Endless Thread - Ballerina in the Sky

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

This is the story of a shocking event that sent Endless Thread producer Quincy Walters, and countless others, down a disturbing and fascinating rabbit hole about a small, daring group of people called wing walkers and a woman who wanted to live her life "to its optimum."

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Hey, Emery. Hey, Quincy. Hey, Ben and Amory. Producer Quincy Walters, you are going to be our pilot today, wink, wink, and we're doing a story that's been on your radar for a pretty long time now. Yeah, it's a story that's a story that's been on my mind for nearly a decade, and if I had to quickly summarize it to hook your

interest, I tell you that it's an unusual love story and a story about an incident that a bunch of people, including me, can't forget. And one of the other people is Mo doused. Okay, well... Nine years ago, Mo was at an air show in Dayton, Ohio. So, like, one of those things where you watch... planes do stuff. Exactly. Military planes, private planes.

And so Mo saw this thing happen. And he's been writing a song about it ever since. I saw a ballerina in the sky. So beautiful and all how she could fly. As graceful as a swallow in the air. performing feats that you would ever day. Another person at the same air show was Rock Scobo, and he's also been working on a very different project ever since that day.

For people to actually see a part of their original airplane, there's very little else here in this big pile of junk that can be recognizable as her airplane. sorting through what's good and what's bad, it takes a little bit of time, but it's the meticulous detail of putting together the new plane that really takes the time. So you take it right down to the fine line between living and dying. Sometimes this is what happens. Mo and Rock and many others involved in this story are part of a scattered community of people

whose memory of this event continues to exist online years after. it happened. And it feels like every year or two there's another development or somebody comes back to reflect, a new piece of content. And I think I maybe have consumed all of it or a lot of it. How did you first hear about this incident at the air show? Honestly, the YouTube algorithm did it, I think. And I was also compelled by this idea of a tragic accident and a plane called Aurora that some people wanted to see fly again. There was a crowdfunding effort and an internet rabbit hole that I went down about this incredibly rare, extremely brave group of people called Wing Walkers. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Siebertson. And I'm Quincy Walters.

And you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today, ballerina in the sky. Quincy, you're a bit of an aviation obsessive. Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's accurate. I, you know, when I was a kid, I loved aviation. I wanted to be a pilot. I had model airplanes. I built all kinds of aircraft out of Lego, some real stuff and ones from my imagination. and my parents would buy me World War II model planes, and they would take me to air shows. And believe it or not, my first story on public radio

was about me taking a ride in a B-17 flying fortress. Oh, yeah, totally know what that is. Yes, go on. Okay. So it's a, you know, a World War II bomber. Got it. The fuselage of this World War II bomber freaks and whines a sweet taxi,

the runway. The 70-year-old flying fortress was delivered in 1945, but he never saw combat. Instead, the B-17 carried cattle and fought fire ends. I haven't attained my aviation dreams, uh, you know, but YouTube's algorithm has clocked my interest. And I always get a steady stream of various aviation-related videos, including videos of wing-walking. Okay, so Quincy, I sort of know the answer. answer to this a little bit. But how would you define wing walking? So anybody in the wing walking aviation community will start off by telling you what wing walking isn't. And they'll say that wing walking shouldn't be confused with wing riding. And now wing riding

is when, you know, a plane is on the ground and somebody, you know, fixes themselves to a wing. And they, you know, strap themselves on to a wing. The plane takes off. And they ride the the wing of the airplane. But wing walking, the distinction is that the person starts off in the cockpit of the plane. It's usually a biplane, the wings on top and bottom, open cockpit. And when the plane is in the air, the wing walker will get out of the cockpit and climb up to the top wing and strap themselves in and pose, and then they'll go to a different position all without, you know, a rope or tether. This is the stuff of nightmares, is what you're saying.

I don't like flying. I think you both know that. I don't love it. I don't like heights. And I can only sort of imagine what it is that you're talking about, but I think we should watch a little bit of it. Yeah, I've got a wing walking video you can watch. Oh, good.

Oh, no. Whoa, okay, she has her legs wrapped around one of the bars that, like, connects the top wing to the bottom wing. And she just dangled from the, from the bars. I hate that. Oh, she's not done yet. The watch is curved repositioned. The left-hand side of her. She'll box you.

So she's just sitting on the wing. I mean, I don't mean just, but she's sitting on the wing. Oh, no. The plane has turned pretty much 90 degrees. Oh, God, she's hanging off the bottom wing upside down. And then the plane turns upside down. Yeah, that's her signature move. So I know this is super rare to do this, right?

Like I went down my own little rabbit hole on this topic a few days ago and saw something saying that there were maybe only like 12 or 13 people in the world who actually do wing walking. Is that right? Yeah, Ben, that's that's right. You know, I think there might be more wing riders than wing walkers. Okay. It's such a sort of, you know, harrowing activity that not a lot of people do it. It's definitely fewer than 20, probably close, closer to, you know, 10. But wing walking started in the early 20th century. I think the first, you know, recorded wing walk

attempt was in like, you know, 1918. Wow. Wait, when was, when did flight start? Have we been wingwalking as long as we've been flying? Yeah. So it wasn't long after Kitty Hawk, you know, the Wright brothers first flight, that people started doing interesting things with air. airplanes, like wingwalking. And over the decades, the number of wing walkers hasn't really changed all that much, but some of the regulations around it have, like in the 1930s when the U.S. government made it illegal to do wing walking below 1,500 feet. Oh, you got to go higher. Okay, fair. Exactly. But, well, and that kind of, you know, put a damper on the sport because, you know, the human, I can't really, you know, perceive all the sort of intricacies happening above 15,100 feet.

So. Yeah, this is definitely a binoculars necessary kind of spectacle. Right, right. So I'm not necessarily sure if the law reverted, but wing walking is still a thing. In its heyday, you know, people would add to it where they would, you know, be on the wing of the plane and, like, transfer to a train or a car. And then later on, it kind of like developed into transferring over to another plane or walking onto another plane while still in the sky. But in the late 90s, early 2000s, we get a wing walker by the name of Jane Wicker. Jane Wicker, the wing walker. Yeah, she was one of the few people to free walk. So you have wing walkers and then you have people who free walk, which, you know, the numbers dwind.

a little bit to where, you know, she's going to different parts of the wing and different parts of the plane without, without any kind of tether or anything and doing different poses. It's quite harrowing stuff. I'm Jane Wicker, and I am going to do some good old-fashioned barnstorming. Well, there she is. I have a feeling this one's going to give you some vertigo, Amory. Oh, God. Okay, she's crawling on top of the top wing because there's like two layers of wings.

Oh, no. She's standing straight up on top of the top wing. Is she connected to the wing? When she's getting into position, she'll get on the top wing and strap herself in and do a few poses, and then the plane will get into a different position, and she'll unstrap herself,

and there's nothing connecting her at that time. This is madness. This is Jane Wicker, and Jane Wicker has a very interesting, I guess, introduction into wing walking. She enjoyed aviation for most of her life, but she was a budget analyst at the FAA. But she went from, you know, budget analysts to, you know, being one of the best, I guess, most sought after wingwalkers in the aviation. world. My name is Elizabeth Summer. I am a wing walker at the flying circus. I have a long list of things. I am a flight attendant. I am a private pilot as well. Yeah. All things flying, right? Elizabeth or Beth met Jane Wicker in 1990. They both answered the same classified ad in the Washington

Post for the Virginia-based Flying Circus Air Show, looking for people interested in in wing walking, no experience necessary. But talent, star power, Beth says Jane was a natural. Just beautiful, beautiful lady, beautiful smile, very charismatic, captivating. Beth is actually responsible for introducing Jane to the pilot who would take her wingwalking career and her life, for that matter, to New Heights. I introduced her to Kirk. He was recently divorced.

and I met Jane when we were wing walking and training. And I just thought I should introduce them. They both had a heart for aviation. And so we were at our annual balloon festival evening party with the balloonist. And I introduced them. And the rest is history. It was a great match. I took her out flying and we did all the aerobatics and fun stuff.

This is Kirk. And so I said, are your belts on tight? She goes, yeah. And I rolled the airplane upside down about 50 feet off the ground. She's screaming and hollering and just absolutely, I thought blood curling screams. That's it. That'll be the last date I ever have. And I rolled right side up, and she goes, do it again, do it again.

And I said, I'm going to marry you. And I did. Kirk Wicker pilots a barnstorming byplane, dubbed the beast. During the air show season, his wife transforms into beauty. So you heard the announcer there say barnstorming, which I actually looked up and learned was this way in which airplanes were kind of marketed to Americans

in the early days of flight. So pilots would perform stunts at these barn events around the country in the roaring 20s, I guess, Amory and Quincy. That's right. I think that was around the time they were doing it. And they were showing off their skills and really showing people who were skeptical of flying that it was cool and not scary. And wing walking was, I guess, a part of that,

Quincy? Yeah, Ben. And what? Wingwalking is supposed to show that flight is cool and not scary. Yeah. Basically, yes. Yeah. It's supposed to sort of like normalize the, I guess, fantasticalness of flight. Yeah. Not only airplanes, no big deal. There's a guy climbing around on that plane while it's flying. Look at him. If he can do that, you'll be fine getting in a plane.

Not into it. They gave people airplane rides, which was also like a big part of it. Huh. Yeah. And like I said, you know, this is kind of like new technology. And and for like around this time, for the most part, airplanes

were, you know, used a lot. in war, you know, World War I. Sure. So this, you know, kind of brought a sort of,

I guess it's described as like one of the, um, formal, I guess, events of civil aviation. Huh. So Kirk and Jane were continuing this tradition decades later as a married couple.

They got hitched in 1993. And they were a team. But a wing walking partnership. much like a marriage takes work and guts and trust. If you think of how a ballet dancer goes out and practices and practices to have that perfect performance, that's what we did. And, you know, we went through everything, you know, and trained for it, just like we were going to go out and perform in front of a live audience on a stage. And all of that training paid off because to the windward, walking community, Kirk and Jane were like the king and queen of the sky.

I did not realize there was such a thing or that anyone would aspire to be such a thing. Exactly. I don't think a lot of people grow up, you know, imagining that. But Kirk and Jane received a royal welcome wherever they performed. So we would literally walking down the fence draft session and signing autographs for people. I mean, we'd be out there for three and a half hours. And Jane just loved to interact with the kids. That was her thing. That fed our ego more than going out there and letting the people see all these wild and crazy, unusual things that you don't normally see people do.

Doing that for the younger generation and putting hopes and dreams into their head of maybe being able to go out and do something like this, that's kind of cool. And that's what we like to touch on. And that's what Jane really focused on. We're the kids. And somehow in the midst of all their training and performing, Jane and Kirk had a couple kids of their own. Jane Wicker is a picture of the typical suburban wife and mother,

with one notable exception. Jane is an extreme thrill seeker. Back in the early 2000s, Jane was featured on a segment of the Learning Channel about Daredevils. I get bored very easily, and I'm the kind of person that will rearranged furniture every day or, you know, I start one project and then I get tired of it and I get into something else and I need to be constantly stimulated. In the video from TLC, Jane says there's a common misconception that she has a death wish, but she says the opposite is true.

I have a wish to fulfill my life to its optimum and experience as much as I can. And if I was to sit on my rocking chair, it'd be kind of a pretty boring lie. I will not do anything where I think that there is even the smallest chance that something could go wrong. And so we practice for the bad things, and she had enough faith in me. And she told me, you know, flat out, she goes, no matter what has ever happened between us, you are the best pilot I could ever imagine they're being on this planet. Whatever has happened between them, Kirk says, because in 2002, he and Jane got divorced. Their romantic relationship was grounded.

But as pilot and wing walker, they were destined to soar again. Kirk had sold the plane they used, and it was hard for Jane to find a new one or a new pilot. But eventually, it was a new plane and the same old pilot who got Jane back off the ground. Let's wave some encouragement, everybody, to Jane Wicker, who was going to give you. In a YouTube video from 2011, we see a video of Kirk and Jane doing their harrowing routine at the Flying Circus Air Show where they met. You have to really know your airplane's envelope. And Kirk Wicker, for those of you, Kirk Wicker fans, he's checked out and supplied 130 different airplanes. The duo's new plane, a beautiful, bright,

yellow, white, and red, refurbished biplane, they called Aurora, the Latin word for dawn. Chosen by Jane, she said, because it was her new dawn of wing walking. It had a special inverted fuel system that made it possible to fly upside down. I don't know about you guys, but I have a list of things I never want to do, like drive a tractor trailer, um, I shave my head, and now I'm going to add flying upside down. firmly on the list. It's one of the very, very best wing-walking pilots in the world, Kurt Wicker, doing the flying. Jane Wicker, ladies and gentlemen, she is one of the best.

So it's two years later the morning of June 22nd, 2013. It's a Saturday, and Jane Wickers getting ready to perform at the air show in Dayton, Ohio, and a local news station WDTN interviews her about her act. The too dramatic things I do is I hang underneath the airplane by my feet and we roll upside down while I'm doing that. All right, we're going to talk more with you if you can stay with us because there's a very interesting fact coming up. You're not going to believe who her pilot is.

It's her ex-husband. And at this time, her mechanic and crew chief is her new fiancé, Rock Scobo, also an aviator. And the plan is for Rock and Jane to get married on her new plane, Aurora. So the ex flies her plane. The new guy fixes her plane. And they're both just trying to keep her happy. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting, I guess, to say the least. And in April of 2013, the three talked about their, you know, unique dynamic on the Florida Aviation Network. Oh, my God. So we're one big happy family. Big happy family. So, you know, when I'm up there flying Jane, he's making sure that the airplanes, you know, in great shape because he wants to make sure she gets back okay because he cares very deeply for her. I'm caring for her because she's the mother of my children and I don't want to see anything happen to her. We love what we do.

And, you know, personality-wise or personal issues aside, it's like, That's past. And, you know, this is a great example of, you know, you can get along. You can work together. You know, you can get past anything. Anything like death-difying aerial acrobatics without a parachute. And Jane's wing-walking act back then was truly a one-of-a-kind thing to behold. And Kirk and Jane talked about pulling off her signature move, the on top of the world maneuver,

the one we saw in the videos where Jane goes from hanging upside down, from the plane's wing to sitting on top of it when the plane turns upside down. Having her out on the wing does create a lot, well, not, not, a lot of drag. Be careful. I have to deal with aerodynamic drag. I have to deal with the weight. And my right leg and my right arm probably get a lot stronger during air show season because I have to carry a lot of right rudder. a lot of right aileron as she goes out on the left side.

But we've been doing this for so long together that we can kind of look at each other. I can tell by his eyes. We can look right at each other's eyes and know exactly what's going on. That six cents where you don't really need to talk. Back to the air show in Dayton, Ohio. Our songwriter from earlier Moe was there with his wife. It was a little subdued because the military demonstration,

which Mo came all the way from Canada for, was not going to happen. We went anyway, and but something was different. Jane was not performing with her usual pilot, Kirk. Even though his name was probably still on the program, it just so happened that Kirk had a last-minute work thing come up, so the plane was being flown by another pilot, Charlie Schwenker.

And just a heads up, some of what I'm about to play for you is pretty, disturbing. Hanging upside down on a barbell or something, the strength to get right. We were probably, I don't know, I'm going to guess, 50 yards away. So we could see very, very clear the end. And what you could see is Aurora wowing the crowd by flying close to the ground, making tight turns. And sure enough, Jane is hanging upside down from the wing.

And then you have to fight the wind, and then you have to get yourself back up right. Now, you think that Jane is going to disappear from us. Now, she's still on that far side. Keep an eye on Jane. Hang it down. Watch this, Jane Wicker, sitting on top of the world. But then, suddenly, the plane drops out of the sky, slams into the ground, and immediately explodes in a fireball.

A wheel flies up in the air. Mo and his wife watched the whole thing up close. I just couldn't believe what I was, what my eyes were seeing. It was, it was almost in slow motion. Like, literally, like, you just can't believe what you're seeing. We're going to ask, ladies and gentlemen, number one, that you turn your kids away from the scene.

Number two, don't try to help. We're going to send folks on the way to get to the scene as quickly as possible. Number three. I remember distinctly. I turned away. I couldn't look. I just, I think I uttered something like, oh, my God, no, or something like that.

Now, Rob Ryder and I, along with the air show officials, will be keeping you posted of what's happening to the best of our ability. We will keep nothing from you. And again, Rob said, please stay off of the... Wow. The plane's dropping from the sky is so quick. It's so fast. It's like she's up, she's up in the air, and then the plane just plummet sideways and... Yeah, my first introduction to Jane Wicker was through this very violent YouTube video.

And like you said, it's jarring. One of those things that gets seared into your memory forever or a really long time, something where you see someone living and then not. Yeah, I mean, I've seen this and I've seen some things like this on the internet, and it does have a kind of you can't go back vibe after you watch it. It's hard to forget. Right. And I wrestled with whether or not I should mention this, but there are a lot of videos and high resolution photos showing the moment of impact that have been posted online. They're on YouTube, Reddit, the recent. shut down gory video site Live leak. They're horrible and haunting, but they're also the reason why so many people,

myself included, know about this crash and why the story of Jane Wicker has continued to live online. Wow. For this to be your introduction to Jane Wicker, I'm really glad that you went back and found this whole story of who she was, what is wing walking? Because you look at something like this,

and it just looks like, it looks like something gone very, very wrong, and clearly it is, but knowing what we know now, having the introduction to her that we have had by hearing just the experience and the training and the relationships all wrapped up in this, and then to see it go in,

seconds is really, really chilling. What I want you to do now, especially if you're with children, simply turn around, simply go back to the ground display and relax, if you would. Maybe a big job that you hear from me, but that's the best thing you can do, especially if you have children. There is entertainment out in the ground display area. I found out through a friend who was at the air show that day. He sent me a text.

Do you know Jane Wicker and Charlie Schwenker? And I thought, this is really weird. Why is he texting me that? Jane's friend Beth was at work as a flight attendant, and she had just gotten cell phone service back after landing in Chicago, far away from the Dayton Air Show. And then he told me, as you can imagine, And it was just breathtaking.

And I never got to see her wingwalk with her new aircraft. And it didn't take long for some people on the internet to speculate that Jane's ex-husband pilot intentionally crashed the plane, a classic, you know, jilted lover conspiracy theory. But it was Charlie Schwenker in the cockpit. Right. And Charlie had flown Jane before. But, you know, Kirk was about to head to the airfield to meet back up with Jane, looking forward to flying her as usual. And I was going to be there to fly her on Sunday.

And I was literally walking out the door of my shop. And that's when I got the call that the accident had occurred and kind of put everything into a whirlwind type situation for me. The Jane Wicker story could have ended there, but thanks to the people who loved her, it doesn't. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity. to get you the answers.

And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader.

Recruit new talent. reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Mo Doused, the songwriter we heard from at the top, is still processing the death of Wingwalker Jane Wicker musically. Ballerina, please don't go. It's much too soon, no, please don't go. On that hot Ohio day, you took my heart.

and breath away. You thrilled me with your lofty dance. Touched my soul, held me in your trance. Your valley then came to... I've rewritten the song so often because I just wasn't quite happy with it. It didn't... It didn't...

The emotion and the feeling of the whole thing. And my final version, you can actually, if you close your eyes, you can flying up... And then there's Rock, her crew chief, her mechanic, and her fiancé, who's left to pick up.

up the pieces and put them into his garage. This is a fuel tank in the Jane's airplane. And as you can see, it's pretty well destroyed. This is a tail wheel. The tail wheel on Jane's airplane is still usable. The whole back part of the fuselage is a lot of the parts are still usable there. So at the end of 2013, Rock started a crowdfunding effort. I know that Jane would have wanted me to rebuild this.

airplanes, so I'm going to rebuild it. And hopefully that'll, I can move on with that. Then again, I might remind me of it too much and maybe I'll have to, you know, sell it or Rock told me a few years back that he had $125,000 invested in this effort. He was looking for $50,000 more. A Facebook page Save Aurora has helped and drawn monthly contributors to the cause.

The task of rebuilding the plane seems like it weighs heavy on him. And like so many people I've talked to about Jane, he's in this sort of gray area of trying to move on and still trying to carry on her legacy and the legacy of Aurora. Jane's old wing-walking friend was trying to figure it out for a while too, and she had every reason not to want to wing-walk again. In the year 2000, her brother died in a plane crash during a flight lesson. A year later, on September 11th, she lost several friends who were flight attendants on the plane that was flown into the Pentagon.

So I went from loving aerobatics to being a nervous flyer. But then, in 2018, five years after Jane died, Beth got back out on the wing. just as she was turning 50. I fully believe that, you know, God put us here to live this life. And I'm going to live this life. I'm living it for two people. I'm living it for me and my brother.

And, you know, when I'm up on that top wing, I just feel so much joy. And I just always think about my brother. and I just always ask God if Mike gets to peek down that he gets to see me what I'm doing. And I just can imagine he would be smiling, you know. Let's watch Beth as she climbs out to the end of the wing. Out to the end of the wing. No parachute, no safety rope.

Beth is glad to be back in the air, whether someone's watching from above or below. But she thinks Jane Wicker achieved heights that few will ever reach. I mean, hey, what we do is pretty fabulous. But what she did was just amazing. You know, she was a pro. Jane's ex-husband and longtime pilot Kirk Wicker says that he stopped flying acrobatically right after the accident. He didn't want to risk their two sons losing both of their parents. but he still thinks about that day.

Without a doubt, if I was flying her, she'd still be alive. I just want to quantify that. I'm not degrading the pilot that was flying her. Matter of fact, he had my total blessing. He was a very good, very experienced pilot. And to be flying the mother of my children, you had to have some damn good skills. He just made a mistake.

Mistakes happen. But, you know, it's just quite unfortunate that it happened. And being, you know, that my kids and all and myself, you know, we were all deeply affected by it, but we got to live. The National Transportation Safety Board agrees with Kirk, by the way. They concluded the crash was a result of pilot error, specifically too tight of a turning radius while Jane was changing position on the wing. I should mention, though, that none of this has deterred one of Jane's own sons from trying to get his pilot's license. Wow. Quincy, where do you land on this?

You got served up this video by the YouTube algorithm because you were interested in flying. But has Jane Wicker's story changed how you think about aviation? I guess, you know, this fits into the, I guess, the grand story of, of aviation, that it's not all success. It's about people testing the capabilities of themselves and of machines they build and rebuild. And because of that, you know, accidents are going to happen. But people do a lot to, you know, prevent them from happening.

And it's also sort of interesting to know that I'm not the only one who's been thinking about Jane Wicker all this time and who hasn't been able to get this out of my mind. Because on the YouTube videos, you see comments that were posted recently about people who were there who saw it years ago and they can't get it out of their mind. And to Moe Douse writing and rewriting his ballerina Please Don't Go song, I don't feel like as much of a weirdo for being so captivated by the story for all these years. And nor should you. Aviation is already a daring feat of humanity, right?

Wing-walking is pushing the envelope on that idea even further with even greater risks. And with all things that are risky, it really comes down to whether you let those risks ground you or you take flight in spite of them. Quincy, thanks a lot for bringing us the story of Jane Wicker. Thanks for letting me tell it. Endless Thread is a production of WB. in Boston. Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content.

You can join our email list. You will find it at wbUR.org slash endless thread. This episode was written and produced by Quincy Walters, and it's hosted by us, Amory Severson. And Ben Brock Johnson, mix and sound design by Emily Jenkowski. Editing by Maureen McMurray, additional production from Dean Russell and Nora Sacks. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities

and the coolest high-five you ever got. If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbUR.org.