Every Town - A Truck Full Of Acid: Europe's Most Unsolved Mystery

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Every once and while you come across an unsolved mystery so tragic and strange, that the possibilities about what could have actually transpired splinter off into various factions. Each one has a piece of the truth, but never does the whole story emerge….which is why the case of Juan Pedro Martinez has become one of the more bizarre disappearances in Europe’s recent history. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Videos, Podcasts & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Every town has a dark side. Every once in a while you come across an unsolved mystery so tragic and strange that the possibilities about what could have actually transpired splinter off into various factions. Each one has a piece of the truth, but never does the whole story emerge, which is why the case of Juan Pedro Martinez has become one of the more bizarre disappearances in Europe's recent history. Hey guys, it's Andrew. Thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode of Everytown,

but today we're digging into the story of a missing child who literally vanished into thin air. Of course, something had to have happened to him, but the authorities are unsure what it was exactly, and there are many paths to look into. Let's head over to Spain, discuss the Somaciera Pass incident, aka Europe's strangest disappearance.

Andre Martinez was a typical blue-collar type of guy who worked as a truck driver in southeastern Spain. He was a hardworking family man, picking up long-haul drives all across the country, and night or day, he made sure to deliver. Outside of work, his wife Carmen and 10-year-old son Juan Pedro were the center of his world, and while financially the family didn't have a ton, their lives were rich in terms of them being tightly knit and doing everything within their means to keep one another happy. Which is why then, after Juan Pedro had finished school that year and had done very well with his grades.

His parents wanted to reward him with a trip. Andre had recently been assigned a job to go all the way up north for delivery in Bilbao, which was about an eight-hour drive away from their home. Since Juan Pedro had never been there, they figured this was a good chance to show him another part of the world, so the trio decided to head up there together and spend a few days checking out the area along the Atlantic Ocean

before coming back. It was a good chance for the family to spend some time together, and the drive itself is a beautiful one, that traverses up and down several mountain ranges. On the evening of June 24th of 1986, around 6 p.m. Andre picked up his truckload. It was around 5,000 gallons of sulfuric acid he'd be towing, and having done a lot of trips at night,

the family soon headed out on the road. That way Andre could get most of the drive, arrived done while Juan Pedro slept, and by late morning the following day, they could reach their destination. But unfortunately, none of them would make it there. The reason why has baffled everyone, including the authorities who have come across this case ever since. In June 25th, by around 5 a.m., the family had made it all the way north of Madrid,

close to the town of Somers Sierra. It's a beautiful area marked by gently sloping mountains and dense forests, and they had taken the scenic N1 highway, which is a two-lane road, that at times could take them through steep and narrow passageways, but it wasn't anything Andre hadn't done before. At around 5.30 a.m., they took a stop at the El Mano Roadside Restaurant to have a little bit of coffee and pastries before finishing off the drive. Winnesses say they left there at around 6 a.m., and within the hour, the case that Interpol is named one of the strangest disappearances in Europe would begin. As they traveled along Somo Sierra Pass, something very scary occurred as Andre's truck began to accelerate, speeding at a rate that went seemingly unchecked.

The witnesses on the road that early morning reported seeing the large red-and-black Volvo truck swerved to avoid hitting cars on its path. Even though it had just had to tune up and inspection, it appeared like the truck had lost its brakes. Speeding up on these thin-lained roads is dangerous in and of itself, but in a little-lane road. but in a large truck, it's a much worse situation, not just for those in the cab, but for anybody else on the road. Coming to a long down slope down the hill, Andre was picking up speed. 60, 65, 70 miles an hour. He ran one person off the road when he clipped the back of their car.

Further ahead, he swerved, took the side mirror off another vehicle. Now reaching in excess of 85 miles an hour, They were then coming up to a turn that there was no way to handle at those speeds. And that's when it happened. The heavy load sent them tipping onto their side, smashing into a ditch. There was a small explosion upon impact, and the load they were carrying, all that sulfuric acid came spilling out everywhere. It was a disaster, not something most people could survive. When emergency responders arrived, their first order, of course, was to check for any survivors.

They found Andre and Carmen in the cab, but it was nothing they could do to save them, as they had likely died upon impact. At this point, they had no idea that Juan Pedro had been with them as well, and since there was no sign of the boy whatsoever, they got to work cleaning up that acid. This was a huge spill, and if unchecked, the chemical would run down the sides of the mountain and make its way into the Durton River below, so it needed to act fast. Large undertaking was made with thousands of pounds of lung. lime being brought in and dumped to soak up the toxic chemicals.

In order to do it fast, a lot of people were brought in to home. Luckily, they managed to clean it up and all was good on that front. While that was happening, authorities looking inside the truck found some children's books, some little boy's clothing, and a kid's cassette player. And it was then that, for the first time, they realized that maybe there was a child along with a couple. And that notion would then be verified when Carmen's mother was called about the terrible news of her daughter passing, and she asked,

What about the boy? At this point, hundreds of people have been in and around the area cleaning up that mess, and not one of them had seen any sign of an injured child. A large-scale search effort began to find the boy, but they found nothing. They assumed that maybe he had been thrown from the vehicle, so they covered all that ground. And they then thought that maybe he was under the truck somewhere, but when they moved it, Still, there was nothing. And simply put, it appeared as though Juan Pedro had vanished into thin air. That's when they had the very scary and morbid thought, that perhaps he had landed in the acid and

dissolved away completely. But this was quickly debunk, though. While it is certainly possible for acid to dissolve a body, it takes days to completely get rid of the nails and bones. And because there was such a fast act to clean up everything, surely someone would have seemed part of it. of the boy had he, in fact, been submerged in the spill. There was a theory that maybe a quote-unquote good Samaritan who was on the road that day and witnessed the crash, stopped, and found the gravely injured boy. Who knows, maybe he was covered in acid, and so they picked him up in order to try and save him, rush him to a nearby hospital.

However, instead of making it there, he passed away while on the drive, maybe this person or persons began to panic. They had the best intentions, but, but after the adrenaline of what they witnessed had died down, they could have come back to their senses and realized they didn't know how to save him or where to bring them, that maybe they should have left him for the police to save. And if they did that, then, well, maybe he would have survived.

At that point, now they're thinking that maybe they might be to blame for Juan Pedro's death. They could have had a criminal history, instead of dealing with the authorities and telling them what they had done instead, they just dumped his body somewhere. That we'll never know. That angle, in my opinion, is a bit of a stretch, but it's definitely possible and something the authorities consider. The more plausible explanation, though,

is that Juan Pedro managed to survive that crash and was burned to some degree by the acid. That pain would have been tremendous and unbearable, and in a panic to save himself, he then ran downhill towards the river in an attempt to wash it off. At that point, maybe he fell in and got washed away to somewhere unknown. Even if he didn't get burnt by the acid, he most certainly could have sustained a very serious head injury or was even just in shock of what had happened.

The speeding down the hill at nearly 90 miles an hour, the screams from his parents, the crash and explosion, his parents lying there. No matter the exact reason, head injury, shock, or a mix of both, Juan Pedro needed to get away from this event, at which point he made his way to the woods where he wandered in isolation, eventually succumbing to the elements or his injuries. It's hard to say for sure, but people put in these kinds of life and death situations can do some strange things sometimes. There's even stories of people who forget their entire lives once they get a brain injury, and they do exactly what we're describing after the incident occurs. Just wander off,

only to be found decades later, living under different names with no recollection of how or why they got to where they were. And this isn't isolated. It's happened many times, and we've covered it. Of all the possibilities as to what really went down that day and where the young boy went, this one seems to make the most sense. But that's only until you look more at Andre's truck and try to answer, why was he speeding down that mountain road in the first place? In order to piece the puzzle together, the authorities needed to better understand what went wrong that day with Andre behind the wheel. As mentioned, it was assumed he lost control over his brakes. However, that concept crumbled under a closer examination.

The brakes you see worked just fine. Several experts and mechanics looked them over to double and triple check, and no one found any issue at all. On top of that, his tachometer, which is the instrument that measures the working speed of the, of an engine was still intact. And it showed that on that eight-mile stretch a row between when the family left from breakfast to the time up until the crash, Andre had completely stopped his car more than 12 times on that highway. Of course, this would make sense if there was some sort of traffic jam, but this was at 6 in

the morning. And all those on the road that day who had seen the crash and were interviewed said there was absolutely no traffic. So then, that became another big question mark. Not only is he just stopping on a main road for no reason, but it's not easy to do this in a large truck carrying a load, and it's very dangerous, so what's the motivation behind that? Well, a year after the crash in 1987, the truck was dismantled, and it was then that it was discovered that within the truck's cab were trace amounts of heroin. This brought up the idea that maybe Andre was involved in drug smuggling on some of his routine delivery jobs, and from that point on, the authority. authorities chase this angle. In the case of smuggling drugs, just for the record, that doesn't

exactly mean he was doing it because he wanted to. Organized crime in the mafia forced people to do things they haven't wanted to do since they've been around. And when talking to Andre's family, they did confirm that he had received pressure and threats to take drugs across borders. Whether or not he did this, though, or how many times is unknown. But at one point in the case, it was thought that the pressure from these people was so great on Andre, that the trip he was taking that day wasn't so much to be a fun family vacation, but in order to keep an eye on and protect his wife and child. In other words, they told him to take some drugs to Bilbao. He said no, and they threatened him and his family, and Andre didn't feel safe leaving them behind. And this is when the theory came to be that maybe the real reason Juan Pedro vanished, without a trace, was because he was not in the truck at the time of the crash at all.

He'd actually been kidnapped. The mafia, as you know, is not really one to take no for an answer. And so it's possible some known associates actually followed the family out on the road when they left for their little excursion. After breakfast at some point, they threatened Andre once again, and to make certain he followed through with his task, they took his boy for collateral in a separate vehicle. It was said the two herders out on the countryside that day who witnessed the crash and were questioned by authorities, said very shortly after the truck turned on its side, a white van pulled up with two blonde-haired people getting out of it, a guy and a girl. They had white lab coats on, and the fact that they were blonde stood out to them meant these were foreigners, likely from a more Nordic type of country.

It appeared to them that they took something from the truck before taking off. These guys were far away, so it was hard to say for sure, but it could be that they were retrieving their drugs, which is why the traces of heroin were found in the truck in the first place. It's impossible to say the order of things and what exactly transpired, but if these drug dealers in the white van did have the boy, it may have followed to make sure Andre delivered the heroin, at which point you'd get his kid back, and so maybe the same thing. stopping multiple times had to do with Andre making sure that they didn't get too far behind and out of his sight. As a way to mess with them, they could have been going super slow, but

he wanted to always have eyes on his boy. Similarly, the speeding ahead and ultimately the crash could have been him chasing them for one reason or another. Nervous and panicked, the dad was willing to risk his life to stay close as they sped away. In the end, he couldn't make the curve. While police initially searched for this white van with the two blonde foreigners looking for any sign of Juan Pedro and stopping over 3,000 vehicles that matched the description, they still never found him. It does seem that everywhere you turn in this case, the explanations just get stranger and stranger, but in the end, something most certainly happened to Juan Pedro. When things get too complicated, sometimes it's best to get back to basics, even if it can't be proven.

Occam's razor says the simplest solution is almost always the best. So if we remove the elaborate drug dealer concept, then what are we left with to explain why Andrei sped his truck to the point of flipping it? Some sort of medical emergency. He was stopping not because of traffic or to wait for the white van, but because he wasn't feeling well. And unsure if he should get help or not, he would then continue on only to stop again. Something like the onset of a heart attack,

do this, we was feeling lightheaded and wasn't sure what to do exactly, and then it really hit. He lost consciousness behind the wheel on that highway, which sent them all speeding down the hill and headed right for the curve. His wife Carmen, no doubt, tried to steer the car away from danger, but it's a terrifying situation that is all happening at breakneck speed until the crash. Young Juan Pedro was plastered on every telephone pole and storefront windows of the authorities, the has continued seeking answers. From time to time, they would receive calls from people claiming they had seen them, but nothing concrete came from that.

There was a story, though, coming from May of 1987, where a man ran into a blind old lady from Iran, asking where the U.S. embassy was. They were in Madrid, and she was accompanied by a young boy. A man assumed was her grandson. She explained they had been in the country for only six months, but when the boy spoke, as a sort of translator, his Spanish was not only perfect, but he also had an Angeloosian accent, which is where Juan Pedro was from. And this stuck out to him because he remembered finding it very odd. He even complimented the boy on speaking so well, at which point the woman seemed to get

nervous and retreat from the interaction while holding the boy's hand. It wouldn't be till later that this man saw a poster of the missing boy, swearing that he's the one he had talked to that day. But by then, who knows where they had gone. This would align with the idea that the boy wandered off after suffering a head injury in the crash, and not knowing who he was. This is why he was unable to tell anyone. In the end, all this speculation is exactly that. And there are still no real answers in this mystery. Just bits of eyewitness accounts and rumblings about the mafia that you can draw conclusions from, but without the evidence, it doesn't mean much. As a side note, one thing I did find interesting in learning about this case,

is that despite it being such an odd one and well-known among those in Europe, particularly in Spain, there really isn't a ton of concrete evidence about it that you can find. You have to really dig, which to me sort of gives credence to the involvement of organized crime and the idea that maybe they paid off those in charge to look the other way. And so around and around, this mystery goes. It's been almost 40 years and still no answers, so the chances of finding any are very slim at this point. All you can really hope for, at the very least,

is that this tragedy was just a strange natural occurrence. That's something more sinister wasn't at play. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you enjoyed it. If you like listening to us, I want to get an additional exclusive podcast each and every week, sent your way, go check us out on Patreon where now you can get the audio exclusive versions for just 75 cents per episode.

It's free to try, so check it out in the link below. Thanks for tuning in today, and remember to come back next week for another episode, but with scary, strange and mysterious stories, because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.