Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 111. Has The Martin Family Been Found? Case Updates And Answering Your Darkly Curious Questions // My Mailbag

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Has the Martin Family's car been found in the Columbia River? What happened to the Brazilian poisoner who tried to kill her husbands family? What is Hantavirus, the incredibly rare illness that killed Gene Hackman's wife? I'm opening my mailbag today to ask some of your burning darkly curious questions TW: references but not not descriptions of the following- Suicide, child abuse, sexual abuse, animal death Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On April 11th, the amateur arrives in IMAX. I want to find and kill the people who murdered my wife. Critics rave, the amateur is a tense, unpredictable ride. You're just not a killer, Charlie. Train me. That constantly finds new and inventive ways to up the stakes. The first one you kill, you let the other ones know you're coming. You don't want them all?

Academy Award winner Rummy Malik and Academy nominee, Lawrence Fishburne, the amateur. Only in theaters and IMAX, April 11th. Hello, and welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kaila Moore. We have a lot to go over today, guys. I hear from you all the time as I sit here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters. I get letters, I get questions,

and I even hear about updates on some of the cases we've covered. I get letters, I get questions, and I even hear about updates on some of the cases we've covered. So today I thought it would actually be interesting to go through my mailbag and answer some of your burning questions on different darkly curious topics. First, I'll say that if you're listening to the ad-supported version of the show,

thank you, seriously. Or is why I get to make this show every week and sometimes like this week, twice a week. And if you're subscribed on Patreon or Apple podcasts, I guess it's three times a week because this week we have our bonus episode on Antarctic conspiracy theories. And I'll be putting that out for subscribers on Friday.

There is a free trial on Patreon and on Apple podcasts if you just wanna try it out, see if you like it. But for now, I'm going to reach into my mailbag. So here is a message that I got recently that I knew I needed to address on this podcast. So this listener asks, Hi, Kaylyn, I was wondering if you saw the update on the Martin family disappearance. I think they found the family's car in the river in Oregon. What do you think?" Okay, yes, I am so glad this was asked because I really wanted to talk about this update on the show. And thank you to everyone who sent me this article,

which was actually a lot of you, because that's how I first found out what was going on with this update. So, I'm sure many of you have listened to our episode on the Martin family disappearance. It's episode 48, Beneath the Icy Depths, the mysterious disappearance of the Martin family. But for those of you who haven't listened yet,

or anyone who needs a refresher on the case, because it was like two years ago when we came out with this episode, it's now believed that the Martin family car was found in the river along the highway they disappeared on. And let me give you a quick overview of what happened. So, on December 7, 1958, the Martin family, that was Ken Martin, his wife Barbara Martin,

and their three teenage daughters, all loaded into their red and white Ford station wagon and drove down Highway 84 in Oregon to go get a Christmas tree. And their last sighting was at a snack bar along the highway on their way home. And it was actually a waitress who noticed that they were the only people in the snack bar that day, except for two other people who were in the snack bar with them. Two ex-convicts, Roy Light and Lee Pierce. And as the Martin family left the snack bar,

so did the ex-convicts right behind them. And a later report from a witness who was driving down the highway said that two men were seen under a bridge at Cascade Locks along Highway 84, talking to someone inside of a station wagon. And the next day, the family was reported missing after the kids never showed up to school. And also that day, a white Chevy was found abandoned with the keys still in the ignition on the side of Highway 84 near Cascade Locks, the same spot where the men were seen talking

to someone in the station wagon. And stranger yet, the abandoned car was traced back to Lenny Pierce, one of the men who was inside of the snack bar with the Martin family. But police didn't think that there was any foul play at that point or really any connection at all. They didn't even know if the family was dead

or if they ran away to start a new life or if they had a vacation plan that they didn't tell anyone about. But a few months later, two huge clues were found. So the first was a set of tire tracks behind an aluminum plant along Highway 84. The tracks led straight off of a bluff into the river. It was the Columbia River that ran right along Highway 84.

And there was even some white paint on some of the rocks that looked like it matched the color of the Martin's car. But the strange part of this was how far away this area was from the highway. It didn't look like you could just accidentally swerve off of the road and fall into the water. You would have to drive to this specific spot intentionally. And another clue that was discovered

was back over by Cascade Locks, where the car was abandoned and the conversation happened. There was a gun found under a rock with one bullet that had been discharged but was jammed in the gun, like someone was holding onto the gun when it was fired, and it prevented the shell casing from ejecting. And kind of this huge surprise twist, the serial number on the gun was actually tied back to

the Martins' son. See, the Martins had an older son, Donald, who was 28 and away in the military when his family disappeared. Donald was reportedly gay, according to his best friend, which his parents were not very supportive of. And it was suggested that Donald and his parents didn't have a great relationship because of this. And one of the leading theories at the time became that maybe Donald hired these two ex-cons, one of which he did have a mutual friend with, and he supplied them with a gun that he had stolen, and then he inherited over $300,000 in today's cash when his family died.

But again, there wasn't really any proof that the family was even dead. But that is until May 2nd of 1959, when two of the daughter's bodies were seen floating down the river. The day before, there was a large boat on the river that was dropping an anchor when it hit something big on the bottom of the riverbed.

It felt like a car, they said. And perhaps they hit the Martin's vehicle, and that allowed the daughters' bodies to float to the surface. And one of the officers who saw the bodies of the two girls said it looked like they both had bullet wounds in their skulls, but that never made it to the official coroner's report. And Donald, who already looked like a suspect, looked even more like

a suspect. Because during the investigation, Donald never went to go look for his family. He didn't attend their memorial service and he never went to go look for his family, he didn't attend their memorial service, and he never went to pick up the ashes of his two sisters. They actually sat at the place where they were cremated for 15 years. After that, despite all the dives, all the searches of the river, the Martin family vehicle was never found. Though it was always believed to be in the Columbia River, perhaps in Cascade Locks or over by the area where the tire tracks were found.

And that is until just a few weeks ago, when a diver named Archer Mayo believed he found their car. So, Archer is a sculptor slash diver who is really into recovering old items on his dives, and he became obsessed with the Martin family disappearance a few years ago. He wanted to try and find them, but he knew it would be really difficult.

The river is 100 feet deep in parts, and there is a lot of muck to comb through at the bottom. But Archer wanted to focus his search in the Cascade Locks area, where the Martins were maybe seen talking to the ex-cons on the side of the road. Back in the day, the locks were used for steamboats to pass through, but today they're an abandoned

and uncombed offshoot of the river. Archer spent a lot of time building these models in his home to figure out where a car would end up in the river if it went off of the side of the road at Cascade Locks. And it seems like he figured it out because in November of 2024, he dove into the river and found an area where there was about 15 feet of thick mud that had all this debris in it.

And so he just started digging. And I saw in one report that the New York Times put out that he actually found a couple of cars during his dig. But one of them was a Ford that matched the description of the Martins car. And what was left of the license plate on that car matched the family's license plate. One sheriff said that he felt 99% confident that this was the Martin family car, but we won't know for sure until the lab is done processing the vehicle. On March 6th and 7th of this year, 2025,

the car was pulled from the river in an operation led by the Hood River County Sheriff. And I did see a more recent update that came out in the last few days that confirmed no human remains were found in the car. And that makes sense, actually. If the two girls' bodies had gotten free from the car

within a few months of the disappearance, it does make sense that the rest of the family may have floated away or just decomposed over the last 66 years. And I don't think officers were really expecting to find anyone in the vehicle. But now the interesting part is, Archer filmed a YouTube video about how he figured out

where the car was in the river. And in that video, he says, everything we thought we knew about the case is wrong. He apparently has been working with a journalist to investigate the mystery more. And though he didn't say it outright in the video, I do get the sense that he believes the Martin family accidentally drove off the side of the road into the river.

I don't think he really believes there was any foul play. But in classic fashion, he is writing a book about it, and we won't know what he really believes happened or why he doesn't think there was any foul play until we read his book. Which, this wouldn't be the first book actually written about the Barton family disappearance. The most famous one is called Echoes of Distant Water, the 1958 disappearance of Portland's Martin family, written by JB Fisher. And that's actually the book that we used when we were writing the episode.

That book is based on the notebook of the lead detective on the case, this guy, Detective Graven. Archer argues that Detective Graven got everything wrong in this case. I think we can all agree that there were a few weird coincidences that happened in the case, but I keep going back to how the gun the brother stole was found near the crime scene as if it had been ditched.

And also I keep thinking about how a few years later after the family disappeared, one of the ex-cons that followed the Martins out of the snack bar was actually arrested for sneaking into the backseat of a car and carjacking the driver when they got back into the vehicle. Was that his MO? Was that what he did to the Martins that day? So, long story short, yes, the Martin family car was most likely found, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding

what happened. And personally, I just feel like there were too many weird coincidences to actually rule this as an accident. But you can check out episode 48 of our podcast, Beneath the Icy Depths, the mysterious disappearance of the Martin family to decide for yourself what you think happened. gameplay. Drop in on the exciting Sugar Rush and Crazy Time slot games or play the dazzling MGM Grand Emerald Nights, a slot experience that captures the magic of MGM. With so many games, it's time to make your move. Download the app and visit Bet MGM Ontario today to experience the next level of gaming. Visit betmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please gamble

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Okay, our next question is actually also an important update on a case that we covered this year. And it comes from a listener who writes, Hello, I'm a listener from Brazil and I'm so glad you covered the poisoning case that was happening here. Did you see that the day you put out the episode, Daisy was found dead in her prison cell? It was self-inflicted. I'm sad because I feel like now the victims won't see any justice." Yes, I did see that. Thank you so much for this update. I actually received this update

from multiple listeners in Brazil and that's how I found out about it. But this was something that I talked about in episode 104, Lovesick, A Tale of Poison, where I talked about a woman in Brazil named Daisy who was accused of poisoning six people around Christmas time, three of whom died. And she did this by putting arsenic and flour that was later used to bake a cake. The people who were poisoned were all members of her husband's family and also her 10-year-old son, who luckily did survive. But the wildest part of this story is after Daisy poisoned her husband's family, a lot of his family members started to think back on all of the other people who suspiciously fell sick around her, like her

father-in-law who died of, quote, food poisoning months before. And that was after Daisy had brought him powdered milk that made him sick. There was also how her husband and son had gotten horribly ill after eating her cooking twice, I think, like, in the last six months. So Daisy was being held in a jail in Brazil while investigators were looking into these other suspicious cases that were happening around her. And CNN reported that her husband actually asked for a divorce the day before she was found dead in her cell.

Which, at the end of the day, she killed three of his family members, potentially four if you count his dad, and she attempted to kill his son twice. Asking for divorce feels like it was on the nicer end of possible responses. Her body was found, I believe, the morning we put the episode out, if not just a few days later. I've read a few quotes from the family members of

the victims and they all seem pretty upset that Daisy will never have to face any actual consequences for her actions. So, yes, this is a horrible story. I had hope because they at least had found the perpetrator in this case. Oftentimes, poisoners don't even get caught, but they knew pretty much right away that it was Daisy who did this. Because when the family was asked if anyone hated them or would want them dead, they all gave her name. I just really feel for this family because they're not gonna see justice

in the way that they had hoped for, but hopefully they are able to heal in some other way. Okay, the next question that I have in my mailbag was one that I actually got from quite a few of our Australian listeners, and this was from after I did the episode on haunted Australian prisons. And it goes, Kaylyn, how could you talk about the tragedies

surrounding Port Arthur and not cover the Port Arthur Massacre? It's one of the biggest tragedies Australia has ever faced, and I would love to hear you talk about it. This It's one of the biggest tragedies Australia has ever faced. And I would love to hear you talk about it. This is another one that I am very glad was asked, because I didn't mention the Port Arthur Massacre in my episode on haunted Australian prisons.

I actually thought about it a lot when I was writing the episode, whether or not to mention the massacre that happened. And ultimately, I chose not to talk about it, but there was reason behind it. But essentially, there was a horrible tragedy that happened in Port Arthur, and I'll give you a little bit of backstory on it, and then I'm gonna explain why I didn't talk about it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Port Arthur Massacre is actually the reason why there's pretty strict gun laws in Australia, and also a near ban on all fully automatic or semi-automatic firearms in the country. On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old shooter opened fire on people throughout the Port Arthur historical site, which is the area I was talking about in that episode.

He started in the cafe, and then he made his way through the gift shop, the car park, all the way to the toll booth at the entrance of the site and he killed 35 people in total and wounded 23 more. It was horrible. Port Arthur is pretty remote. It took the police 20 minutes to arrive after the first call, which did unfortunately give the shooter a lot of time to make his way through most of the site.

The shooter had potentially been inspired by another mass shooting that had happened a month prior in Dunblane, Scotland, and that was when a 43-year-old shooter took the lives of 16 students and one teacher at a primary school. But it's kind of hard to know exactly why the shooter did this. He was intellectually disabled and a lot of his musings didn't really make

a lot of sense to the police. I was actually listening to the Casefile podcast episode on the massacre when they covered it in 2017. And at the time, the host said that it was the third worst shooting in the Western world. So I went and I looked that up, and today, it's actually the fifth. The Christchurch shooting and the Las Vegas shooting

both surpassed the death count, and they were both just awful, awful tragedies. And I will say, for as horrible and tortuous as the history of the prison is, the Port Arthur Massacre is typically thought of as the worst modern-day tragedy to happen on the grounds, and in Australia in general, because it's a huge point of national trauma

in Australia to this day. I'll give a little background on me here. So, I'm from Connecticut. I was actually in college when Sandy Hook happened. And I remember, after that tragedy happened, there were a lot of conspiracy theories that really started coming to the forefront of the conversation when people were talking about Sandy Hook.

I mean, I even remember getting coffee with a girl I went to college with, and she was trying to tell me about how some of the parents were crisis actors, and all of the reasons that the government would want a tragedy like this to happen. And it seems to me, at least like in some of the research I was doing on Port Arthur, the Port Arthur Massacre has really become an event that conspiracy theorists in Australia cling to.

I ended up watching an interview with the shooter's mother when I was doing research on the area, and it seems like even she believes the conspiracy theories about the massacre. This woman fully believes that her son was not even in Port Arthur the day of the shooting, simply because he told her that he wasn't. Even though, mind you, her son was known to harm animals from a young age. He had a fascination with guns. He would fire off shots at strangers without any regard. Her son, who after the massacre, kept asking police what the death count was so he could revel in it. I mean, five years before the shooting even took place, his therapist made a note that he kept talking

about wanting to shoot people. But his mother still believes to this day that it wasn't him. I actually even read this little story about him where he was known to grab the steering wheel when people were driving and try to run them off the road. And then later on was involved in an accident where a woman who was driving the car he was in died in a head on collision when their car swerved into oncoming traffic.

So we're talking about just a severely disturbed individual. And a story like this felt like it might have been a little bit too big to be brought up in an episode that was about the prisons and the ghosts of the area. I didn't want to make it seem like I was brushing it off by bringing it up as kind of a side note in the episode. And part of me was worried that it would sound a little bit it seem like I was brushing it off by bringing it up as kind of a side note in the episode. And part of me was worried that it would sound a little bit

like the madness that was infecting the prisoners and now the people who visit the site was responsible for this tragedy, when in reality, the shooter had suffered with really dark mental health issues for a very long time, and it had nothing to do with Port Arthur. But thank you so much to the Australians

that reached out to me about wishing I had included something about it in the episode. I didn't realize it at the time being an American, but now I can see how much it still affects the country to this day, and it's just, it's very heartbreaking. So, thank you for reaching out to me about that one. Okay, this next letter is gonna double as a recommendation that I have for you guys. I've seen a lot of you talking about the Ruby Frankie documentary on Hulu, Devil in the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie. And one person truly just wrote in to ask what I thought about the documentary. Well, lucky for you, I do have a

lot of thoughts on the documentary, but let me distill you the most important ones that I have. And I'm also going to give you a follow-up recommendation on something to read if you found the docu-series interesting. So a summary of the Ruby Franke case, if you're not familiar with it, but Ruby Franke ran a YouTube channel called Eight Passengers, where she filmed her husband and six children for years and amassed around two million subscribers. She was part of the Church of Latter-day Saints in Utah. She had kids in her late teens, early 20s with a man named Kevin. She didn't work, but she wanted to find a way

to make money and preach the lifestyle that came with being a good LDS wife and mother. And the docu-series that recently came out follows the rise of her channel, focusing on interviews with Ruby's husband, Kevin, and her two oldest children, Chad and Sherry. And they detail how during this time, none of the kids really wanted to be in the YouTube videos, but they felt like it was the only way

to get affection from their mother. Ruby was really mean and abusive when the camera wasn't rolling, so all the kids felt like it was just better for the YouTube videos to be made. One day, Ruby has her kids' therapist, this woman named Jodie Hildebrandt, move into their house, and this is when all hell really breaks loose.

Jodie is something else. She actually had lost her license as a therapist, or at least had it suspended after she breached patient therapist confidentiality and got one of her patients fired from his job. And her whole deal was she ran these really strange workshops for men with addiction issues, even though she had no real experience in that field at all.

And in the documentary, you actually see some of these sessions she would run, and it's really just her telling these poor guys that are trying to deal with their addictions how horrible and embarrassing they are, and how their wives have every right to hate them. And Kevin, Ruby's husband, was actually in one of these groups. But Jodie moves into the Frankie house,

and she starts convincing Ruby that her youngest children are possessed by Satan. And she also convinces Ruby to kick Kevin out of the house as well as their two oldest children. And I say convinced lightly because I think Ruby is horrible and I don't think she needed to be swayed that much to tear her entire family apart. And as Ruby is living with Jodie and the children in the house,

the abuse just keeps getting worse and worse and worse to the point where it's almost unimaginable what the kids were going through. And eventually the police were called after the youngest son escaped through a window to get help from a neighbor. He was suffering from the effects of starvation and had clearly been physically abused, but he was alive and he saved his family by getting out and getting help.

So the whole thing has at least somewhat of a happy ending. One of the most frustrating parts of watching the docu-series, though, is watching Ruby's husband, Kevin, speak. Maybe you know what I'm talking about if you watched this docu-series. He tries to frame himself as a nice guy that just wanted affection from his wife because he wasn't really popular growing up.

He says that he fell under her spell and he was totally brainwashed by her. He just wanted to make her happy. And to some extent, I am sympathetic about the brainwashing, especially when it comes to the children. Obviously, I'm sympathetic that they were pretty brainwashed by their mother. But Kevin wasn't brainwashed the entire time,

and Ruby was abusive towards their children basically since they were born. And he watched and he did nothing. And then at the height of things starting to get really scary in the house, when Jodie was there telling Ruby that her children were Satan, Kevin just leaves. Ruby tells him to leave and he does.

And the children had no advocates for them in the house and they could not fend for themselves. And on top of all of that, I did read Sherry Franke's book. Actually, that was another recommendation from one of you guys. I devoured the whole thing in one weekend and I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who's interested in this case. Sherry is a beautiful writer and she goes through

the whole story from her perspective, which she is very, very brave to do all that. But in the book, she explains that after Kevin left the family, she started being abused by a much older man within the church. This man saw how Sherry had no support. This man was married, he had children, and so he was able to kind of weasel his way into Sherry had no support. This man was married, he had children, and so he was able to kind of weasel his way into Sherry's life by pretending to be a father figure to her.

He said that he could help her, and that he was the only one who cared about her because her parents obviously didn't. And then he pressured her into sharing her location on her phone with him 24-7 so that he always knew where she was. And the abuse just gets worse from there. It got so bad that Sherry broke down

and told someone at the church what was going on. And then, of course, she was essentially suspended from her church for having a relationship with an older man who denied everything. And then Sherry was told she was crazy and was trying to tempt him. Please, if you can, read her book. I would say buy it if you can to support her financially. But if you can't, please just try to get a copy from a friend or the library because I personally believe

that there's a lot of really valuable lessons in that book. I was amazed at how she was still able to, in the middle of all that chaos, poke her head up, look around, and realize that something was not right. She just really trusted her gut the whole time, and I think that's such a valuable lesson. But hearing her story told in her own words just made me want to throw a chair at the TV even more every time Kevin was on screen.

Your children are being abused. Your daughter is being abused. Your daughter is being assaulted by a man your age and you're nowhere to be found. I honestly would have liked to see the interviewer push back on his answers a little bit more, especially when he's asked if he still loves Ruby at the end, because he says yes. After almost killing his children because of her abuse, Kevin says that he still loves her. And I will say after reading Sherry's book, it does seem like she's working on forgiving her father and repairing that relationship, which everyone's healing journey looks totally

different and it's totally up to them. And after all that she's been through, I really cannot judge her choices. But I do hope that Kevin takes a good long look at himself in the mirror every night before he goes to bed. All right, so I have one more for you guys. It's a listener who recently wrote to me, and this one really stood out because, um, I have a lot of thoughts on this. So this listener

writes, Kaylin, am I going to get hentavirus? I read about Gene Hackman's wife dying of the virus and it reminded me of one of your morbid medicine episodes. What is it? Am I at risk? Okay. So the short answer is no, you are most likely not going to get hentavirus. About 30 people each year get Hentavirus in the United States. And while the death rate is actually very high, it's about 36%, that still means only about 11 people die of this disease each year. I think I remember reading one time that 13 people get crushed by vending machines every year.

So you're at more of a risk of being crushed by a vending machine than getting Hentavirus and dying of it. But it was really devastating to read recently about Gene Hackman and his wife. I mean, The Royal Tenenbaums is still one of my favorite movies, so I was very sad when I read the news. On February 26th of this year,

95-year-old actor Gene Hackman and his wife, 65-year-old Betsy Arakawa, were both found dead in their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of their dogs tragically passed away with a couple as well. And so immediately, when people heard this news, they started thinking it was carbon monoxide poisoning. Because it sounds like a classic case of a gas leak

that no one knew about. Like, maybe the family had gone to bed, and then they just passed away in their sleep. But the situation ended up being a little bit darker than that because once authorities arrived on the scene, they very quickly realized that it was not a gas leak that killed the family. One of the strangest things about what they saw

was that it looked like Betsy had died days before Gene, which is not very common in gas leaks. And what was eventually discovered was that Betsy had died of an incredibly rare illness known as Hentavirus, which comes from deer mice. Gene very tragically had a heart condition and Alzheimer's, and he was not able to take care of himself after she passed away, and he died just a few days later.

So, Hentavirus does have kind of a spooky history in the United States because for a while, no one really knew what it was. In 1993, a Navajo man and his fiance died suddenly near the four corners in the United States, and that's where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. And they had come down with something

that felt like the flu. They had trouble breathing, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meat. And they had come down with something that felt like the flu. They had trouble breathing, sniffles, chest pain, but they started feeling a lot better eventually. And then within a few hours, they took a really bad turn for the worse and died of acute respiratory failure. One doctor actually started looking into this a little bit more and he found that there were five other young people in the surrounding area that had also died of flu-like symptoms recently. So doctors started calling it the Navajo Flu because it was mostly Navajo

people getting it, but no one knew what it was. Was it even a flu or was it something else entirely? But over the following weeks and months, more and more people kept dying suddenly, all from respiratory failure that occurred after severe flu-like symptoms. And many of them would appear to get better and then would take a turn for the worse in the next few hours.

It was so bad that actually anyone who fell sick was told to have a family member monitor them 24-7 because they could take a turn and die at any moment. Finally, virologists at the Center for Disease Control were studying tissue from the sick when they realized that the virus inside all of them had a link to a European virus known to cause kidney failure. This virus had mutated and somehow found its way into the deer mice population in the southwest. And when the mice would excrete anything, think like blood, saliva, pee, or droppings,

they would dry out in the desert air and the particles would cling to dust. And then the dust would get kicked up into the air and would be inhaled by humans. And that's how they got sick. But this all had to happen within 48 hours though, because that's how long the virus. But this all had to happen within 48 hours though, because that's how long the virus can last outside of a host. That outbreak, by the way, near the four corners, was estimated to have a death rate at 56%.

And that's not really the only time in US history that there's been a freaky outbreak of Hentavirus. In 2012, three people died and more became sick when a campsite had a really bad mouse infestation they didn't know about. And it was a really nice campsite in Yosemite National Park too. It was full of these tents that looked like they were supposed to be cabins. Well, it turned out that there was enough space in the tents walls for mice to crawl

in and overpopulate the area. Many of these tents had mice infestations that the staff and the campers did not know about. And a ton of hentavirus was being picked up into the air every day. Today, hentavirus has around a 36% death rate. And every now and then there's warnings in areas if the risk is particularly high.

But other than that, you don't really hear much about it though, which is why it's so surprising to hear of someone dying from it, let alone someone with a higher profile dying of it. But yes, to answer your question, you will probably not get Hentavirus, though I personally am a hypochondriac,

so I have been scouring my house for mouse droppings, just to be sure. But that's all I have in my mailbag for this week for you guys. And as always, thank you so much to everyone who reached out, who sent me stories, who tells me about their own life experiences and how it relates to the episodes. Everyone who reads updates on cases we've covered and sends them to me. I love, love, love, love, love it. And I will be back here in two days, actually,

kind of to tie this up with a little morbid bow, with another morbid medicine episode. And I'm excited because I haven't done one of those in a while, but I really love doing those episodes. This one is on spontaneous human combustion. So meet me here next week and bring your fire extinguisher. I'll see

you then. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Search and Writing by Kate Murdoch. Sound Design and Mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. You can listen to Heart Stars Pounding anywhere you get your podcasts, including the free Odyssey app.