydrated. They're sunburnt, but they're alive. And so this news quickly spreads to La Palma and then to, you know, everywhere really on the islands.

Everyone on the islands was concerned about this. It was a big story. Well, the ship had a few Spanish speaking crew members. And so the Duchess was like, trying to communicate with them. And they said, hey, look, come aboard, man, we will, we will give you food and water. We'll get you straight. So they didn't, they came aboard, they got food, they've got water, I love how it mentions that they got cigarettes, right?

And then they were offered a trip back to La Palma. And this is where things took a turn for the strange. The four crew members of the Fausto refused the offer. And they said, hey, all we need to get back is enough fuel and food and we can do it ourselves. And the crew was like, are you sure? Your boat? Is it all right? Wasn't it broken down?

Why were you just sitting in the water there? Is something wrong? Like, didn't this Julio guy need to get back to his wife and kid? And the four of them are like, it's fine. No, all we just needed is some stuff to get back, don't even stress it, like no big deal. Nothing's out of the ordinary. Yeah, and then the crew, the Dutchess were like, I mean, they seem fine. We question them and yeah, they had a near-death experience, but they weren't even remotely

close to the state that people find most castaways, which is like mentally broken, right? Like, it isn't just near-death experience, it is like the heat and the oppressive nature of the ocean and like salt and just your body and you're going crazy. Most people are gone when they're found as castaways. These guys seem fine. Could it be possible that them not wanting help is them being fucking crazy? Good, very good point. If I was, if I was, this is like a Star Trek episode, but if I was, if I was the captain,

I would be like, no, you're coming with us. They checked the boat and it seemed entirely seaworthy and totally fine. The engine worked. Everything was fine. They couldn't figure out what was going on there, but they then sent them on their way and they watched, they watched as the Fausto headed east back to the islands and the Dutchess radioed saying, hey, based on where we're at and based on where they're headed, they should be there by seven PM.

So literally the town of Taza Corte, which is like in the southern part of La Palma, where these people are from, they, all the people in the town flocked to the port to wait for the ship's arrival. They were so excited. A celebration started. They brought out food. They brought out wine. They all stood around with the four families and they were like, eyes to the horizon.

They had this big party. This is documented. There's one photo and here is another photo. Okay. So there's, there's a lot of fucking people. I thought it was going to be like a few people. We're talking like the village is here. Everyone is here.

Everyone showed up. There's like a hundred people in this photograph at least. Yeah. And the other one is like sort of down more towards the water and it's just people sitting around waiting. A lot more boats. There's all these boats out there. So like people were excited for them to return.

This was a major story on the islands and from what I understand also in like Spanish newspapers at the time, it was, it was pretty big. This was like the missing ship and the fact that the Dutchess followed them all the way. You would imagine. Surely. Well, at seven, no ship arrived. Then eight, nine hours began to pass by and no ship appeared. Oh my God.

As the crowd dispersed, the families of the four men stayed at the docks until morning, but the Faustone never showed up. It was missing again. What the fuck were they doing? How far, like you can see, like, can't you see like 20 miles on a ship? God, that is so fucking weird. Yeah. And this time it was day.

So like, yeah, they, like, by the time they got all set up, it wasn't like they were sending them back out at night. They were sending them out during the day and it would take them a few hours and they'd arrive at seven p.m. No. This is why I love the story because it's always, it's so many twists, it makes no sense. Thank you to our really long time partner Talkspace for sponsoring this episode. It's important to prioritize your mental health and wellness every day because when

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with Talkspace. To match with your licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com. Make sure you use the code CHILL to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. That's CHILL and Talkspace.com. Then on July 26th, early in the morning, four planes took off from Grand Canaria now, all with very clear orders. Fly to the exact point where the Duchess found the Falstow, established a search radius and

then spend all day plotting speed and courses and search everything that it could possibly be like a possible location for the ship. Other ships joined in both military and civilian, including the Caster or Research Vessel. There's like documents about it. AID was requested from mainland Spain. And they sent... It's like Marco Rosso. They sent hydro planes to come in like...

They had DC Douglases. They had all these different ships involved in the search. And literally, it was covering pretty much everything from the Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula there, all the way down past Morocco, into the Atlantic. They were looking everywhere for these people. Yeah, how far could they possibly have gone? It's been less than a day. They were supposed to arrive at seven.

This is the next day after that. So they are sending everyone... To give you an amount of cost and evolved, it was approximately or would be today approximately 2.26 million US dollars for this search. And it lasted only a few days. This is a significant effort. Yeah. Yeah, they put in money.

And yet, after all of that effort, the search for the Fausto was finally called off on August 7th. The boat officially... No ship? No ship. The boat officially being classified as lost at sea. Damn. Here's the best part.

Oh, let's see. I told you. You never know where this is going. It's ridiculous. Yes. It is ridiculous. Fast forward to October 9th. Now we're months later.

Two months had passed. Yeah. And little by little, the families were coming to terms with the fact that like, they're probably not coming back. They had lost their loved ones. And despite the crazy happenstance of them, finding and like finding out the ship, being alive and then refusing help for some reason, that you know what, they're actually gone. And like with all things, the news moved on, society moved on, just the family seemed

to really care. But meanwhile, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, an Italian merchant ship named the Anna De... Anna De... Mayo? Mayo? M-A-I-S? M-A-I-O.

M-A-I-O. No. Yeah. Like, meow. M-A-I-O. I think that's how you would say it, or meow, Anna DeMio, whatever it is. I'll call it the Anna. It was heading to Venezuela.

And while they're on the way to Venezuela, they spotted something in the distance. And it was... Venezuela. Yeah. It was a dark, cloudy morning, but visibility was definitely still good. And they saw something and they're like, we need to get closer. What the hell is that? And once they were in range, they noticed it was a fishing boat.

The kind not really made for crossing the Atlantic. But as they approached, two things became very clear. One, her name written on the boat was El Falstow. And two, no one was at the wheel. Okay. And this is... I'm sorry. How long after?

They... This is two months. Two months. Okay. This is where it was found. This is the map location of where it was found. Dude, they're just in the middle of the ocean. They're just nowhere near anything.

Literally like... Yeah. Yeah. Over here. Yes. Venezuela. Venezuela, by the way, is in South America. Correct.

Like, we're talking about Morocco to South America. We're talking about in between like, nothing is there. Yep. Nothing. So the Ana pulls up alongside the fishing boat and the first mate, Luciano Assione, along with another deck sailor who is unnamed, boarded the vessel. And this is just... This is the first mate.

This is the Ana, just so you can get a vibe of who this guy is, what he looks like. Why do they have these like, incredible images? Yeah. They got these profile shots. Dude, this stuff was in... When we're done, if people want to take a look, I will send to Mathis all of the Spanish language that's like, it's in newspapers. It's like, this was big.

This was a big thing that happened. It's a huge deal. Yeah. We just don't know about it. Yeah. Yeah. Language barrier. Exactly.

He goes over. There's no one on deck. He goes down to the cabin. No one's in the cabin, although it appeared to be in completely excellent condition. Like it was like recently just like fixed up all nice. There's no signs of violence, no signs of damage, no signs of panic. And according to him, it's a perfectly seaworthy ship, just kind of floating in the Atlantic. And despite all of his best efforts, he can't find a logbook.

He can't find anything that explains what happened or any signs of where the crew might have gone to. There's nothing which he thought was very, very strange. So he goes back up onto the deck and begins to look around more and he's like, oh, the engine compartment. I definitely should check in there. He opens the engine compartment, jumps down inside, and they're laying face up next to the engine is the body of a dead man, naked, a transistor radio found by his body.

But here's the thing. That man had clearly been dead for some time because his body was near mummified. What do you mean mummified? Like near. Well, I would imagine be like, imagine the salted air actually does quite a bit of mummification. And so at least from what he could tell, he's like, this person's been dead for a while. This isn't like this guy died last week. This guy's been dead for a while.

And next to him was a notebook. And so he was like, what the, okay, guy who came over with me, get your ass back to the main ship, report back that we just discovered this thing. Tell everyone that like this is messed up and he stays behind in the ship and he's inspecting the engine room and he's trying to like find clues as to what could have possibly happened. And again, like I said, he found this notebook and he started going through it. And upon opening it, the first thing he's noticed was that the first couple pages are all numbers, like just like scribbles of numbers and he's like interesting, but it made no

sense to him. It was like math and stuff. And then he starts flipping through and after the numbers, he finds 28 ripped out pages. They are missing all the contents missing 28 pages gone. And then after that, on the last page, he discovers like something that he can't really understand because he's Italian, it's Spanish and he kind of gets the gist and it's, looks like a farewell. Like someone writing a farewell.

Like as soon as he realizes there, nobody's coming for you. Maybe. Right. It's just like a farewell letter. And so he's like, all right, I don't speak Spanish, but I'm going to take the book. I'm going to take all these other documents I found and I'm going to bring them back to the Anna and once he gets back, yeah, one guy, everyone else missing. And so he brings it back to the Anna and on October 11th, well, sorry, well, they go back,

they radio in, they say we found the boat and this is what we're going to do. We're going to keep the body on the boat. We're going to store it like for crime scene related stuff. We're going to keep the body on the boat. We're not going to touch anything else. We're going to, we're going to tow this ship to Venezuela and have the Venezuelan authorities take a look at it and we'll hold on to the notebook and we'll hold on to everything just to like keep it safe.

October 11th comes around less than two days after they began towing the Fausto in the middle of the night, authorities receive a crazy telegram from the Anna bizarre to the point of disbelief. They informed them that while being towed, the Fausto vanished. What do you mean? Yeah. They believe, they believed that it somehow had sunk bow first overnight, which I looked up as I was like, what does that mean?

Basically like, you know, the front goes down, but like, here's the thing. The only way they can happen is if the boat's going either too fast, the boats that's towing it's too fast or that they made like a weird turn and like the waves messed up the boat behind it, but you would figure these guys are in a giant boat. They're not kind of, they're not doing that. I don't think so. So it just, yeah, this will be interesting to our Navy listeners or people who just know boats in general.

Let us know either the boats being towed and it sinks and nobody notices. They said that the boat like capsized somehow and potential. That's what happened because the cord, the cord was like underwater and I guess the boat maybe was sucked underwater and ripped away from the cord. And so maybe that's what, like, they don't, they don't have a clue. But what I do know is that right here is where it disappeared. So this is them even closer to Venezuela. They're still, still very much in the middle of nowhere, but closer to Venezuela middle

of nowhere. Barely, barely moved. Yeah. It doesn't look like it moved all that much. Again. This is less than two days later. So they're, they clearly, from what I can establish seem to have slowed their movement down as not to capsize the boat, which I think was the purpose, right?

They were, they were towing in evidence. How did you not notice when, what has somebody woke up and it was gone in the middle of the night? Gone. They reported immediately. They were like, this thing is gone. It's gone. Bro.

That's ridiculous. Yeah. It was very, very crazy. There's always the possibility as well, like that they were being lazy. They thought it was no big deal. Nobody's on the ship. They didn't have to rescue anybody. They took it easy that night.

Maybe they went to bed or sleep and they just missed it. I'm not saying that's what happened, but you always got to kind of keep that in mind too. The boat gone and with it sinking, the body was gone too. Right. That sucks. All that was left were the documents recovered by Luciano and eventually the notebook was returned to Spain and was returned to the families.

And the crazy thing is that upon immediately seeing it, Julio Garcia's wife instantly recognized his handwriting. She was like, that is my husband's notebook. I would recognize that anywhere. Those numbers in the beginning aren't like some weird wacky code. She was a mechanic who did odd jobs around the island and he would like write down numbers of what people owed him and he'd write down numbers of like what, you know, certain things were.

And so this was all like, this was his journal. He took him with him wherever he went and she's like, that's not suspicious at all. What's weird is the ending. The fact that there's 28 pages missing and the fact that there's this note to her. Basically, as she's looking through this, she says the last page contains a farewell to his family that Luciano was going to, that Luciano, the guy from the Anna understood. He like got that bit. But the like subtext, the things he couldn't pick up on was the fact that it was instructing

his wife how to proceed with like insurance stuff and how to sell properties and how to like, if he died, what to do with money. And then it ends with, don't ever tell their then five year old son's name. All that has happened to me. You know that God wanted this fate for me. Love you. Then he writes his address below that. His home address.

Yeah. Now it almost, now with that last bit, it almost sounds like a suicide note. I feel like I know, I feel like I know what happened here. I feel like my first question is why were they on this boat in the first place? They were going to make a delivery, right? Apparently they were going to make a delivery. Yeah. My question is number one, what was in that boat originally?

And number two, I wonder if they were under duress when they were rescued. Well, I wonder if what? Yeah, yeah. Interesting. You should bring that up. So first off, because I love the fact that primary sources, man, this is the actual last page that was kept by the wife from 2013. Cool.

It's cool to have something like that. That's, that's really. Yeah, this is it. This is the last page. And so, and yeah, it looks like aged paper from one of those like notebook things that you would flip over the top, like each page over the top and you rip them up. Fascinating stuff. So looks like my aunt's handwriting, actually, after looking at the notebook,

investigators concluded that since the vast majority of it was all numbers at the beginning and then 28 pages were ripped out, that he must have documented what happened and then the last page is sort of like, because it comes out of nowhere, really, it's kind of an explanation, but those 28 pages, something happened to them. Whatever it was, it documented what happened. And this, of course, left many questions and they are what was written on the 28 pages. Why were they removed and by who? What happened to the rest of the crew?

Why did they refuse to be toed, like to be taken back by the duchess? Why do they say that nothing was out of the ordinary when they were first found? Why didn't they offer any explanation as to why they disappeared to the first place? And since that time, there have been many, many theories and I just want to go through some of them because they are like fascinating, but also what's interesting is these are, there's like ones that are like built into the mythos that I think is like literally our urban legend now in the Canary Islands. Like this is, to them, this is, oh, that definitely happened.

Like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so the first one is they were trying to make a better life for themselves in Venezuela and a lot of people are like, that doesn't make any sense. They were leaving their families. Also, they weren't even there for the trip. Like they, like, why were they trying to make their way there?

Honestly, it would make more sense if you want to look at it from in my mind, like make their lives better if they were all poor or and they had insurance. You know, on them to maybe like a group goodbye kind of thing where the families will be taken care of, the insurance will make sure they're not in poverty anymore, but it does mean they have to go fucking kill themselves. Well, here's the thing. And I think I'm not a big Spanish scholar, but I'm pretty sure at this time period, this was like post Franco regime.

And I'm pretty sure Spain was like at its poorest. So if that it had ever been and the Canary Islands are like, they got like Spanish flavor, but they're not getting the same treatment that Spain proper is. So it's probably very poor there. And so you, I mean, like it is possible that they were so poor. They thought, OK, we're doing this for our families. I mean, that's, I guess that's why it's included on the list.

Another one is they witnessed something they weren't supposed to see. This goes to the fact that a few months earlier and roughly the same spot, the USS Scorpion was sunk. And many people think it was a secret Soviet sub that was in the area. And maybe they came across it and maybe they saw something. But the question is, again, why reject help? Like, why would you reject like you're on a boat? Get out of there.

But maybe they were like that ship is in the water. And if we go, you know, I mean, I don't know who knows. Another one is like what Alex was kind of hinting at, what was on the boat? Were they trafficking guns or drugs or whatever? They were taking explosives. So clearly maybe something else was going on here. And they didn't want to be caught by authorities, which is why they were not wanting to go on the boat.

Here's the thing, after looking into it, they all turned out to be debt free. They know criminal records and, you know, the ship's owner was super clean. So they just seem like normal fishermen. Many mysteries I have. What if they got boarded and then somebody wanted to take the ship? So they hid below when they got found and were like, you better come back here. We're going to kill. But they were doing flashlight SOS shit.

So like that's what I'm saying. That's what like that's totally silent. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, true. Today's episode is sponsored by honey. The easy way to save when you're shopping on your iPhone or computer. I don't know how you feel about online shopping, but I love it. I do it probably every day, which maybe doesn't sound good for me, but I just end up doing it all the time because it's just convenient.

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Yeah, true. Mr. Fosyana, you come across the one that I think is also it does seem very, very like this can't be real, but it's the most popular theory, especially like in urban legend that the boat was was commandeered in El Hierra by a Nazi fugitive who had been hiding on the island after World War Two and now because they were just starting to really crack down and hunt down former SS officials, he was like, get me to South America, which is why they diverted and were headed to Venezuela because this dude

forced them at gunpoint or something to do it. And he hid below deck. So when they like met with the ship, he was down below and then like maybe some shit went down on the boat. And that's why the one guy lived and everyone else is gone. But there's no sign of struggles. There's no sign of like blood or anything. So they're like, it sounds great.

Like it makes for a great story, but it doesn't explain a lot of those things that don't make sense there. Right. And then, of course, there's the theory that I think is probably true that it was just like a series of very small, but successive setbacks that eventually they went from like, we got this to like, oh, my God, we're all going to die. And it just kept getting worse, even though they convinced themselves because they were sailors, they could do it.

But like, I kept thinking, what is, you know, what could this really be? And I just want to say, I never thought about this. It didn't cross my mind, but I'm going to shout out to Firelark on Reddit for just like posting a theory that I think is the strongest theory ever. So Firelark says, I'm willing to bet that when they were initially found to drift, but still alive and Mathis, I think you were saying this earlier, they were much worse off than they seemed. The crew of the Duchess mentioned that the men didn't seem like in a state of

mental breakdown, as one might expect from being lost at sea for days. But that in itself could easily be an alarming side. There's men just like, they're just like, yeah, dude, yeah, like a group. The men were probably delusion. Well, just give me a little bit of gas, dude. Yeah, they probably were like super affected by the dehydration and the stress and the exposure and all that stuff, but they seemed super chill. And he also says they, I guess, also say

if any of the fruit they ate had fermented or gone bad in the heat, that could have worsened the situation tremendously. Accidentally, while they appeared calm and irrational to the observers, they actually could have been highly irrational. This would explain why they refused to tow, why they insisted their boat was fine. When it was clearly not, my theory is that their navigation equipment had become faulty somehow. But not in a way that was immediately apparent.

It was still visibly functioning, but not providing proper directions. This would explain why they got lost in the first place in the fog. And then why they were forced to rely on the instruments, right? It's nighttime. It's 2 a.m. It's fog. They use the instruments. It could also explain why they insisted the crew of why they insisted the crew of Duchess that there's nothing wrong with the boat. It's fine, even though they're clearly off course.

And because they're no longer rational, they can't deduce that the equipment led them astray. So then after parting with the Duchess, they set sail again using the nav system and now they're back out at sea. After that, all three men probably rapidly hydrated and like went crazy and anything is possible at that point. Paranoia might have set in that might have fought against each other. Anger, agitation, poor decision making, compounding their problems and the men who didn't die in the ship might have jumped

overboard, convinced they were near land or that a boat was more dangerous than water. And all of that is kind of like secondary, though, to how they got lost in the first place, not once, but twice. And he's like, that's something I think people dismiss. Or I guess they don't know anything about Firelark. And then there's a comment below that I thought was fascinating, which is from a sailor that was like, look, as a sailor, sometimes we put a compass next to something electrical.

It'll throw off True North. And you won't realize it because you're not thinking about it, but you'll like set the compass down next to like a faulty electrical thing. And next thing you know, you're going the wrong direction. And I was like, that explains some things too. So I think that's super interesting. And that's the last bit there. But this again is another story

that's real from history where people just vanished. And we'll never, we'll never think because I'd be curious, you know, what the findings on the corpse would have been if there would have like, maybe they could have deduced that maybe he had some injuries on him that didn't show there was some fighting, I don't know. Well, a lot of people think that there's two because a lot of people. Yeah, my guess is like, yeah, he maybe wrote down the events. And then when he realized there was nothing coming back,

maybe he just didn't want his family to know the truth and was just like, fuck it. A lot of people think that maybe he was those 20 pages was him writing down the fact that like they started to do cannibal shit and like embarrassing things where he was like, I don't want, you know, I wrote this down, but now I'm reading it. I realized like in death, this makes us all look terrible. And he just tossed them or a lot of people are like, interesting that this one dude found these and reported back. Oh, 28 pages are missing.

Did he remove the 28 pages? I hadn't even that's also something I would do that to me. That to me, the missing pages is like foul play for sure. I don't know why it is, but it is. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't make any sense because it's so very obvious that you have to, if you ripped it out, you did so because you didn't want it anyway. It wasn't like a mistake. It wasn't like whatever was written there.

If it's all numbers, why rip out numbers? You know what I mean? Like what is the purpose for ripping that stuff out? Unless maybe he was like so crazy and dehydrating and stuff that he honestly thought like, oh, I'll stick this note I wrote in a banana and throw it in the water. And maybe some will find, you know what I mean? You know, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure within, like you said, within days, all that shit would have,

it would have been starving and going crazy and. But they were given supplies, though. Supplies and fuel, which is crazy to me that and they saw them go back east. They watched them go back in the direction. If they would have just stayed on that heading, they would have hit any of the islets. It's crazy to me. It gives me you like a theory that involves them wanting to be back and intending to be back just doesn't make sense to me.

There's something going on. But the problem is, is that and I think this makes it interesting, is that the other three dudes, sure, you could say, oh, these guys are going to go to Venezuela or whatever. But the one guy, his whole purpose for jumping on that boat at night was, I got to get back to my kid. And then he no longer cared about the kid. It's so weird that surely he would be the guy that's like, take me back.

Like, like the fact that all four said, I'm going to stay on the boat. Why wouldn't the one dude who just want to get back and see his kid? Why wouldn't he stay on the duchess? If the other guys were going to go, why would he join them? Assuming these people are all above board human beings, right? Which it seems like they were, right? The only thing I can imagine is like consequence free money, right? Some kind of something that's just too good to ignore.

Because otherwise, what are you doing? Like something like both times they disappeared, they both had the same direction. Like they were doing something for sure. You know, and either they were doing it or somebody else was making them do it. But it just doesn't make sense to me that it wouldn't be that way with those details. It's how I feel. It's bizarre as hell.

And that's why I love it. That's why I've saved it for almost four years on my computer. Because I'm like, this is a story. This is a great story. So I love that. Yeah, I will give all the links to Mathis. There's so much to this. You can see all the different photos.

And if you want to see the original topic that was posted by Hello Lurker here four years ago on Reddit, I'll give them that too. And you can go through the whole thing. It is incredible. The comments are like, people are super into trying to solve it. I love this kind of stuff. And I've just been sitting on it for a while. And I was like, one day I want to do a podcast on this back to look for the sunken

boat, then you know what? Based on where it is on that map, it is a way you're going to know how. When you look at the ocean, sometimes you see the really dark parts. That's where it is. That thing is so far down, plus with like shift in currents. Who knows where it went? Plus they didn't. I don't know that they found it.

You know what I mean? Like, did they see it fall off right away? So it could have just gone miles and miles after it was long gone. So that's where they noticed it was missing. So who knows what it could have fallen off within the first 20 minutes. They just didn't look. I have no clue. I'm not going to, you know, it's so bizarre, but the fact that there's so much

documentation and there's so much going on with this. And, you know, like a great example is straight up just like in the sources. It's just like, here's a TV mystery show that reconstructed the case. But it's in Spanish. Yeah. It's all in Spanish. What? Whoa.

Whoa. New discovery here on Chiluminati Live. You just solved it? No, I didn't solve it. But I see now that the video, which was up a few days ago, it was removed again. Yeah. Oh, well, like, just in case it comes back up. Yo, speaking of seeing things one day and having them remove the next.

Thank you, Jesse, so much for this episode. We're going to go to patreon.com slash Luminati pod for a mini so where I'm going to go scream about the government. I'm very excited. This is so funny. I love this. I will thank you guys so much. We'll be back next week with another episode.

Goodbye. Bye. Patreon.com slash Chiluminati pod. I want Chiluminati. I want my Mothman blush. Anyway, me and my wife were sitting outside indulging on our porch one night, enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside. And after a few moments, I hear my wife go, holy shit, get out of here.

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