Criminal - Hungryland

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

In March of this year, a biologist working in a nature preserve in Florida saw an alligator swimming along a canal with something in its mouth. When she looked closer, she realized it was a human arm. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. It's Florida. If there's a body of water, there's probably an alligator in it. Or if there's not one right now, there will be really soon. This is Travis Slusher. He works in special ops for the Martin County Fire Rescue on the southeastern coast of Florida. We do everything from high-angle rope rescue,

confined space, building collapse, trench rescue, and dive. How often are you finding yourself diving? I would say we go on roughly probably 12 to 15 calls a year that you're actually in looking for somebody or something, and that can be anything from a person, body parts, weapons for the police department. We look for guns, knives, whatever, you know, any evidence that they may need.

We talked with Travis in a little conference room inside the fire station. He grew up in the Midwest, and says he thought moving to Florida would mean beautiful ocean diving, clear views, and warm water. But it didn't turn out like that. Tell me about this most recent time you went diving. Just take me through the call and what you had to do.

Yeah, so we got hit out with the Sheriff's Department to look for body parts. So we got out there. It was about a 15-minute drive. On the way out there, we're getting a game plan of what we're going to do, what patterns we're going to do, what equipment we may need. We arrived on scene, talked to the deputies for a little bit,

got a little back story on it. In March of this year, a biologist was working in what's called the Hungryland Preserve in Indiantown, Florida, when she saw an alligator swimming along a canal with something in its mouth. And when she looked closer, she realized it was a human arm. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Detectives in the Martin County Sheriff's Office were sent to the scene at the Hungryland Preserve. They didn't know yet if they were looking for a missing person

who may have fallen into the water or if it was a potential homicide investigation. That then resulted in us securing the park for the night and then the next day began our search for additional human remains. Detective Mark Weaver. We didn't know at this point if remains were spread far across the park, if they were all in a meaty area. You know, we weren't sure. So we're searching. We're watching for buzzards. Vultures are a great indicator, will lead you to where human remains are. They're working the sky and they're better at it than we are and have much better vision. So a lot of times when I'm out looking for remains, I'm actually looking for vultures and watching them work. So we're doing that, but we wanted to check the water area right where the alligator was seen.

That's when Travis Slusher and a few other divers from the special ops team were brought in. How often have you had to dive with alligators that you're thinking to yourself, oh boy? A lot. And if you don't see them, it's definitely in the back of your mind. Or if you don't see them, you look over to the right and then you see the sheriff's department standing there with an AR-15, just watching out to make sure nothing pops up. And has that happened often, that you've had a sniper? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, most of the calls that we go on, if we definitely know or see that there's alligators, we get the sheriff's department involved.

My job was to stand by with a rifle and hold a position where I could watch for alligators and ensure that these guys weren't attacked by an alligator while they were working in the water. The divers were hoping to find the rest of the body. By this point, they suspected they were dealing with a homicide and had brought in dogs that specialized in finding human remains. One dog focused on a 30-by-40-foot area of the canal. We got information from the sheriff's department what we're looking for,

whether it was an arm, a leg, torso, head, that the dog hit here and that we're just looking for either remains from human parts or at that time they didn't know if there was one victim, two victims, three victims. So it's really weird, especially if you know you're looking for body parts compared to just a human. You know, it's a little different to think you're swimming underwater and, all right, am I looking for fingers?

Am I looking for an arm, a leg, a head, a torso? So where did you set up? I have a 7 by 16 foot enclosed trailer that I stood on top of the roof of that so I had the best vantage point. My line of fire would not be obstructed by anybody on the bank or anybody on the shoreline because I was so far up above them. And I could see farther down the canals looking for any signs of gator activity. If they're swimming quickly, even if they're just under the water, they'll often leave a V pattern of little ripples where kind of like a boat leaving waves. Sometimes they'll swim with just their nose out of the water and do that. And then sometimes they'll even be under the water,

but still leave that V pattern of ripples when they're swimming, if they're swimming quickly. Or if they move in slowly, but then they sit down on the bottom or slowly walk on the bottom as they do, that sediment that's on the bottom, all the decomposing vegetation, that's full of decomposing gases. And so as they step on the bottom or touch the bottom, you'll see those little air bubbles coming up from that. So I'm just watching for any of those patterns anywhere around either direction as hopefully early indicators if there is an alligator responding. Because if there are human remains, it's a potential food source to an alligator. They are going to fight for that. They are going to protect that. So gators' nature, they want to leave when you're around.

So any of them coming in, they're not coming in to just come visit and say hello. They're probably coming in to defend a food source, which is obviously very dangerous when there's divers in the water. And so before you get in the water, you've got the sniper on top. Mark was on top and kind of said, okay, all clear. I've got my eyes out. And then you go in. Yeah. Yep. And so, you know, and we all did that. We all looked around, make sure we didn't see anything, and then he's there in case something that we missed or the alligator was actually, you know, laying on the bottom, and then we spooked him up or, you know, it was time for him to come up and get some air. But yeah, that's what Mark was there for. And is the, what is it like to get in one of these

canals? I mean, is it murky? Is it deep? Can you see? So the canal we were diving in was about 20 feet deep in the center of the canal. And when you first got in the water, you probably could see maybe four or five feet in front of you. But we're not really looking for stuff in the water column. We're looking for stuff on the bottom. And on the bottom of this canal had about four feet of muck. And so what we're actually doing when we're swimming around looking for stuff on the bottom. And then the bottom of this canal had about four feet of muck. And so what we're actually doing when we're swimming around looking for stuff is we're submerging ourself in that muck. So our hands and arms are completely, you know, as far as you can reach down

in that muck. And once you disturb that, then it goes black. There's absolutely zero visibility. You're not looking for things anymore. You're feeling for things. So you close your eyes because the water will play tricks on you. If you keep your eyes open, you'll see shadows and stuff like that. So you just close your eyes, and all you're doing is feeling and digging in the mud for whatever you're looking for. And, you know, it plays tricks on your mind because not only are there alligators, but then you're looking for a victim to try and find somebody in the water or to, once you find someone in the water, it can be startling, you know, because you can't see.

All you're doing is feeling and you feel something and you're like, is that a snake? Is that a victim's arm? Is that the nose of an alligator, a tail of an alligator, an alligator arm? So it's not a job for anybody. You got to have the right mindset. Travis and Detective Mark Weaver couldn't tell us the current status of the investigation, but say it is ongoing. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these Series Essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that

follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

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And we're going to look for alligators. When we talked with Detective Mark Weaver about the Hungryland Preserve case, he invited us to come to look for alligators. Hello. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, no worries. Maybe I'll see if we can find some gators for you all to see. Okay, good. Well, you tell us what's the best? We met him early in the morning

at the Martin County Sheriff's Office in Stewart, Florida, on the eastern coast of the state, about 40 miles north of Palm Beach. Right now we're going to head out to a, we're going to go past a town called Indiantown and then we're going to

head out to a state park called Dupree and look for some gators. He said it was a little harder to find alligators in July, but if we started early, we'd probably have a better shot. Alligators like to be wherever it's warmest, so if the water's warmer than the air, they're often just going to land in the water. And by nature, they like to avoid people, and they'll quickly duck and just land in the water. But first thing in the morning is a good time to try catching them laying out on the banks because they're trying to get warmed up in that morning sun. Is it, you know, for someone who is not from Florida or not from the South, an alligator is an oddity. You know, people never see alligators or think about alligators.

But here in Florida, alligators are kind of part of life. Yeah, they're like a bird flying by. They're just there. They're everywhere. Just part of the environment. When I was a kid, we actually had some saltwater crocodiles living in the canals next to where I lived. I remember that. We were swimming and stuff in there. It's crazy.

Sometimes I wonder if my parents even really loved me. I remember that. Some of my earliest memories, I remember standing on the canal. I was about four or five years old. I'd go to work with my dad. I remember standing on the canal banks. On lunch breaks, we would sit there and count them for fun. And then I also remember going on a camping trip with Sunday school class

in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. And when we were on a canoe trip, we'd have canoe fights where we'd tip each other out of the canoes and stuff, going up to Trapper Nelson's back in the river. We just got back, and life flight flew flew over and a kid had got out of canoe. What we found out a little bit later is the kid got out of canoe and stepped on what he thought was a log and it was a gator. And unfortunately him and his father, his father was playing tug of war with the gator basically and retained the boy, but unfortunately the boy

didn't make it. And you had just been there tipping canoes before? Not wisely, yes. Detective Weaver says people frequently call the sheriff's office to report an alligator in their pool or backyard or on a golf course. And he says he's been in many situations, like the Hungryland case, where he's had to stand watch with a rifle in case an alligator is around, making sure divers can safely do their job for covering evidence, weapons, or bodies. There was another time recently when someone confessed to committing a murder and tried to hide the body by throwing it over a bridge into a canal. Detective Weaver and his team went to recover the body. We were out there recovering it. There was

gator trolling 10 feet away. He was wary of us because, you know, not used to humans, and so he didn't trust us. But he was pretty upset that we were removing the body. Like, normally a gator, if there's no food involved, a gator sees you, he's going to go the other way.

By nature. Just duck under the water or swim the otherator sees you, he's going to go the other way by nature. Just duck under the water or swim the other direction. Instead, he swam to us and was too scared to totally come up on us. If we had gotten the water, he would have, I guarantee you. We were on a boat pulling the body up out of the water. If we'd gotten the water, I guarantee you, because now we're in his environment 100 100 he would have been totally comfortable with taking us on at that point so he just comes right up about 10 feet away and is like not sure to get closer or not because we look like a big threat to him he doesn't know what we are um so yeah he definitely wasn't pleased that we were taking the body

because that was his potential food source. Absolutely, yeah. They love things that are decomposing. They smell it in the water. They smell that scent quite a ways away. They will absolutely respond to that. They take large things, like say a deer, they won't consume it right then and there.

They'll take that and stuff it underneath a culvert or a log or something like that in the water and let it sit for a couple days. And then they'll start dismembering it and consuming it. Do people hunt alligators? It's one of my hobbies. So for a long time you couldn't hunt gators in Florida. They'd been hunted to almost extinction.

The American alligator population reached its lowest numbers in the 1950s. Once they were added to the endangered species list and hunting was banned, they made a comeback so quick it surprised people. In 1979, a spokesman for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Service told the New York Times, we're up to our ears in alligators. Today, they're no longer considered endangered, and hunting became legal again. When I was, I don't know, in my early 20s or so, is when the law finally changed and you're allowed to start hunting again. And so the state started issuing permits, and they still do.

They go out and do gator counts. They'll fly over various methods. They do gator counts. And then they determine how many permits to issue. Permits are issued in geographical areas. It's very strict. So you can only hunt in the geographical area that your permit allows. And you're only allowed to take two gators with each permit.

And do you ever eat alligator meat? Absolutely yeah. I hear it's really good. Yeah it is it can be a little bit tough I cube it up and I tender it with a meat mallet and then you know just cook it on the grill like chicken season it Italian dressing just let it marinate and that's good. It can be a little bit gamey it depends on the alligator's environment. If it's a smaller pond alligator, it's probably going to be a little less fishy tasting. It's going to get raccoons and armadillos and things like that more in his diet. We have what we call deeper water gators, like out in Lake Okeechobee,

if you leave the swamps or even in the swamp edge too. But these are big gators that go out and swim in the open waters, and they seem to have more of a fish diet, so you can have a little bit of a seafood taste in them. Alligators as we know them first appeared around 85 million years ago. Alligators were here when the dinosaurs were here, and they were one of the few species to survive the mass extinction when the asteroid hit. Their earliest ancestors have been around for even longer. Paleontologists have found evidence that there were all different kinds. One lived

in the ocean and had fins. Another was thought to look kind of like a cross between a crocodile and an armadillo. There is even one, which looked more or less just like what we see today, except that it was estimated to be nearly 40 feet long. Do you ever think about how prehistoric these... I mean, when you look at them, you really think, I'm looking at something that's been around for a really long time, a creature. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're so barbaric and tough.

They have these cutes on their back, like bone, pieces of bone, square bone that's just armor. And a 10-footer is easy, 300, 400 pounds, 300 on the slender side, 400 pounds on the more normal side. And they are nothing but muscle and armor. I mean, absolutely nothing but muscle and armor. Have you ever come close to being bit by one? I don't know, probably. But you haven't, you've escaped it. So, so far I've escaped the chompers, yeah. After a while, we turned off the main road. Tell me where we are now.

We just turned into a state park called Dupree. It's tens of thousands of acres, a very large state park. I thought maybe we had arrived and could start looking for alligators. But then we turned again, and kept driving onto a narrow gravel road with brush on either side. Well, we are really out here. Getting there. Eventually, we saw a small canal appear, running parallel to the road. I'm getting into some more.

Those are all cypress trees across the way there. Oh, there's a bunch of cypress trees. I'm going to get out and just look around here quietly and see. See something. So this is very swampy. At one point, he told us to watch out for water moccasins. Watch for what? Water moccasins. Water, okay.

You got that, Susanna? Water moccasins. There was very tall, thick grass. It was hard to see where you were stepping. We started walking very carefully toward the water. The canal was a few yards wide, and Detective Weaver was looking at the bank on the other side. I'm looking where there's sunny spots, because that's where they're going to want to be.

He pointed out some ripples in the water, and said that meant something had just dipped under the water. Could have been a turtle, but I don't know. It sounded louder than a turtle. Yeah, it was probably a gator dip. That's what it sounded like. I guarantee you from here, as far as you can see, there's probably 50 gators. You just can't see them because they're all under the water. You don't know they're there.

Let's move on down a little ways. It's still a little bit early yet as well, so. We kept driving along the canal for a few minutes, watching the bank closely. And then, all of a sudden, we saw something. There's one laying straight across. I see it. I think he just dipped behind this bush. Don't shut your door. You can open it, just don't shut it.

Okay, we won't shut it. Well, he was really big. Yeah, he's laying right there. Come over to me. Look at him straight ahead. See him looking at us? See him in the water? Look right through. Oh, I see him. He's big.

He's not big. Oh, I see him. He's big. He's not big. How big do you think he is? Seven or eight feet. Nine to ten is when they start getting really thick. Pretty soon, we saw another alligator on the bank. This time, we were quiet enough and didn't scare it off. He's behind those bushes and he doesn't see us right now. He doesn't know we're here right now. It's like you having your morning cup of coffee. He's just trying to relax and not be bothered. Oh, he's moving. There he goes.

Oh, I see him. He's coming right towards us. Dip down, come closer, and then pop back up right in front of you, too. Like if there was a deer drinking right here, he'd dip down, come right across, and then pop out right out of the water in front of him. So he's probably, what would you say, 20 feet from us? Yeah. 15? 20, 20, 30 feet. But he was interested when he heard the sticks.

As soon as he saw us, he went, oh, that's not food. I don't know what that is. I'm staying over here where it's safe. Wow. You'd never know he was there. So they're very sound sensitive. They're sound sensitive, and again, they're very shy. I mean, as soon as he knew we were around, what did he do?

He jumped right in the water. That's their nature. Now, it's different if you confront them in the water, because that's where they're comfortable at, and that's their home. But even in the water, their nature is to avoid people. Oh, there's a big one. That's a big one. Is this one right here?

That's not one's head, is it? Yeah, yep, that's the one right there. That's his head. It's his nose to the left, and you come back and see his eyes. The distance between the nose and the eyes is, what, about five, six inches? So he's about five or six foot. Whatever the inches is between their nose and their eyes is about how many feet they are. I've not found a gator yet that's not consistent, except for ones that have had their tail laid off.

Wow. So we're really in the thick of it now. Well, that's what I told you. I mean, the whole... They're everywhere. You just don't... You don't realize it. There's two I've seen right down through there,

and there's one laying in the water. There's three. Spotting gators is kind of like somebody that's addicted to playing the lottery for me. I just want to go a little bit farther, just one more, just one more time. Just a little bit more, around the next corner. At the end of the day, we'd learned a lot about alligators. An alligator can bite through steel.

It is one of the strongest bites of any living animal, second only to saltwater crocodiles. Their eyes glow in the dark. They reflect back red when light hits them. They're fast, by some accounts reaching 35 miles per hour. They've been known to climb trees and climb over tall barbed wire fences. A couple of years ago, one walked into a woman's house in Clearwater, Florida, known to climb trees and climb over tall barbed wire fences. A couple of years ago, one walked into a woman's house in Clearwater, Florida. I'm sorry, is it in your house? Yes.

Okay, you said it's in your kitchen? Yes. No one was hurt, and the alligator was safely captured, but several bottles of the homeowner's wine were smashed. I don't know why he wanted my red wine, but he got my red wine, the good stuff. Are you mad about the wine? Yes. Alligator attacks are rare. Attacks that result in death are incredibly rare. In Florida, an estimated 26 since 1948. But non-fatal attacks happen every year. But something that a alligator wrestler told me before I got bit was,

you never know how one second with that animal, one wrong second can change your life. In May of 2021, Jeffrey Heim was diving in the Myakka River near Tampa, Florida. So I put on my wetsuit and mask and fins and snorkel and everything at the river bank and everything's calm. It's a nice day. No wind. Nobody around the river except for a couple people that kayaked by and they saw me getting ready with my dive stuff and they were like, you're really getting in the water? I said, yeah. He was looking for megalodon shark teeth. Shark teeth that are anywhere between 2 million and 20 million years old. Some as big as seven inches long. He'd been to the Myakka River several times and usually had luck finding teeth there. It's considered a blackwater river, which means you have to have a light to be able to see. And even with the light, you got to be close to the bottom, the river bottom to be able to see anything that you're looking for. It's not that deep there. It's about eight feet to 15 feet,

but either way, it's the biggest challenge is the darkness. There's been one time in that river where I was just down for several hours and I came up and I realized it was nighttime and I had no idea because the water's that dark. There's no difference between night and day when you're down there. So I slip in the water, I go out to the middle and I drop down. I just see sand, sand, sand, and I'm looking for gravel where the fossils are. So I swim under, I keep seeing sand, and I start heading to the bank, and I go down and up a couple times, and then I take one last drop,

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knowing that Anthropic built Clawed with an emphasis on safety. The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. I felt like I got hit with a boat.

It came out of nowhere, no warning, completely behind me. And it was just so much force. I thought it was a huge boat with its propeller just slamming into me going 50 miles an hour. The next thing you know, I'm at the top of the water and I look and there's an alligator in front of me and we're looking at each other and she's staring at me, but I don't have any pain. I don't hear anything out of my left ear, and I feel the right side of my head. Something's wrong, so I reach behind it and touch it with my hand, and I feel my hair sideways, like sticking out horizontally, which was, I was like, that's bad, and I looked at my hand. It was covered in blood. I was like that's bad and I looked at my hand it was covered in blood I was like okay that's really bad and then she lunges at me and

I back away she just lunges and then stops we both stop and we look at each other and then she really lunges at me a lot more aggressively the second time and I back away a lot quicker the second time and I'm like I got to get out of here and my left ear is like ringing, still no pain, and I climb out of the water, and the bank's like six, seven feet high, so I climb up out of that. There was a restaurant not too far from where Jeffrey Heim had gotten in the water, and a couple happened to be walking to their car in the parking lot. Jeffrey was able to get their attention. They called 911 and started wrapping Jeffrey's head with a bandage

using a first aid kit from the restaurant. And there must be a lot of blood that's... We must be bleeding a lot. A lot, but I can't see it. I just know it's happening. I feel it. There's a lot of blood. And I'm tired. I'm about to pass out. And that's where I thought I was really going to die.

Jeffrey called his parents and told them what had happened. He says he almost passed out a few times. But the couple sitting with him kept him awake. Eventually, an ambulance arrived. He remembers joking with the EMTs. He still didn't feel any pain. What were your injuries? I had a skull fracture in my temple, 34 staples in my head,

and then three puncture wounds in my wrist, which became infected over the next couple days. My hand swelled up like a balloon because the bacteria, not only in that river, but in the gator's mouth are very dangerous, and I had everything go inside my wounds, no doubt, because I was underwater. So the alligator's jaws basically kind of went around part of your head.

Yeah, the side and the top of my head. There's that circular, it's a half circle shape on my head. You can see the snout. After several days in the hospital, Jeffrey was able to return home. He's been diving in the Myakka River a couple of times since. He's been careful to take precautions, like never diving alone. Do you think alligators are misunderstood at all? Yeah, I mean, all apex predators, I think, are. And I don't mean to have any of this scare people from alligators. I think we should

respect them. We should never kill them outside of what's legal. They are an important part of our ecosystem. But I think the respect and the understanding of their role in the environment is important. So it shouldn't be as much of a fear as it is a respect. We asked Detective Mark Weaver what advice he had for dealing with alligators. Don't walk your dog near the water's edge, first of all. They love dogs. That's a little snack. And gators will hunt by laying under the water right near the edge of a pond or a canal and they can launch five six feet out of the water's edge easily

and you can't see down the water usually the sun's glaring on it the water is murky and you don't realize that six inches under the water they're laying right there and they can see out perfectly fine so walking right next to the water's edge is not a wise idea. Otherwise, it'd be rare that a gator's coming towards you. The only time a gator's coming towards you is if it's been used to people and being fed by people, which is one of the main reasons it's highly illegal to do that. And what you do when you illegally feed a gator is you essentially give that gator a death sentence because eventually someone's going to call that in and law enforcement is going to come out fishing game and see that that gator's coming right up to them coming towards them looking for a handout and that

type of aggression unfortunately we have to deal with and so they're going to end up removing and euthanizing that gator you, so that people don't get hurt. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission runs something called the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Hotline. Residents are encouraged to call the hotline if they see an alligator over four feet long and feel like it's a threat to people, pets, or their home. The hotline will then send a trapper out to help remove the alligator. But they also advise, if an alligator isn't threatening you, just leave it alone. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.

Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Samantha Brown, and Libby Foster. Our technical director is Rob Byers. Engineering by Russ Henry. Thank you. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation, Botox Cosmetic Adipotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing,

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