Doomed to Fail - Ep 136 - Cave of Doom: John Jones & Nutty Putty Cave

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Let's talk about one of the worst ways to die... there are chances you've seen this graphic of how John Jones was stuck in Nutty Putty Cave... but did you know he's still there? A young father with another on the way, John made a wrong turn in Utah's Nutty Putty Cave and ended up head down in a crevice that was impossible to get him out of. For over 24 hours rescuers tried to get him out in vain, in the end John's body is forever entombed in the cave. Listen to this one somewhere with a lot of space so you can move your arms!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Taylor, your chipper is ever. I am. Just a happy chipper person. No, you know me.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, what I have to tell you that I haven't just told you? the past two minutes. There's nothing. There's nothing like. It's like an old married couple being like I was afraid of nothing to talk about.

I don't know. I just talked to you for seconds like, oh, you're still here? No, no, that's good. That's good. So why don't you do this? Why don't you go ahead and introduce us? I have a really interesting story today. Yay.

Cool. I'm excited. Welcome to Doom to Fail. We are the podcast that brings you twice weekly. History is most notorious failures and greatest disasters. I am Taylor, joined by Fars. And Faris has something exciting to share with us today. Yeah, it's a really fun story.

No, it's not fun. It's a horrible story. It's a really good doom to fail story, though. Like, it actually, like, hits on all cylinders for what the premise of the show is supposed to be. And it's also terrifying. And really, the, the starting point for even looking against this, was just, like, think about the worst possible ways of, like, dying. Like, one of the worst conceivable ways. And I stumbled on a story.

And, uh, I think it might have to be. in the top five worst ways i've ever heard anybody dying so that's what we're going to talk about today cool so for us not for yeah yeah not for this poor guy whose name is john edward jones and it has to do with his ultimate demise and fate in a cave in the caving systems of utah so uh so let's get into what this cave actually is so as a starting point uh this uh this this cave in Utah. It's called Nutty Puddy Cave. It was discovered in 1960 by a guy named Dale Green. It would be funny if his name was, if his name was Dale Muddy Puddy. So it is a stupid name, but the reason it's a stupid name is because the texture of what's inside

of it is this like clay stuff that's like silly Puddy. And originally he was actually going to call it silly Puddy. Then he thought that that's too stupid. And so he just won't with Nutty Puddy. deal nutty buddy um so because of the way the cave was formed and again kind of like the texture i mentioned earlier it's like a super craggy rocky nightmare on the inside of it and it also given the fact that it's full loose mud it's like kind of like a fun place to go uh there's a lot of slides built into it also it's only 1400 feet long so you can kind of explore it in like a chill sunday basically so as a result that this became Utah's most popular cave attraction. Some

reports said in the initial phase of when it was first discovered it was attracting 25,000 visitors a year. Eventually they cut down to like 5,000 or so visitors a year. But in 2004, a group of Boy Scouts went into the cave and one of them, this 13 year old boy, he got stuck in a part of the cave known as the birth canal. So he ended up needing professional, yeah, he ended up needing professional rescuing

which did occur but it also resulted in the cave being closed to public out of safety concerns. So due to, this is 2004. So due to public demand, the state agency

that owns and is responsible for the cave, they decided to reopen it on May 18th of 2009. They said they took safety precautions and that's why they're going to reopen it. But really it just sounds mostly that people were just fucking pissed off

that this thing was closed and like, fine, we'll open the cave. We know it's the most popular cave in the city or the state. All they do is they mean, did like permits it was like how's a permit going to save you like just supply you just pay the $17 for the permit anyways so let's get into the layout of nutty putty cave so the main entrance

to the cave is just a hole in the ground and it's a 15 feet shaft that you climb down to get to the fore of the cave upon entering the cave you would run into what's called the big sloth which is literally a 45 foot long slide section that you can literally slide down it's like nature is trying really hard to tell you not to do that with the 15 foot drop that would break your legs if you fell like nature's like don't come in here I'm going to make it really hard and scary so like don't do it if people do it anyway Taylor I you know I was Googling caverns and caves that you can explore in Texas and I think I might have to do this um that's cool I think that we should to start a new podcast called Underground with Taylor Rivers

and I'll go underground in cities and you go underground in caves and then see who dies first. You know what's funny as you bring that up because I was researching this cave that's in like 20 minutes from where I'm at right now and I was researching it and it's like a really popular attraction and people go there all the time.

But it had mentioned that parts of the cave just opened because sinkholes form underneath it. How do you know it's not going to happen when you're on top of it? thousand percent anyways um okay so you get this big slide section and it's literally literally a slide and um after exploring that is where most people who are just recreational touristy kind of people they'll call it quits and how to the cave if you want to keep going you can go down a section that i mentioned earlier the birth canal so

birth canal once and that's it never again uh so this was a super tight passage that was like very claustrophobia inducing and it was mostly reserved for more experienced cavers that's the premise here so our main person for this event uh again this guy named john edward jones he was an adventurous guy he'd been caving a lot he hadn't actually been to nutty putty before but his family's been been there and done then so he he's of the class of individuals who's an adventure secret i would call him he was 26 years old in 2009 and a medical student who was married to a woman named Emily who was pregnant and he had also just had his first daughter, Lizzie. So, yeah, he was, he went to school in Virginia, but his family lived in Provo, Utah, and that's why they were there because this all was going down on November 24th.

So they were there for Thanksgiving. They were there to announce to his parents that they were pregnant again. she was only two months pregnant and so that was an entire point so he and a group of friends including his brother they decide they want to go explore nutty putty and despite not having personal experience with nutty putty

other people in his group had been there before and so he felt like he could take it like I said he was an adventurous guy and he decided that he wanted to go through that challenging section called the birth canal so this part of the cave tightens down to about

18 inches and it pins the person's arm to their sides and makes it like a very, very slow route where you kind of are exhaling air out of your chest so that you can keep going deeper, which is like a bad sign. That's a bad sign. So John starts going down the birth canal head first with his arms pinned to his side and he's a relatively big dude. He's over six feet tall. He's 200 pounds.

and so this was a pretty tight squeeze for him. He gets to a point where he realizes he can't actually go any further. It was just too tight, and it's at this point he realizes that he also can't go backwards anymore. He was stuck, nearly completely upside down vertical, in a pocket that was 10 inches wide and 18 inches high. This was the scene as was described by people who later would find him, say it looked like he was swallowed by the,

the rock so here's a problem uh john wasn't in the birth canal john was in a section of the cave nobody went to it was known as ed's push it had been explored by this guy in in 2000 named ed martineau who was a professional caver it was essentially a no-go zone he took the wrong turn he was trying to get to the birth canal and he went one step further and went down this section that was largely unexplored so john's brother josh who was with him discovered him in this upside down position and he tried to push him out he like put his feet up again he went in feet first instead of head first and so he was trying to use his feet to kind of like push his foot up a little bit and then maybe like like leg press him up he moved him

a little bit wasn't enough he talked to his brother trying to calm him down and then he makes a make a break for it and he calls um rescue services and around 100 people assemble an hour and a half after they'd first send to the cave to try and rescue John. So initially the rescue was, let's just try and pull him out. That obviously was not working. Then they decided, hey, why don't we try and destroy the rocks around him with explosives or with chipping through? And then it was determined that doing that was likely to cause potentially the cave collapsing

or otherwise killing John even more quickly. they decided that they were going to start using a rope and pulley system to to go through to tie rope and police system from outside all the way to John to try and pull them out that way. So this was a problem given how tight the passageway was. And it was said that to construct the pulley system itself took about an hour for each piece of equipment to move from the top to where it had to be a fix for John to be able to kind of get wenched out. so how long does it take to get there like how far in is he he was i think he was 190 feet from the entrance something like that okay yeah yeah it wasn't far but you just couldn't do anything i mean if you saw so one picture i saw one of the rescuers john's not in it but one of the rescuers took a picture and he has his hand in front of him like this like if anybody like is stretching like

their fingers from side of side and he's touching the ceiling and the floor of the cave at the same time. So there's no maneuverability is a problem. Only six of the over 100 people were actually able to get to John. With the most consequential one being a woman named Susie Motola, who was pretty small. She was five foot three. So she was the one who could more easily get to him.

She was with the sheriff's search and rescue team. And basically she was there to assess his situation. And really to offer emotional sports, this guy was like in distress like in really really bad distress as you can imagine yeah yeah yeah it was quickly determined that like i said chipping away the rocks um around john wasn't wasn't going to be an option either because there just wasn't that much time so by the time they had finished putting together this rope and pulley system he was down there for around 20-ish hours or so and at this point it was excruciatingly painful like all the blood in his head all

the blood in his body his legs had no blood in it and I listened to this one doctor talking about which was your body's just not built to live like that. It can't live in that position. So what they ended up doing was they ended up

instructing this police system and they fixed the rope to John's like to kind of try and hoist him out. They were able to get him up a little bit and it was enough where they kind of like winch him out up a little bit. It was enough for them to be able to kind of give him some water

They could, you know, attach communication devices to him so that he could talk to people better than being with his face down in the rocks. They couldn't go much further because his feet were hitting the ceiling. The ceiling above him was only 12 inches above where his feet were. And so while they were assessing what to do, the police system ripped and it dropped John back down. The break actually also shattered the jaw of a rescuer who was standing next to it. and it also almost severed his tongue to make matters worse for John when they dropped him back in

they didn't drop him back in the pulley broke but when he was dropped back in he landed further and at this point he's fully on his head so if you look at pictures of him originally he is uh you can't see pictures it's schematics you can't see an actual picture of him thank God but um

he's actually his head's down on the rock it's his chest that's being compressed his shoulders in his chest or what's wedged in there. But this time, he fell further in, and his head was on the rock as well. Oh, God. So by this point,

things are getting more and more desperate. Like I said, the doctor that was consulted in the scene said that you could reasonably expect a human being to stay alive for eight hours in this position, and we're like around hour 20 or so. Wow. The only other option they could think of

was just break his legs. They just break his legs. Right. and then rope him out that way or pull him out that way and they were determined that if we did that he's going to die anyways he's going to die of shock

and horrible agony because his body's not doing good like if this if they thought to do that originally then it could have worked because his body wasn't so weak that he couldn't handle the breaking the legs

but at this point they're like if we do this he's going to go into shock and kill him and then it was determined really like they decided like look rescuing him is impossible like it's literally impossible there's nothing that can be done at this point all they could really do was talk to him to kind of alleviate his despair um they had his family

there like on the outside of the cave talking to him through like a radio and um his last words were to his wife he said i love you and then he died 27 hours after getting stuck on november 26 which was thanksgiving day oh my god so he was pronounced dead only because somebody went in there and they checked his feet for a pulse, which I guess you can do. And it was like, yeah, he died. They assumed, which is a fair assumption that he died of some level of respiratory distress and cardiac arrest because of how hard his heart was working. Officials concluded that rescue would be to take his body out of there would just be way too dangerous.

Like you're more likely to lose another person down there. We'd have to basically shred his body up just to get him out anyway. So why even bother doing this? We're just going to deliver a pile of bones to his family. They decided the best way to deal with this was basically to blow a rock formation in this part called Ed's push and just bury his body in the rubble, which is what they did. And then they poured concrete in the opening so that nobody can ever go inside. ever again is that scary yes he's just like his body's just like in there in case and concrete

yeah oh my god is that scary like just yeah that's so scary what are these pictures i'm googling what is real are any of these pictures real like the picture of him like smiling as just him in another part of the cave so picture of his boots sticking out is that real uh i haven't seen that john Edwards Jones. Let's see what you're getting. Uh, no. Wait, maybe that is real. Could that be real?

I don't know. I didn't think they would publish real pictures of that. Well, there's a couple different ones with, like, different feet, so who knows? I mean, they published a picture of the dead guy up on Mount Everest all the time, you know? Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I also know that they, um, they ripped up. off his jeans in the middle of this process or whatever pants he was wearing because

they thought at one point they thought they would just douse him in like oil like vegetable oil and maybe get him out that way and so they they undressed his top part that they could access um so any pictures of his legs if it if those are right it must have been early on so so what ended up happening um was So his wife, Emily Jones, she, like I said, she was two months pregnant when this all went down. She ended up giving birth to their child seven months later. She gave an interview and it was about five years after this incident happened where she'd mentioned that she'd resolved to never remarrying. Eventually, her brother introduced her to a friend of his named Donovan Sanchez.

They would marry four years after John's death. They would end up getting another, they would end up having another child together. and they I mean I look them up on Facebook they're on Facebook and they're like look like the sweetest the guy is a teacher for Teach for America

and she like runs a photography company and like illustrates children's books it's like very Mormon and like the Swedish yeah yeah yeah I thought this was interesting Donovan when he asked

when he was going to ask Emily to marry him asked Emily's parents and John's parents for their permission so that's sweet yeah what a horrible horrible, excruciatingly, unbelievably painful way to die.

I can't believe you even got in there. Like, what was he thinking? I don't want to blame the victim here, but like, what fuck are you doing? So what happens when you go down the birth canal is there's a spot where you can eventually turn around.

And that's what most people do. They go down to a certain section. And then if they wanted to, they go further towards what I think it's called the aorta. There's like another tight thing after the birth canal. But before you get to that section, it opens up so you can actually turn around and go back up the way you came and then get up to the big slide. They assume that's what he thought he was doing because he said he's going down the birth canal and then he kind of, he thought that that section where he was going into, Ed's push, was the last push before he was able to kind of turn around. So, yeah, bad, bad guess.

I hate it Yeah there's a movie they made about this I actually only learned about this Because I went to his widow's Facebook page And she had posted this movie I think it's called The Last Descent Yeah I see yeah I'm looking at it

It's like a Mormon Christian movie And like if you read the plot Part of it is a little bit spooky Because part of it is Because so many times he black out There's big chunks is where he was blacked out by the way like he was like he fade in and out of consciousness that he'd come to and like be aware of what's going on um but in the movie the plot that i read about it was that at one point he blacks out he wakes up

and he realized that he's like on top of the rock instead of inside of it and then he like turns around he goes outside and then he he realizes there's nobody there and he like oh my god i died and he realized he was dead and he goes back in the cave i was like man that's like a really I don't know, spooky Definitely haunt the shit out of that cave So creepy There's a body just sitting there But there's a really cool cave system

Near me And I think I'm gonna go check it out Okay It's free too I'm sure it's free It's free because someone's died there yet And it'll be $17 Yeah

What you're saying yeah let's let's hope they don't name a part of a cave after me I mean that's the interesting thing is like you take take out like an organ and you get named after an organ but you got to die in a cave to get named after the cave yeah yeah have you heard this story before I think I've definitely seen that like image before like see like the diagram of him just like totally upside down in there um yeah yeah the way his arms were pinned is uh i think it was his left arm was on his stomach

like he was just pushed into his stomach and then his other arm was behind him there's nothing he could god did he have the helmet light or was it dark no he had a helmet light yeah it doesn't it doesn't help that much i mean you're i know but like it was just like totally dark yeah yeah yeah it's a terrible story um but I mean, God, just, I would have just, I was thinking like, why didn't they just like, when they first found him, why didn't they just like inject him with something like knock him out and then break his legs? And then even if you just shred all his skin coming out of there on the rocks, and who gives a shit? Like, at least you're out. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think knocking him out, I mean, as a doctor, I think knocking him out makes sense. because I Wikipedia and appendixes earlier today I know a lot but I feel like that would make him like not tense up and easier to squish around

yeah yeah I think by the time they realized how dare the situation was or like everything we do is going to kill him it sounds from what I read of the rescue reports

that they were like we just knew this wasn't going to happen and he was still alive so we just tried but it wasn't we weren't going to get anywhere with this

I think we could have done what to kill them yeah luck to you in your kind of need yeah gotta make Thanksgiving rough going forward

I know for all it's gonna ruin the day someone had worked really freaking hard on like some appetizers that were never eaten and I was wondering that I was like

if it was me would I go back to just like snack on some ham could I would that be weird I think the next day could you have a turkey sandwich

because you have an entire turkey why not yeah I feel like you can but maybe after maybe just like the one and then later you'd be like I don't know, celebrate Thanksgiving in October.

Yeah, yeah. But, um, yeah, but, um, yeah, don't do, don't, don't, don't do that. Yeah, that's my story. Obviously, you've seen the descent, the, the, the descent a bunch. Oh, God. Yeah, like, one of the best war movies ever. Um, the part where she's in the, in that little tight spot, her friend goes, the worst thing that can happen to you was already happened to you.

You're going to, you have to get through this, you know? I'm like, what is this? How does this? What does this? What is wrong with you people? Yeah, yeah. Which is weird. It's like, you don't actually need to make that situation more scary. It's already pretty damn scary. Yeah. But I love those movies.

I know they're so good. The second one's pretty good, too. I don't know she has the second one. It's the same woman. She, like, comes back and just, yeah. Oh, yeah, and it's like, that's good. I think that maybe it was the last year. Um, sweet.

So, yeah, that's my story. we gave you two short ones today um but that's fine like maybe y'all will like short ones more than more than full length size whatever whatever let us know whatever we're tired all right we're so tired we we I went out last night my feet hurt a doll like dancing honestly like not even like I have very comfortable dancing shoes but my feet still hurt I mean they're very tall but um when I'm like out of of my house for like a day like my feet hurt just having to wear shoes like as I think because I just don't wear shoes very often yeah like I'm barefoot all the time and even though

we have like we have concrete floors but my husband wears inside shoes with like a foot pad and all the things but I never wear shoes no me neither I've noticed that like my big toe starts like the nail starts like hurting like it's like digging into my skin when I wear my my hokos I just want to stay home what is this you even put shoes on Taylor, I start to question whether we would have survived if COVID didn't happen, and we had to actually go to work again. I honestly don't know. That's such a big question.

And that alternate universe is not great. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Do you have anything to read off? I do.

All right. I do. I have a message from Nadine. We know how you and I were talking about where money goes for different charities? Yes. I'm just going to read this, the whole thing. It's like two paragraphs. She says, hello, I used to be a professional fundraiser and subsequently spent a lot of time studying philanthropy in general.

There's no clear way to define what actually goes to the cause. It sounds good on the surface, but it's essentially meaningless. I'm not sure people are picturing cash being handed directly to poor people or what, but this phrase has no definition. Would we count the salary of the food bank's cleaning staff as going directly to the cause? The cost of the desk, the mental health worker sits at, nobody knows it's a garbage measure. it would make more sense to judge organizations by effectiveness, but this is almost impossible to do. Again, no agreed upon measurements, super complex issues with myriad players, often the impacts are tough to trace in terms of causality, especially for advocacy, all of which eventually then need to become disillusioned with the whole shebang. Anthropathy is mostly a shadow government, but without even the accountability of elected leaders.

It gives rich people even more power than they already have about what issues to get love and is usually pretty ineffective. That's why you get a perspective, take it or leave it. I love it. I also heard this from this other podcast I listened to where the guy worked for the UN or something, and he mentioned how annoying it was to the actual people doing the work when, like, celebrities would get involved because they're like, and now we got to, like, all this work that we know to get prioritized in a certain way

we have to reach off the priority because now this other issue has the attention because Bono decides that he wants to write a song about it, you know? Right, totally. Like my sister works at Austin puts alive and the like post office did a thing or they made a stamp with a dog on it and they were like, we're going to announce it in your

parking lot and they were like, okay so they have to like do all this stuff. They had to like host this huge event and they're like don't care about your stamp. I'm not going to get any money for the stamp you know like everyone knows we love animals stop it but they had to do it you know yeah yeah let those people do their jobs and yeah thank them just thank them it's enough yeah sweet um yeah cool thank you nadine thanks everyone who listens and sends us this stuff we appreciate it doom to failpod at gmail dot com you could instagram message us facebook message us on all the

socials at doom to fail pod on youtube you can comment on our videos all that good stuff well said we want to hear from you awesome uh and uh yeah i guess that said thanks taylor