Going West: True Crime - Ben McDaniel // 214

Episode Date: July 2, 2022

In August of 2010, a 30-year-old scuba enthusiast from Memphis, Tennessee headed out for a cave dive in Ponce De Leon, Florida, and never returned. After an extensive search in the waters, his body was never found, begging the question: Was this an innocent diving accident? Or something much more sinister? This is the story of Ben McDaniel. BONUS EPISODE patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Scuba.com: https://www.scuba.com/blog/scuba-diving-stories-news/happened-ben-mcdaniel-unanswered-questions/ 2. The Commercial Appeal: https://www.newspapers.com/image/776368583/?terms=paul%20mcdaniel&match=1 3. The Commercial Appeal: https://www.newspapers.com/image/775597268/?terms=patty%20mcdaniel&match=1 4. My Death Space: http://mydeathspace.com/article/2013/03/23/Paul_McDaniel_(22)_died_after_suffering_multiple_strokes 5. Ben's Obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/commercialappeal/name/ben-mcdaniel-obituary?id=14280163 6. Vortex Spring: https://www.vortexspring.com/ 7. Maple Grove Farm: https://maplegrovefarm.net/celebrations 8. Porchlight International for the Missing & Unidentified: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/usedtobedoe/mcdaniel-ben-aug-18-2010-t30585.html 9. ID "Disappeared": https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/video/disappeared-investigation-discovery-atve-us/the-vortex 10. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85727230/benjamin-wayne-mcdaniel 11. Paul's Obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/commercialappeal/name/paul-mcdaniel-obituary?id=15263224 12. Lowell's Obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nwfdailynews/name/lowell-kelly-obituary?id=19741320 13. Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/6bzwl7/theories_on_the_disappearance_of_ben_mcdaniel/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to crime fans? I'm your host Teez. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to going west. Thank you so much everybody for joining us today. Today's case is one that I was recently reminded of online and one I'm sure someone has recommended to us before but I couldn't find any proof of that. So if you have suggested this story, thank you. I have always thought this case is incredibly bizarre and different and just brain scratch worthy. And of course we had to pick a summer case yet again because it is summer. Yes and as I will mention we just got back from Hawaii so this seemed like a good time to cover this case, not that it takes place there.

It seemed like it was on par. But we were talking about scuba diving and this is that kind of case. It is so different and unique and mind-boggling. So shall we? Absolutely. All right guys, this is episode 214 of Going West. So let's get into it. In August of 2010, a 30-year-old scuba enthusiast from Memphis, Tennessee, headed out for a cave dive in Ponstaleon, Florida and never returned. After an extensive search in the waters, his body was never found. Begging the question, was this an innocent diving accident or something much more sinister?

This is the story of Ben McDaniel. Benjamin Wayne McDaniel, better known as Ben, was born on April 18, 1980 to parents Shelby and Paddy McDaniel. He was the oldest of three brothers, later joined by Brad, Tim, and Paul, in Collierville, Tennessee. About a 30-minute drive southeast of Memphis, Collierville sits just across the border from the state of Mississippi. Ben had always loved the water, and he and his family used to vacation regularly

in Florida, with his father Shelby, even catching a prize-winning fish off the coast of Florida and being written up for it in a newspaper. Despite not living by the sea, Ben loved to swim and was passionate about reef's coral and underwater life as a whole. At 14 he learned to scuba dive while on vacation, and it quickly became his favorite hobby. Known as the most adventurous one of the McDaniel clan, Ben was also the daredevil. He took up rock climbing as well, which was a past time that he shared with his brother

Paul. And it's pretty daring in itself to be a scuba diver because I read that about 700 to 800 people die each year from it. I think that's worldwide. But he and I, like I said, were just in Hawaii. And my brother-in-law was looking at this as an activity, which I was way too scared to do. And, interesting fact, you can get the bends from scuba diving and then getting on a plane,

which is so terrifying. Yeah. But the bends also known as decompression sickness, which is caused by a drastic change in air or water pressure, can kill scuba divers, amongst other things like drowning, of course, exhaustion, panic, et cetera. But like I said, Ben was things like drowning, of course, exhaustion, panic, etc. But like I said, Ben was definitely more of an adventurous man and he really loved scuba

diving and just exploring the water. On September 14, 2008, tragedy struck the family when the youngest of the four brothers, Paul, had a stroke at just 22 years old. Paul had graduated from Christian Brothers High School, and was in his last year at Christian Brothers University, both in Memphis. He was majoring in finance and planned to attend law school. Paul, like his brother, was an explorer and a daredevil. He was an avid mountaineer, and he loved climbing through any conditions, the more challenging, the better. This family is wild.

Yeah, they just love to do like outdoorsy stuff. Which is really awesome. So Paul's obituary reads, He always lived every day to the fullest and never stammered in front of any worldly challenges. He was the articulate type that always put danger first. Not afraid of the depths or heights. Paul was a man to be admired. The articulate type that always put danger first, not afraid of the depths or heights.

Paul was a man to be admired. The night before his death, Paul called his parents to tell them about his latest rock climbing expedition, but it complained about having a migraine. An autopsy showed that he had mixed his prescription Xanax and his prescription sleeping pill, likely in pain and exhausted, and just wanted to go to sleep. There was speculation after the autopsy that he had actually died from an accidental overdose and from mixing his prescription medications, but the family has not publicly confirmed this. He was supposed to meet his family for lunch the next day, but when he didn't show up or answer

his phone, they stopped by his apartment and found him sitting up in bed, but in coherent and confused. Just six hours after being admitted to Methodist Central Hospital, Paul was pronounced brain dead. And sadly, doctors were never able to pinpoint why this happened to someone so seemingly young and healthy. So Paul had expressed his desire to be an organ donor, and shortly after his death, his final wish was fulfilled.

So one kidney went to a 14-year-old girl in East Tennessee, and the other went to a New Yorker. His liver went to a man in Memphis, and a man in Texas received his heart, which is all so amazing. And then his remaining tissues and bones were stored and used for up to five years after his death. Two days after Paul's death, his brothers met with the Mid-South Transplant Foundation,

asking how they could help the cause. They went on to establish the Paul Andrew McDaniel Foundation, which is an organization raising awareness about strokes and organ donation. The Foundation's LinkedIn page reads, quote, "'Paul has left an undying fire in his brother's hearts to make him proud." The founders have pledged to reduce the incidents

and impact of stroke and decrease the huge need for organs both locally and nationally. Every day, the Paul Andrew McDaniel Foundation makes a difference in the lives of people touched by stroke in local communities. Community involvement goes a long way in helping Paul Andrew McDaniel Foundation achieve its mission. By getting involved today, you could be helping a family member or friend tomorrow. And Ben actually told their local paper, the commercial appeal, quote, if Paul would have known the signs and symptoms of a stroke,

he would still be here with some quality of life without a shadow of a doubt. Young people need to be more aware that it can happen to them. The world is missing out on a great man, but we don't know what God has planned for everyone who received his organs. And to help spread that information, signs of a stroke can include sudden numbness or weakness in the arms, legs or face, especially on one side of the body, as well as sudden confusion, difficulty speaking, dizziness, and loss of balance. So all of this is

relevant to Ben's story and just showing what his family went through so recently before Ben disappeared. Yeah, absolutely. It shows just the level of how much the family loved each other and actually, it shows Ben's character as well. Absolutely. So the whole McDaniel family really struggled under the weight of the grief,

but 28-year-old Ben reportedly took it the hardest. It had been a difficult time in his life, even outside of his brother's untimely passing. Being the entrepreneurial young man that he was, he had previously started a construction company in Memphis while he was still attending college, so he was out there trying to make big moves. He graduated from the University of Memphis in 2004, four years before his brother Paul's death, with a degree in construction management. But with the recession in 2008, came new struggles for his once-prospring business. Ben had also hired an employee whom he trusted and worked with very closely, who wound up

stealing clients out from under him in order to start his own construction company, basically running Ben out of business. So with that, Ben was forced to shut down his company for good. He told his father, Shelby, that he had debts totaling around a half a million dollars, and things were not going his way in his personal life either, with Ben and his wife, Sarah, headed for a divorce. Now we couldn't find any information about his ex-wife other than her presence in Paul's obituary, but we do know that her name was Sarah and that they were married at the time

of Paul's death. But after his passing in 2008, Ben's marriage seemed to go downhill. He decided to sell his home and move in with his parents to recover financially and emotionally. Ben's parents were doing very well for themselves and had always been quite wealthy when they raised the boys. So his mother, Patty McDaniel, had been a teacher for 11 years at Woodland Presbyterian School in Memphis, but in 2003, she and her husband Shelby had purchased a large farm in Collierville

called Maple Grove Farm. Patty's father, Ben Baker, was struggling with Parkinson's and moved in with the couple. Now, they initially purchased the farm because of the simple layout of the house on the property and it would be easy for her father to navigate. But shortly after purchasing and refurbishing the farm, they began running summer camps and eventually opened it for parties, weddings, and all kinds of family fun. Patty's father passed away in the summer of 2005, just a couple years after they moved

into this farm. So her son Tim McDaniel, Ben's brother, and his fiancee Nicole were set to take over the family business so that Shelby and Patty could make up for the years that they spent nurturing the farm and finally do some traveling. In 2010, just over two years after his brother's death, with the joint culmination of his business shutting down and his marriage ending, Ben was finally starting to feel like himself again. That was like a rough patch.

His brother died, his business failed, his marriage ended, he was in debt, but it seemed like over those two years or so, he started to dig himself out of that hole. Yeah, he was kind of starting to recover here. So he had rescued a dog named Spooner, who according to his mom, he took everywhere but the grocery store. Also, he had a new girlfriend named Emily Greer, so his personal life was really looking up. On top of these wonderful things, he was pursuing his true love of scuba diving professionally

and working on a teaching certification. Ben had finally moved out of his parents' farm and relocated to their vacation condo in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, a seven and a half hour drive from his family's home back in Collierville. As hard as it was for him to be away from his family's home back in Collierville. As hard as it was for him to be away from his parents, whom Ben called his best friends, he knew that he needed a fresh start and wanted to nurture the passion for scuba diving that he had developed over the years of beach trips with his family. Santa Rosa Beach, a city of about 14,000 people, is situated on Florida's Panhandle between Pensacola

and Panama City. Santa Rosa Beach sits in an area along the Gulf of Mexico coastline called 30A, which got its name from a road in South Walton County called County Road 30A that spans about 20 miles along the Florida Panhandle coastline. The area is known for its sugar soft white sand beaches and crystal clear waters, which just sounds like a dream to me. It does. So on Monday, August 16, 2010, four months into his time in Florida, Ben returned to Collierville to celebrate his mom's birthday, but he had to depart the vesti-vities early to get back to Santa Rosa Beach for a dive that he had been planning

on doing. On Wednesday, August 18, 2010, so two days later, Ben got up and took his dog Spooner out, like any other day. Then drove an hour northeast inland to Ponce de Leon, Florida to cave dive in Vortex spring. So this was, like I said, an hour away from his home. He had been planning on doing this dive. He had gotten really back into scuba diving. So he was probably very excited to do this dive. Now it was a typical scorching summer day in Florida with temperatures around 90 degrees Fahrenheit or 32 degrees Celsius.

Vortex spring a little about it. It's a freshwater spring recreation area offering swimming, slides snorkeling, a dive shop, and yes, cave dives. And he and I were talking about this earlier. It's I had originally been imagining it like in the early entrance of a beach, I don't know why, but this is literally like, it's like a huge circle. Yeah, it's like a big pond. Like if you think of a pond, it's like a very big like bluish green pond.

It's really kind of weird because that's the entrance like if you go down into this pond, that's how you get down into these caves. Exactly. And I'm going to say this a couple of times in this episode, but we did post photos on our socials. We are at going West Podcast on Instagram, at going Westpaw on Twitter,

and we are also on Facebook. This is definitely one of those cases where you're going to want a visual. So the park prides itself as, quote, one of the best and safest diving resorts in the country. Spanning 520 acres, the spring produces 28 million gallons of beautiful, clear water every day at the slightly cool but consistent temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20

degrees Celsius. Ben had been there many times before. temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius. Ben had been there many times before. This was not his first rodeo. And he knew the employees at the dive shop, including the owner, Lowell Kelly, quite well. However, he was not necessarily well liked. One employee, Chuck Cronin, claimed that Ben was overly

confident in his diving abilities, and that apparently no one in the area wanted to be his dive partner. I just like, why do people care though? Just let him do his thing, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. So Ben had sketched out a map of the underwater caves in his dive log book, where he kept track of all of his dives. He regularly sketched out maps of his new discoveries within the complex underwater cave system.

And beyond the basin of the spring, the largest and most open area of the water, there's a long winding trail of caves that grow increasingly smaller. So if you're claustrophobic, you're probably hating this episode right now. God no. Yeah, it's very, very narrow. So, past the basin is a funnel called the main cavern, which leads to a more narrow entrance to the actual caves, then a cave called the piano room,

and then a gate that remains locked at all times, unless you can present your cave diving certification at the desk of the dive shop, and then they'll let you go past that point. Yeah, they'll give you a key in exchange for your certification. And I gotta tell you, looking at photos of these caves, maybe it was hard to look at, and maybe that's because we're not divers.

Yeah, the depths of water scare me, and it's all quite claustrophobic, like you said, but if you do wanna see photos of these scary--esque caves and even a map of the entire cave, because there's a lot of caves within this cave, check out our socials again, because we're going to do our best to describe it to you guys, but it's so much easier if you just look at it to see, oh, wow, that is a very long cave that has a lot of different little nooks and crannies in it. And you're also probably thinking, what does this have to do with true crime? Well, we're going to

get there. Yes. So the gate to this locked cave is placed at a depth of 115 feet or 35 meters. Beginning at the gate, over 1600 feet across, or 490 meters of the cave system have been mapped out. So that means think about 1600 feet. That's like the width of the cave. So if you go straight into the cave, you've got 1600 feet ahead of you as far as what has been mapped out. Right. And this is also to a depth of 310 feet or 94 meters. Right, so 1,600 feet across 310 feet deep. Yes, but terrifyingly, the cave's full extent is unknown. A warning sign decorated with a grim reaper standing over the skeletal remains of three people in diving equipment reads,

Stop, prevent your death, go no further. Fact, more than 300 divers, including open water scuba instructors, have died in caves just like this one. Fact, you needed training to dive, You need cave training and cave equipment to cave dive. Fact, without cave training and cave equipment, divers can die here. Fact, it can happen to you. There's nothing in this cave worth dying for. Do not go beyond this point. Such a, I mean, it's very, very straight to the point. Erie. But there's a bunch of photos online, too,

of different cave divers that I'm sure are very much certified kind of next to the sign. Like, yeah, I made it to this point, you know? But past that, I mean, I don't know if anybody has actually gone past that, but the fact that it's not mapped means that it probably nobody has. I would assume, yeah, I would assume probably not.

They probably assessed that area past that point where the sign is and said nope, that past there, that is too hard. So good thing they have that sign there, but it does seem like this kind of, whoo, I did it kind of thing for a lot of very, very professional divers though because like you said, when you get right before the sign, it's so, so narrow that people's bodies can barely fit themselves and let alone with the equipment they have on. Right, so past that sign, it just gets to the point where you can't even squeeze through hardly. Right, but I mean right before that sign. Oh yeah. Yeah, so like leading up to the sign is like you have to be the most experienced

cave diver to even get to that sign. And so the sign says that 300 divers have died in caves like this, but 13 people have died in these caves at Vortex Spring in all the years that people have been diving there. And that doesn't mean it's not dangerous, but if you're wondering what the deadliest cave in the world is, it's apparently the blue hole in Egypt

with 150 deaths in the last 15 years alone. Geez. Yeah, which is so scary. And the most deadly in the US is Jacob's well in Texas, followed by two other caves in Florida. They're called Eagles Nest, Sinchole, and Devils Caves. I've heard of Jacob's well in Texas, and I've actually seen photos of it.

It looks pretty tight. Yes. Now, again, we urge everyone to look at photos of the map to get a good visual, but we will explain it a bit more now. So we mentioned that at the base, this is very relevant, by the way. So we mentioned that at the base of the cave is the main cavern and then the piano room

just a bit deeper. Now just past the piano room is that gate we talked about where you need a key to enter to the real depths of the cave. Because before this gate, there isn't too much to see. This is just the very beginning of the caves. So you don't need a certification to go into the main cavern in the piano room, which probably tells you they're not very, quote, unquote, difficult. But obviously going into the depths of the cave, you need to have the certification for safety purposes, hence the gate.

Pass the gate is where you really get into the caves and where there is much more to explore. Now up until the unknown parts of the cave where the grim reaper sign is, there's what's called the first restriction, the no way, the back mount squeeze, the second restriction, the Champagne bottleneck, the T-room, the third restriction, the max headroom, the trash room, the fourth restriction, and then the end of the line where that grim reaper sign is. So this goes quite deep. Yeah, pretty far. Now while Ben was diving that day, two other divers allegedly looked on as Ben bypassed

the gate outside of the Piano Room and continued to swim down. Now two days later, Eduardo Taran, an employee at the dive shop, noticed Ben's black pickup truck was still in the parking lot. He remembered having seen Ben McDaniel in the water that day, and in fact, he and his fellow employee Chuck Cronin were the two divers outside of the gate who had seen Ben swimming deeper into the caves. Allegedly. Yes.

So Edwardo had actually been the one to unlock the gate himself with the key that he had from the dive shop, which is how Ben, lacking the proper certification, got in. Eduardo, a trained cave diver, knew that people trained in scuba diving, but not cave diving, regularly bypass the gate themselves when they were curious about the caves. And he figured that it was safer to let them in himself, rather than have them break in and potentially get stuck or injured. I get this in a way, but it's also like them wide of the gate there. Yeah, then what's the point of having the certification to get past it?

It doesn't make sense to me. So Eduardo alerted the police that no one at Vortex Spring had seen Ben in 36 hours, and that his car was suspected to be abandoned. So that means his car was Ben's car was sitting in that parking lot for three whole days. Yeah. The employees knew he had been there three days earlier. They didn't call the police before then at the end of their shift that night saying, oh, Ben's truck is still here.

And then they came in the next day, Ben's truck is still here, but I'm not going to call it. You know, it took them three days. And then they came in the next day. Yeah's truck is still here, but I'm not going to call it. You know, it took them to the next day. Exactly. That's very suspicious to me. So the Holmes County Sheriff arrived to start searching, but this was no ordinary crime scene because it started in an underwater cave. Eduardo himself volunteered to search the cave for Ben, considering all of his experience.

Meanwhile, police dug into Ben's pickup truck to look for any clues. His wallet and ID were inside, and so was another curious clue. $1,100 in cash inside his wallet. Yeah, so they're just kind of saying why does he have so much cash on him? Like that's a big amount to have. You try to know. Then a diver surfaced with three decompression tanks marked with Ben's name. Decompression tanks are used when resurfacing from the water to alleviate the toxic level of nitrogen that builds up in your body.

So you can avoid decompression sickness, Again, also known as the bends. And this is caused by rapid changes in pressure. I don't know what it is about the bends that interest me so much like just that this can happen. And obviously it doesn't, it doesn't always mean that someone's gonna die and most of the time, a lot of the time, you just have various symptoms from the bends,

but you can die from it, and just the fact that it's caused by just a rapid change in pressure is so wild to me. Yeah, it's very wild. So, but that's an important thing to have on your back while you're cave diving, and bends are found, but the weird thing is they're found

at like the mouth of the cave. So they're at the very beginning, they're not in the depths of the cave, they're in at like the mouth of the cave. So They're at the very beginning. They're not in the depths of the cave They're in the very early parts of the cave. Well, and let's talk about this because what was really strange was that the pressure gauge Indicated that he hadn't filled them to capacity which was unusual for divers and None of these three decompression tanks that were found were used. So what does that say about his day of diving? Did it even occur? Yeah, it kind of makes you think that, you know,

did these decompression tanks just get dropped at the entrance or what? But it appeared that, you know, from the initial onset of the investigation, that Ben went into that cave but never came out. Local Collierville police went to the McDaniels home there and notified them of their missing son. So they, of course, raised down to Florida to aid in the search.

Ben Fees criticism because it turned out that he wasn't supposed to be in the cave in the first place. Because like we mentioned, divers must be certified to cave dive dive and Vortex Spring has a policy to ensure that only those who are qualified Can go past the first section of the cave you leave your cave diving certification at the desk in order to obtain the key to the gate But the dive shop front desk was checked and Ben's certification had not been left there and it turned out He wasn't certified at all. Now this part confuses me because I was under the impression initially that he you only needed a certification to go past the gate because these guys knew Ben. So how could he

go there multiple times and do the initial portion of the cave without a certification. So I don't know for sure if you need one to cave dive in any way at all because if that has been the case, how was he able to cave dive there on multiple occasions? Right. How would he even have had been there, you know, previously? Right. So his girlfriend Emily said that he had been pouring over caving and diving books the week prior to his dive to learn even more about his hobby. Though Ben may have felt prepared for a cave dive, he was self-taught at an extremely difficult skill, especially for a dangerous cave system like Vortex Spring.

And as recovery searches were underway, investigators ran into many roadblocks given the unique nature of this particular case. Of all certified scuba divers, only 1% are cave divers. And of those few, very few were willing to go down into Vortex Spring. The cave goes over 1600 feet back and even further beyond what has been explored. There's a lot about the topography of the caves that even expert divers and those who have been down and into its furthest reaches don't know about. The last point on the map of the cave system in Vortex Spring, it simply states

that the cave continues at a major restriction. So searching for Ben within the intricate twists and turns of the caves was extremely difficult. And there were doubts from some divers that he was in the cave at all, because there was just no trace of him being there, and no other witness sightings from deeper in the caves. So essentially the only people who claimed to have seen him at all, worked at Vortex Spring and knew and weren't super fond of Ben, Eduardo Taron and Chuck Cronin.

Ed Sorensen is a gifted technical cave diver known specifically for his rescues of loss or trapped divers in the caves of Florida. He was at a town leading a dive in the Bahamas when he heard what happened to Ben and was contacted by investigators to do a rescue dive in the caves of Vortex Spring. He agreed immediately, and despite his friends and co-workers urging him not to, he vowed to attempt to go farther than anyone else had dared to. Exactly one week after Ben's disappearance, Ed arrived and performed three separate dives looking for him.

So he went down there three times. And this guy is like the top of the line cave diver. Yeah, he's like the professional of the professional. Yes. Ed swam so far back in the cave and in such narrow passages that he actually had to turn his head to the side to be able to fit through. Which just gives me the courage. Oh God, yeah. When he surfaced again, he said, quote, I do not think he's in that cave. Ed had been a dive specialist since 1999,

and this was the first time he had ever come back from a rescue mission without a body. He claimed there was no way Ben could have gotten through some of those narrow passages called restrictions by divers in the cave. Ed said later, quote, I know what I'm doing and I barely made it through. The last place I searched was pristine

without a mark that a diver had been there. It would be impossible to go through that restriction without making a mark on the floor or ceiling. He's not in there. So this says a lot because I know I say that, I feel like I say it all there. So this says a lot because, I know I say that, I feel like I say that all the time, this says a lot, but it does because he is such a professional, he went farther than anybody has been,

or recorded to have been. Yeah. And he is saying there are no markings here, which means that no one has been right here where I have been. And you would have to make markings to be able to get through those tight spaces. Well, especially because Ben was 6'2 and 220 pounds.

So he would have made scratches or marks in that soft limestone of the cave, or in the silt and stand at the base of the narrow cave. So they're going in there, or Ed's going in there, and he's like, there is no trace that he went to the depths of the cave. So I feel like with this case, a lot of people say, oh, well, since there's that end of the line zone past the grim reaper sign, he's gotta be in there.

But there's no sign he's there. So if there's absolutely no sign that he even made it past before that, how can we just easily conclude that he's back in that restricted zone? Well, I think we can't. Right. So, although it was possible that, you know, he could have gone into that last tiny section of the cave that no one had been known to have traveled before, he would have had to have unclipped his air tanks and pushed them through ahead of him, that's how narrow it was,

before squeezing through himself. And with Ben's size, this would have been extremely challenging, if not impossible. And some of the best divers in the world came to the cave looking for Ben and came up empty handed. So again, if he had gone through that narrow passageway,

there would have been signs of it. Also, I wanna point out, like just him knowing that he wasn't an actual professional, he wasn't certified, knowing the dangers of even passing the gate in the very beginning of the caves, and also considering how deep the cave goes before reaching the point of the Grim Reaper sign, it's just hard for me to believe that Ben would have gone too much farther past the gate if he was there at all. And I certainly don't believe he would have been able to

reach the grim reaper sign, especially knowing that serious professionals weren't even able to do this. So I doubt even though he loved scuba diving and he was very interested in cave diving, like I think in his heart of hearts, he would have said, I can't go much further than this gate. Because at that point, it gets really difficult. Yeah, and you think about it. Maybe he did go past the gate, but then he gets to the Grim Reaper sign,

he's not gonna go past that. Of course, and that's the whole thing, but again, I really don't even think he would have made it halfway through this whole cave system. Like, to me, he could have never even gotten to the Grim Reaper sign. And it'll be so much easier to understand that if you guys look at a map

because you'll see how narrow it gets. And with his body's shape and size, he wouldn't have even been able to make it through half of those caves. So that's what I mean. I think he would have passed the gate, maybe gone a little bit further and said, yep, this is past my pay grade, you know?

Well, what's interesting is we just have, you know, the word of Ed Wardo saying, hey, I unlocked the gate for the guy, right? Right. But then we have to think about the fact that nobody else saw him in these caves, and that his decompression tanks were found in the mouth of the very first cave. Very beginning. Yeah. Meaning, did he even go past the gate, let alone into the water that day at all.

So let's move on a little bit here. So the McDaniel family paid Steve Keane, the diver who had originally mapped the cave back in 2003 to search for Ben. And he agreed to venture as far back as Ed Sorenson did and record video of it. But instead, when he returned, he told the family that his video camera would not fit through the opening of the cave, and that he forgot his smaller video camera. That tells you how fucking tight this place is. I know.

So the McDaniels say that they asked him to return, but that they had never heard from him again. Which is kinda weird, I wonder why he just like goes to them. Yeah, he just said, I'm not gonna do this. So growing desperate to bring their son's body back for a proper burial, the family offered up a $10,000 reward. Now, the dive community was outraged, believing that it was a danger to offer a monetary reward for such a difficult and potentially deadly dive.

At this point, the experts best equipped to recover him had already attempted to do so and they were unsuccessful, so they're like, who else could possibly do this. So the people who were going after the reward were people not qualified to do so. Which would put these rescuers in a lot of danger. But Patti, despondent at the loss of her second child in less than two years, said that, as a parent, you do anything you can to find your child. Which I can definitely understand. But listen, we've had all these professional divers try and look for Ben in those caves.

Nothing was found. Well, and we have to remember that just two years earlier, Ben's brother Paul had died suddenly. So this is the second family tragedy in just two years. And I do agree that obviously all these people are saying it's dangerous. I don't know that they knew that beforehand. You know what I mean? Because they do, we'll talk about this in a second, but they do eventually pull the reward.

So, but first, they increased it two times, and then it was eventually sitting at $30,000. But at that point, what the dive community had been scared of happened. So a diver named Larry Higginbothum, who hailed from Mississippi, was found dead inside a cavern at Vortex Spring.

His body was found the day after his dive when he, like Ben, had failed to return. One of the rescue divers who retrieved his body explained, quote, he just got himself in a pinch and couldn't find his way out. While it was possible that this was a coincidental tragedy, the divers who recovered his body believed he was attempting to collect the reward for Ben's retrieval. So after Larry's death, the McDaniel family rescinded their reward offer, of course seeing that, yeah, this is actually really dangerous. So Ed Sorensen himself was critical of their plan saying, quote, not only did it endanger the lives of divers who would risk going farther than they should,

it put all of our lives at risk because we have to go in and recover the bodies. And something to note here is that Larry's body was found, and just the day after he didn't come out, right? But Ben's body wasn't found at all, so that's very bizarre. Yes, it is. The next step was to search the surrounding areas in hopes of finding something that wasn't in the water. Cadaver dogs were brought in from Tallahassee, and the dogs immediately alerted to the water. One dog was trying to swim down towards the cave, and the other was running back and forth

non-stop on the banks of the spring. Which does make sense because at the end of the day, we know his decompression tanks were found in the water, so either he entered the water or those tanks, you know, that belonged to him entered the water. Sure. However, when water samples were collected for signs of decomposition, the results showed no presence of the bacteria that would have been present had a body been decomposing in the water below. The McDaniels also paid for an ROV or remotely operated vehicle to search the plunging depths of the cave and hopefully go farther than any person had been able to go.

They put up the full cost to replace the ROV, $54,000 in case it was lost in the search efforts. But the cable was so heavy that it wouldn't travel in a straight line after a certain point and kept dipping and catching on the rocks and sand that lined the cave's floors, so it didn't capture anything that the divers hadn't already captured. It also turned out that the map Ben was making in his logbook was actually incorrect, and may have indicated that he had never been very deep in the cave at all. So this does prove that he did not go very far in the cave in his previous visits?

Yes. So he had arrows pointing in a direction that was actually just a wall of limestone. In total, 16 divers spent 36 straight days looking in vortex spring for Ben, turning up nothing but his discarded tanks. Harry Hamilton, the Holmes County Sheriff's Office captain, gently suggested opening up the investigation to the possibility that Ben had willingly disappeared.

They highlighted his struggle with grief after his brother's death, his financial troubles, and his divorce, suggesting that perhaps he had done this on purpose, dumping the tanks as a red herring, and that perhaps he was sipping drinks on a beach somewhere. So was it possible that Ben had only gone as far as being led in through the gate by Eduardo, and then take it off when Eduardo and the other diver weren't looking to make it seem as if he'd been stuck in there when he had actually emerged? Well his parents adamantly denied this proposition

and this also just seems so stupid to me. And I think it's funny that they mentioned, maybe he's on a beach sipping drinks somewhere. Yeah, there's beaches in fucking Florida. He could have done that any other day. He could have done that any day. His mother Patty claimed that Bennett never would have done this to them

after everything they had been through with Paul's death. I agree. In her words, quote, we know our son well enough to know he wouldn't put us through that again. Also, Ben himself called his parents his best friends, and things had really been looking up for him before he disappeared. And Ben's brother Tim argued that he never would have abandoned his dog's spooner like that. Emily explained that she had been with him, you know, when he was at his lowest and she knew the signs, but that he had been perfectly fine at the time of his dive.

Harry Hamilton subpoenaed Ben's phone and bank records just in case, but found nothing out of the ordinary, so there was no sign that he had fled on his own. Yeah. And his family argued that to the contrary, Ben had found himself and reinvented himself, and that he was in the best place that he had ever been, starting over in Florida, passionate about diving in his new career venture, and dating his new girlfriend. He had come a long way moving past losing Paul. On the last day that he ever saw his family at Patty's birthday party, he left her a card that read, quote, You are truly a blessing and I am so lucky to have you on my team. Thank you again for letting me stay at the condo. It has meant a lot to me and has enabled me to take the time to follow my heart and God's plan for

me. Love you bunches, Ben. That really does not sound like somebody who's just trying to take off. No, and also I feel like doing it in the way of staging it, you disappearing in a cave is so cruel, you know, like that's so such a horrible thing to do to your loved ones. Why would he do that? If anything, if he was trying to get away, he could have just left. You know, like why do you have to come up with this crazy ass plan?

Sure. And the family worried that police hadn't treated Vortex Spring as a crime scene and immediately assumed that he had just disappeared in the cave, and that surveillance footage from the dive shop was pulled too late. Please argue that they pulled it just days after his disappearance, but that it didn't display a good enough view of all entrance points to the water. So unfortunately, the physical investigation did slow down, and there were very few clues as to what could have happened to Ben.

But six months after he disappeared, the McDaniels received a message from a well-known diver saying that she wanted to set the record straight about Ben. And that she, you know, Newe was a good guy who had just made a mistake because remember all these divers are kind of talking shit online and saying that he did a dangerous thing by going in there

without a certification. But she's saying, look, he seemed like a good guy, he had a passion, he made a mistake, and She wanted to write all the negativity that she had seen on the discussion boards. This message was from Jill Heinerth, a premier cave diver. Jill and her husband, Robert McClellan, also a certified cave diver, Jill and her husband, Robert McClellan, also a certified cave diver, agreed that they would dive all the way up to the last restriction in the cave and record the whole thing. Now this is important because obviously, us non-caved divers want to kind of see for our own eyes and the family to make sure, hey, yeah, he is not in there.

Now the family decided to make a documentary out of her journey, which they called Ben's vortex, and you can rent it on Vimeo if you're curious. Unfortunately, for Ben's family, Jill emerged with the same conclusion that the rest of the divers came to, that she did not think Ben was in that cave. She did, however, find an army-grade foldable shovel belonging to Ben in the very back recesses of the cave propped up against a wall. Jill and Robert turned their footage over to the Holmes County Sheriff's Office, hoping that it would aid in the investigation. The McDaniels were disappointed, but Jill explained that sometimes when Divers panic, they mistakenly

box themselves into even smaller crevices. She explained that she had a dear friend who had done a cave dive and had been found in a small, off-shoot crevice of the cave eight months later. While there are fewer crevices in Vortex Spring, that does remain a distinct possibility. Considering all the pro-divers were adamant in their belief that Ben was not down there, the McDaniels became increasingly suspicious that Ben had been met with foul play. And they speculated that his body could have been removed from the water after his death.

His parents also speculated that he may have been abducted after the dives, so he made it out of the water, but not to his vehicle. They even established a tip-line for potential leads in this direction, but they didn't receive any calls. However, in January of 2012, the first indication came that led the McDaniels to believe that Ben's death could have been part of a larger conspiracy. Lowell Kelly, the owner of the Vortex Spring Dive Shop, died mysteriously. Although he said that he had not seen Ben the evening of his disappearance, Lowell had

been working late that night. He also had a bit of a criminal history. After a dispute over a large sum of money, Loll claimed an employee owed him, he took the employee to an isolated area of the woods and beat him with a baseball bat. The man escaped, however, and Lell was charged with kidnapping and assault. For this, he was fined in sentence to probation. In December of 2011, so a year and four months after Ben disappeared, Lowell was hosting

a chilly cook-off at Vortex Spring when he fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head. Now a friend, whose name was never released publicly, escorted him home, rinsing him off, and left him in the bathtub under a blanket. The following morning, another friend came by to check on him and realized that he had gotten worse. He was rushed to the hospital in Pensacola, but it was too late. Lowl had slipped into a coma and was placed in hospice care. He never came too, and on January 20, of 2012, Lowl succumbed to his injuries. The Holmes County Sheriff's Office took on this case

as well, investigating to see if there may have been foul play involved. And they never released the names of the two people who helped Lull or the official cause of death listed in his autopsy. His obituary reads that he was quote, a visionary with a dream for the future of vortex spring. It's unclear why Lull would have been involved in Ben's disappearance, though some speculate that it was to keep the caves from getting closed down, attracting, you know, bad publicity and to avoid a lawsuit. No matter what your theory is, this was an odd coincidence of tragedies.

Ben's family believed that it was possible that his apparent death was staged to cover up a larger criminal operation that the dive shop was involved in. And I know a lot of people think this online too, and they kind of speculate. They think about the money that Ben had in his wallet. And we're wondering if maybe he was a part of something illegal with Vortex Spring. What? We don't know. a lot of people speculate drugs and that maybe because Ben was involved in this in some way he was killed. But obviously because there is no confirmation of this, this is just speculation, it can't

be confirmed. Yeah, I think just the fact that that $1,100 was found, people take that and they just run into speculations with it. Right. And people kind of say, oh, well, LoL was a criminal. He was a violent guy and he said he didn't see Ben the day he disappeared, but he was there. So it's kind of like is LoL lying to cover up something that he did to Ben and then

people are thinking, well, why would he kill Ben? Oh, well, maybe they were both involved in this thing. You know, people kind of run with their theories. Sure, but it is possible. So the family hired a private investigator named Lynn Marie Cardi, who found that Lowell Kelly was not the only employee with a criminal background. She told the McDaniel's local paper quote,

there is just as much reason to look above the water for Ben's body as there was to look below it in the cave. So, could it have been Chuck, Eduardo, or Lowell? All three denied involvement, and Eduardo even took and passed a polygraph test after it was discovered that he was likely the last person to have seen Ben alive. Or, could it have been a random act of violence by a happenstance predator? In his report to police before he passed away, Lowell remembered that he had talked to a clearly inebriated man on the night of Ben's disappearance who had approached him asking if it was too late to dive and then wandered off after Lowell told him that it was.

So could this man have intercepted Ben getting out of the water? Like I said, you know, a lot of people have a lot of theories and some people theorize that something did happen to Ben in the cave and the employees or owner covered it up to avoid a lawsuit because if you was simply missing, there's no real proof that it happened in the cave anyway. But at the time, 13 other people had died in that cave up to that point, and caves are known to be dangerous and deadly, and divers know this going in. So to cover that up seems like a dumb thing to do.

And again, Ben was a pretty big guy, so pulling his body out of an already difficult cave would have been extremely tough. Yeah, but not impossible. Right. And people also point out that his gear wasn't found other than the decompression tanks. So if foul play occurred, it would have occurred before he could change it out of his gear

and into normal clothes. But why? Like, I just don't believe personally that he's in the cave. And I think a lot of other people who have seen Ben's vortex just from what I saw online. And kind of hearing from the pro divers and watching the footage and understanding that these extensive searches were done of the caves

and all these people, all the cave divers are like, he's not in here. Like, I'm not sure how he could be. Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, I could easily see how this could be covered up, like, especially considering that Eduardo apparently had let him pass this gate. So if Eduardo let him pass the gate and somehow Ben got in a pinch, Panicked and died, and then they're thinking, okay, this guy didn't come back out. We got to go find him.

Then they find him and let's say they find him in the cave and they're like, oh no, this is going to bring on a lawsuit. Well, yeah, because it was Eduardo's doing. Yeah, it was Eduardo's fault. So I could easily see them dropping the tanks to make it seem like he had gone in there, pulling him out of the water, finding a place to be. Staging the shovel. Yeah, and potentially bury him on land somewhere.

Yeah, I think that's super plausible. And I think just because Eduardo passed a polygraph test doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't involved in something. No, I don't think so at all. It doesn't mean that he is, but I feel like because there's no trace of Ben, people really rush to, well, he's got to be in that cave then. But it just seems genuinely improbable to me that he is. And the fact that no one actually saw him enter that cave

except the employees and that there weren't marks on the limestone and walls. Yeah. And as you pointed out earlier, there was no sign of human decomposition in the water. So, yeah. So that, you know, that says something too. I think one of the best things you could do is probably go watch Ben's vortex

just to see for yourself and then come to your own conclusion because this really is such a strange case. It really is. Patty explained in an interview that she was taking Ben's death or disappearance harder than Paul's because they were able to bury Paul and were granted closure and peace from that experience. This was of course not the case with Ben so it hurt much more. However, the McDaniels donated all the reward fund proceeds to the Paul Andrew McDaniel

Foundation and were even able to meet the man who had received Paul's heart. Shelby and Patty started a grief recovery group to work on moving past these unthinkable losses. They also took Spooner, a happy reminder of the life their son left behind. There are still so many questions in the disappearance of Ben McDaniel, and the longer we go without a body, or any evidence that he even remains concealed within the caves of Vortex Spring, the farther we are from finding any.

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. I just can't believe it's been 12 years since Ben disappeared, and that's why I say like, if he was in that cave, I can't believe that all these years have passed, and Vortex Spring is still open for business, and nobody has recovered any other sign of him.

And again, that's why those things amongst everything else that we discuss lead me to believe that he is not in that cave and something happened to him above water. Yeah, and think about the fact that in those 12 years, how many times and how many divers have been in those caves, probably so many people have been down there since. Yes, and...

And nothing was ever found. Yeah, and I actually read that a few years after Ben disappeared, someone had extended the map. So that means somebody went further than anybody had gone before, further than Ed Sornsen, and extended the map. So again, people are going past that point, and they're not finding any trace of Ben. But it's so frustrating knowing that there is no evidence that anything else happened to him. It like he just vanished out of thin air. Yeah. Again, please go watch Ben's vortex and let us know what you think about this case.

Yes, I would love or we would love to know all of your guys' theories. Again, we are on Instagram, at West Podcast, Twitter at Going West Pod. We have two Facebook groups, one is just the Going West True Crime, and then the other is the Going West Discussion Group, where Heath and I jump in there and talk to you guys. So, you know, let's know what you think. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you