National Park After Dark - Mercy or Murder? Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Grab your camping gear and make sure you bring plenty of water. This might be a good time to leave your best friend at home. This week we are taking you to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. When two friends from Boston head out on a cross-country road trip to California, they stop at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico to camp for the night. What was supposed to be a one night camping trip ends up being longer than either of them expected and only one of them makes it out alive. Join us this week as we take you down this journey of twists and turns that will make you question your own morals and what you might be capable of doing in dire situations.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome back to National Park After Dark. I'm your host Cassie. And I'm Danielle. So it's my turn to tell a story this week. And I just have to say that there were so many stories to choose from that it was really difficult for me to find a specific one that I wanted. Researching this has been a lot of fun because there's so many stories. I wish I could tell them all in this one episode, but this episode would go on for like seven hours. So obviously I'm not going to do that.

But it was really hard for me to pick this topic this week because I just. found so many. Do you mean like there were so many different stories within this park or in general? Because if it's in general, I totally get what you're saying. My list is just like ever growing. In general. Just parks everywhere in the U.S., in other countries, everywhere, there's so many stories and I want to tell all of them. Basically, bottom line, we are really excited to tell these stories. Oh, and I was thinking right now would be a good time to tell our listeners that we have another giveaway coming up. Oh, yes, we do. For anyone who does not know, National Park Week is coming up this month in the month of April. So it's going to start April 17th and the 24th. So for that

week, we have a giveaway going on and we'll post more details on it as it comes, you know, as springs coming, more and more parks are opening up again. We wanted to give you guys something to utilize when you're in the parks. So, should we just say what it is? No, I think we should let up be a surprise. Okay. It's going to be a surprise. But it's going to be something that you can utilize on your adventures in the park.

So if you're interested, then you can keep up to date on our Instagram at National Park After Dark. If you are a Patreon member, you are automatically entered. We'll have the rules on our Instagram page as well. But if you're Patreon, you do get an automatic entry. So if you are interested in being a Patreon, you can go on to our Instagram National Park After Dark and click our link to our Patreon. Or you can go on our website and PADD Podcast.com and click the Patreon link.

I think that's pretty much the business stuff. Also, it's exciting is we're going to another national park this week. Surprise, surprise, surprise. I was going to say, where are we going? I literally was just going to say, okay. So where are we going? Because even when you posted the picture today, I felt like totally out of the loop, when you posted the pictures on Instagram today and you're like, can you guess where we're going? I'm like, uh, no.

No, you haven't told me. Where this? I don't even know where this is. We are going to Carl's Bad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Okay. Okay. And I'm excited about this one because I knew about this park. I've never been there, but I knew very little in comparison to some other parks.

So I got to research it and learn some things about it. And I want to teach you guys about it if you haven't heard about it yet. Have you been to New Mexico at all? Yes, but not really. It was driving through. So I drove from Amarillo, Texas up to Denver, Colorado. So I drove through the corner of New Mexico. So technically you've been there, but you haven't spent.

I've been there too. And it's so funny because. I went there very briefly. I stayed a couple nights because I went to, it's when I worked at the wolf sanctuary, there was a rally going on in New Mexico. It was technically a U.S. Fish and Wildlife hearing regarding the reintroduction of Mexican gray wolves in New Mexico and Arizona because that is the only place that they have a wild population of Mexican gray wolves left. And, yeah. So this is back in. 2015, 2014, and at the time, there were less than 80 individuals. They share this swath of land

between Arizona and New Mexico, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was planning to reintroduce more Mexican gray wolves to diversify the genetic pool. So they had to do like a public hearing to let the people know, the locals know what their plan was, hear people's, you know, issues with it, whether it was for or against, whatever. As I worked at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, the owner Darlene took me and a few of my colleagues down there to speak for the reintroduction as we knew that a lot of ranchers in that area were going to be very against it. And they were taking public comments, so we wanted to make sure that, you know, there were some pro-wolf people there. And we drove down to this town and it was called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

That's the name of the town? Yeah. That's kind of creepy. It was very creepy. And we were one of the handful of people there that were for the reintroduction. But yeah, that's the only time I've ever spent in New Mexico. It was only a couple days. And it was a long drive, but it was worth it.

But needless to say, I've not been to Carl's bad national park. So take me there. Perfect. Just a little background so we can all get to know Carlsbad Caverns National Park a little bit more. It is in southeastern New Mexico. It's near the Guadalupe Mountains. And it was first established as the National Park in 1930. The park itself is about 73 square miles and it has 119 different caves underneath it. About 250 million years ago, this area was a shallow sea, which had a huge, limestone reef covered area. And after the sea evaporated, the continuous dripping of acidic groundwater formed massive underground chambers and enormous stalactites and stalagmites. And if you remember this from any college or from elementary school, stilastites, stilacites are the rock formations that hang down from the ceiling. And stalagmites are the rocks that grow up from the floor. And I don't know much beyond that, but I do know that part. The total length of the cave is

unknown, but the main cavern is more than 30 miles, and there are three miles of it that are open for tourists. The deepest part of these caverns are 1,027 feet or 313 meters below the ground surface, and people can actually walk as far as 755 feet or 230 meters. down or they also have an option to take an elevator. The Carlsbad Caverns are also widely known for their population of Brazilian freetailed bats. So visitors from around the world come to see these bats flying in groups of 200,000 to 500,000 bats.

And every morning and every evening they fly. So every evening they fly out for the night and every morning between four and 6 o'clock in the morning, they fly back in. So tourists come at these times to specifically watch these massive swarms of bats fly out. That's so cool because, so two things. One, this is starting to remind me of mammoth caves, which is really cool. And two, the Brazilian freetail bats, that's what they're called, right? Yeah. When I lived in Colorado, I went to the San Juan's with two of my friends, I think I've told you this. And we had to hike through a nudist colony to get to this abandoned mine shaft in the mountains of the San Juan's. And out of this abandoned mine shaft were all

these bats. And we hiked up there with this tour guide, this like bat biologist. And we waited for the sun to start to set. And they literally came out in a ribbon of hundreds and thousands of bats. And there was an owl sitting at the mouth of the. cave picking off these bats as they were coming out. And you could hear it like screeching and stuff. And yeah, just like I have a video of it. I'll send it to you. It's like it looks like a black ribbon in the sky of just hundreds and thousands of bats coming out. And I think they migrate like just seasonally, right? Yeah. So these bats at the Carlsbad caverns, they migrate there every summer. So you can only, if you go in the middle of winter, you're not going to see them.

Right. Yeah, I vaguely remember that. That's so cool. That was a really cool experience. They do have these bats there. They have these caverns there, which are the most reasons of why people come to visit this park. But while they're visiting that, there's also a lot of hiking trails that are above the park. So if you remember at the beginning of this, I said the park is 73 square miles and all the caverns are below the ground surface. So above these caverns, there are hiking trails that you can go out on. However, the location of this in New Mexico, they are in the desert. In the summertime, the hikers face extreme heat conditions where they're at really high risk of heat exhaustion and dehydration. And in the wintertime, it gets so cold there that they're hiking in freezing cold temperatures. So while these trails are there, very few people actually go there to hike these trails. And they're actually, from what I last read about it, they're actually not.

trail maintenance at all either. They're very little used. So I read this short article and it was from a few years ago, so maybe things have changed now, but they didn't have the staffing in the park to do the trail maintenance and there aren't enough people hiking the trails for them to continue doing it. Yeah, well, I would imagine if the big draw is underground, you would pool your resources to that, you know, versus maintaining trails that only a fraction of the people. utilize. Exactly. That was kind of my thought too. And for these trails, there is a large warning sign at the visitor center stating that these trails are dangerous because of the heat and heat exhaustion, dehydration, things like that. However, there are no warning signs at any of the trailheads.

So some of these trailheads actually start in other places than the visitor center. So if you're coming from any of these other places, you might never see this sign warning you about the heat and the danger. Uh-oh. I can see where this is going. This is the story about David Coughlin and Rafi Kaddikian. They were two friends who were in their 20s and they were both living in Boston, Massachusetts.

They had been friends for a long time. They actually met in college in Boston and they had been friends ever since. They had both graduated and David was working as a traffic policy analyst and Rafi was an aspiring journalist. David had recently gotten into grad school and was moving to California. He was planning to get his master's in environmental science at UC Santa Barbara. And he had originally planned to make this cross-country drive to move by himself. But he ended up delaying his trip out there because his best friend Rafi wanted to join him. And he could come just not at the same time David was planning to leave. So he actually waited for him to be able to go.

And Rafi was really excited to go because he had done a cross-country road trip in the past. He actually did a two-week trip across the country. He covered 25 different states. And he actually wrote a freelance article for the Boston Globe about his trips across the country. And for him, one of the things he said that this was such a magical trip that he really wanted to do it again. So when David came to him and told him his plans to move to California and drive there, he was down. He was like, all right, let's go. is going to be fun. What year is this? This is in 1999. Okay. So they head out. They pack all their

stuff. They're getting ready. Bring David to California to start his master's degree out there. And they're driving for several days. And on August 4th, 1999, around 3 p.m., they arrive at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. They walk into the visitor center and they went into the desk attendant and they asked for a good place to camp for the night. They didn't have a long time, but they wanted to come see a nice place. It had been recommended by a family member that they go check the Carlsbad Caverns out. So this desk attendant recommended that they head out to Rattlesnake Canyon. And they told them when they got there, this is August. So it's hot. It's the desert. Remember we said it gets really hot there. The desk attendant told them that they needed to carry one gallon of water each per day. however long they were planning to stay there. They went over the rules and regulations of the park, and they handed them a camping permit to go out for the night. They were told to head down this trail, and the whole length of this trail out and back was

5.1 miles. So the whole trail, in total, was 5.1 miles. And they head out there. They go to the bottom of the canyon where they can set up camp and sleep for the night. Despite the desk attendance recommendations of the amount of water that they should bring, they only packed three pints of liquid, two pints were water, and one pint was of Gatorade for the overnight trip. And just to put that into perspective for you, that is about six cups of water. That is less than your daily recommendation when you're not doing anything outside is what they

brought to hike into this canyon. Don, da, do. They get down there. They set up their camp. They're hanging out. fire, have a good night. The following morning, they packed up their camp and they started to head back to their car. So the trail wasn't well marked, but it did have Carnes to guide the way throughout the trail, but there weren't like spray paint markings or anything like that. It was all just Carnes. You did say that there wasn't regular maintenance done on the trail, so I can't imagine that there

isn't much more than some rock formations. Exactly. They head out, they're walking along what they think is the trail, but quickly they realize along the way that they have. to have missed a turn and that they were lost and they didn't recognize where they were. And they had a topographical map to help them locate where they should go and where they were. But the problem was, neither of them knew how to read it. Oh, no. So they're carrying this map and neither of them have any idea what it even says or what it means. And it just so happened that that day, the heat was unbearable.

It was pushing 100 degrees, hot sun, not a cloud in the sky. and they drank all of their water really quickly. And when I say all of their water, they had used one pint of their water the night before to boil hot dogs. Oh, no. So they had one pint of water and one pint of Gatorade and they drank it all really quickly. So they spent that entire day hiking out in the hot sun, hoping that they would find the trail again and they had no luck. They were out of anything to drink now and they're lost. So that night, they went back. They headed back to camp where they had been the night before, and they decided to spend another night and try and find their way again in the morning. So that night while they were camping, Rafi noticed a moving light in the opposite direction from where they had come from. And he thought it might be a road. It might be cars that were going by. So the two decided that the next morning would be a good time to head in that direction and try and find what they thought might have been a road.

Even though that's not where they came from originally. Even though it's not where they came from originally. Okay. So the next day was still very hot. Again, it's a hundred degree weather. And they decided to hike across this entire canyon floor and climb the opposite rim of the canyon, hoping to find this road with the lights that they had seen. When they reached the top, there was no road. So what did he see?

It was just further land of nothing. So the lights he thought he saw was not coming from any sort of source. My guess is that the lights that he saw were maybe in a different direction. And it was that night and in the morning everything looked different. And they didn't go in the right direction that they saw these lights coming from. Is what I would guess happened or maybe it was just a shooting star or, you know, like, I don't know, whatever direction they went in, it was clearly not the right one. Even when I was in Death Valley, dispersed camping, I freaked myself out so bad. Like, it was towards the end of my trip.

I had spent like three weeks dispersed camping outside. I was getting delusional. I could have sworn I saw not lights, but like, you know when you're shining your light and you catch eye shine from an animal? Yeah. I could have sworn. I saw that as I was sitting on top of my camper shining my mag light or but from a big animal.

And I was like, oh my God. And we're in the middle. Death Valley is already very sparse, like very sparse national park. There's not a lot of people around there. And plus, I had taken the camper like six miles into this canyon, had not an ounce of service. I had no idea where we were, what was going on, what the local wildlife was like. And I could have sworn it was a mountain lion.

And I started losing my shit. And I was like, getting the dog. into the campers fast as I could. I'm like, there's a mountain line out there, Ian, like, get in. And he's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, I just saw I shine. And he's like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't see anything. You know, like, I don't see one thing. And it's so true, like, your mind can play tricks on you. And especially when you want to see something, like, they're obviously in a situation that they're desperate and looking for any sort of light source or source of human activity or whatever.

So maybe you're right. It was like, you know, maybe it was a different direction or something, a star or something like that. And you catch it out of the corner of your eye at the right time and the right mindset. And you could totally misinterpret it. And they get something totally different. Yeah. Yeah.

So either way, they got to the top of this canyon and now there's nothing around them. This was the wrong direction to go. they realized they need to turn around. At this point, David and Rafi were starting to panic. They were exhausted and they were starting to feel the effects of the dehydration. They found a shaded area under some bushes and they took a break and they watched some vultures actually fly above them. For this trip, Rafi had brought a journal and on this particular day, Rafi wrote in his journal, We will not let the buzzards get us alive.

That is so ominous. Usually I have like a good idea of what's going to happen at the end of the story just because context clues or like I know the story already or whatever, but I know zero about this. And I'm just really nervous. And I feel like I should be. I feel like you should be too. Okay. Go on. So after taking a break, they decided they needed to head back to the camp where they had been before. And they were feeling hungry and they were dehydrated and they were dehydrated. And they were. actually started eating cactus fruit and trying to drink the juice that was inside. But it was not enough. They decided that they would try out what they had seen in movies. And that was they would start to drink their own urine. A classic. Classic.

And Rafi quickly abandoned this idea as drinking his own urine was really gross. And it actually made him gag. And he was just like, I can't do it. I'm not doing it. Not that desperate yet. which actually turned out to be a good decision because drinking your own urine when you're dehydrated will not help you hydrate. In fact, it actually will do the opposite. So that whole theory in movies is completely false. And I feel like this is important to tell people, especially listening

to this if you're ever in a dire situation and you think drinking your own urine is going to help you. It's not. It's going to dehydrate you even more because even though your urine is 90% water, it contains dissolved salts and minerals and trace amounts of toxins that are excreted from your liver. So when you're dehydrated, these concentrations of these minerals and everything actually become really high. And when you're drinking your urine, you're putting these pollutants that your body filtered out back into your body. And not only are you doing that, your urine is becoming really concentrated with salt. And it becomes essentially like drinking ocean water. I mean, That does make sense. Like you're drinking a waste product that your body produced. And I would like to say also very quickly, I feel like I'm interjecting a lot this episode. But did you ever watch Man vs. Wild? I've seen a little bit of it. With Bear Grills, the British guy. Yeah. I vividly remember him killing a snake, eating the snake, like the meat of it, but using the skin as like a sleeve and he tied one end of it and peed into it. And he.

and held his urine in it and then drank it. So I'd like to know what that was about? What that was about. So that is for show. So you can drink your own. If you are completely hydrated and totally healthy, no health issues and you drink your own urine, it's probably not going to hurt you. It's not going to dehydrate you right then because it is more water.

But when you're dehydrated, that's when you're getting all these concentrated salts and everything. So to use it as a survival mechanism is not going to work. And it's also not something that you should do to prevent yourself from being dehydrated either because you are putting those toxins back in your body. It is bad for your liver. It is bad for your kidneys. It is going to become more salt and more salt. And eventually it's just going to help you become dehydrated. And it's also just gross. Well, there's that. It just seems like it's expediting the process. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely is. So I thought that that was really important to add into this because I know personally I have seen lots of things stating that you should drink your urine if you are dehydrated.

And that is so false. And also, if you're dehydrated enough, you're not going to pee. Right. That whole idea just goes out the window. If you're waiting for a moment where you're going to pee, it's not going to happen if you're dehydrated enough. On August 7th, this was the third night that they had been in the park. David started to become very, very ill, and he started to vomit over and over. And this continued throughout the night and into the following morning.

So he's getting really sick at this point. On that same day, so this is the following morning after David's been sick for a while, that same day, this is August 8th. Park Ranger Lance Mattson was alerted by a park volunteer that there was a car that was parked in the parking lot that had a permit for one night that was dated back four days ago. So he comes over to this car to check it out. He's there about 1.30 p.m. and he finds the car. And he actually looks at the volunteer in the park and asks him, do you want to go find some hikers?

It's like, let's go out and look for these guys. And the volunteer person says, yeah, let's go. Let's go. This is what I signed up for. Yeah. This is what I signed up to volunteer to do. Let's go find these people. Lance is walking along the mountainside along the top of the ridge.

He spotted their campsite almost immediately. And he began his 670 foot descent down to the campsite. Their original campsite. Their original campsite that they've been coming back to. Okay. It's 670 feet down. From the parking lot. Yes.

Essentially, if. Essentially. Which, to put into perspective, is not the height of a mountain at all. I hike, like, Pacman-Madnach, and I know I refer back to this a lot for New Hampshire people and West Coast people probably don't know what this is, but Pac-Manad-Nad-Nock is a mountain in New Hampshire. It is about 1,000 feet high. You start, I think it's 1,200, and you start off at, like, 100-foot elevation. It's about a mile.

It's about a mile. 1.4 miles. Yeah, it's not bad. This is shorter than that. This is 670 feet. It seems so insignificant, but clearly, I mean, you just get to. so turned around and it's so easy, especially somewhere that you're not familiar with, a different landscape, you're not. And to be honest, like how many times that we've hiked either pack or

Mount Madnach, if we got off trail and got turned around, how difficult would it be to find the trail again? Like, even places that are very well marked, very well visited, and you've been to a thousand times, it can happen to anybody at any time. You can certainly get lost. It is. easy. I mean, we have gotten lost together before on a trail, kind of. Kind of. Kind of. We took an extra 10 miles on our, we hiked him out, was it Mount Moose Lock, yeah, New Hampshire. Yeah, it was like supposed to be a six mile hike. It ended up being 16 or 17 miles by the time we were done. So I can't say we haven't been lost before

because we certainly have. But he noticed that immediately and he began his 670 foot. descent down to this campsite. And when he got to the campsite, Raffy rolled out from underneath his tent. He comes out. He rolls out of this tent. And he says, please tell me you have water. And Lance, first thing he noticed, Rafi was dirty. He was unshaven. He was only wearing shorts at the time. And he was covered in scrapes across his arms and legs that were pretty consistent with hiking through the backcountry brush of the area. And looking around the scene, he appeared to be very desperate. He saw three empty bottles, which were the liquid that he had.

There was an SOS written in heavy rocks, and the S was only half finished. The second S was only half finished. And there was a sock that was smudged in blood along with some rocks. Uh-oh. Lance handed him a bottle of water, and Rafi began chugging it. As soon as he started chugging it, he almost immediately started to vomit, which is a sign of dehydration. I've definitely heard of that. You have to take it easy.

Same thing with starvation. You can't just wolf down a whole meal. Lance is looking around and he only sees Rafi. He says, where is your buddy? Because he saw in the permit that it was two people. And Rafi then gestures towards the canyon behind him and goes, oh, he's over there. Lance looks around, doesn't see anything at all. He says where? Right there. Raffey pointed at a mound of rocks. And this time, he pointed to a mound of rocks that were only feet away.

And he said, I killed him. What? What? What? Where did this happen in how and when? Wait, okay, hold on. So I have the timeline, right? So August 7th is the day that... David was getting really sick on August 7th. Up until August 8th. Is this August 8th? This is August 8th. Okay. Fill me in here. So Rafi then went on to tell Lance that his buddy, David, was very sick from dehydration.

And he was so sick that he begged Rafi to end his life and to end his suffering. And on August 8th, the day that they were found, Rafi wrote inside his journal and he wrote this. I killed and buried my sick best friend today. Dave had been in pain all night. At around five or six this morning, he turned to me and begged that I put my knife through his chest. I did and a second time because he wouldn't die.

What? Total twist in the story. Total twist. And it's always the day they're discovered or like so close to rescue that it seems like it just seems like a lot of survival stories or it's always so close. So close. So close. You just want them to make it and you just wait a little bit longer. Raffi had claimed to murder his friend to save him from suffering. But immediately he was highly questioned whether or not that. was the case and if there was actually malicious intent in this and that he, instead of killing him out of mercy to save him, he was actually just plain murdered him. And they thought this for several different reasons. When they did the autopsy on David, they found that his blood and urine levels were at the point of dehydration. He was moderately to severely dehydrated, but it was not fatal. They also reported, quote, he was very much alive when he was stabbed.

They also found in this autopsy report that the vomiting that had been occurring for that past day was not likely due to his dehydration, but it was probably more likely that he had eaten unripe cactus fruit that had made him really sick. I was going to ask that if, because at first when you're like, he was vomiting all night, I'm like, it gets to a point that if you haven't been eating and you're super dehumaning, You're not vomiting up much, but then I remembered you said they were eating the cactus. And if that could have been a reason, maybe you'll explain more. I just don't understand like how you go from having a road trip with your best friend to committing murder.

And that was a huge question in this investigation as well. Investigators were also questioning how if Rafi, who had been claiming to be really dehydrated as well, if he was so weak and dehydrated and his friend was so weak and dehydrated, how was he able to bury his friend under these rocks? Because if you remember, he pointed to that big rock formation and pointed that he was under there. He had buried him in these rock formations. And some of these rocks weighed up to 50 pounds that he had put on top of him. Yeah. For someone who's, you know, on their last leg in a survival situation, I mean, got to carry. It is. A lot of work. And God forbid, like, that was the case because I can't even imagine being in a horrific situation like that where I'm with one of my best friends. And it is to the

point of, look, like, I'm suffering so much. Please put me out of my misery. And somehow I do that. I don't think that you would be in a physical situation that you could physically then bury them. Like, I just imagine it like, okay, you did the deed. You don't have any energy to do anything else. Like, how are you going to completely bury them? Barying someone when you're at the top of your physical game is already hard enough. I would imagine, I don't know. But. Yeah, which is why they were very skeptical. And also another thing that was really sketchy for them is when Rafi was rescued from his severe dehydration, after only an hour of IV fluids, he was feeling a lot better and he didn't need to be hospitalized. That's a very quick rebound. Very quick rebound. And speaking from experience,

I have been very severely dehydrated and I was hospitalized. This was not for like an adventuring accident. It was just I got sick with some other things and I got very dehydrated. It took me days to bounce back. And I mean, I have to say as soon as they started giving me fluids, I was like, thank God I didn't realize how much I needed this. But I didn't feel good for days. And for all my levels to come back and for me to be better, it took a long time.

And I wasn't really on my deathbed of dehydration, but I was very dehydrated. And it wasn't like after an hour of fluids, they were like, okay, one hour later you can be discharged. Like, you were still there and being monitored. And one side note, is all of this, I know you were saying that Rafi is the one that was keeping the journal. I'm assuming. So now all these accounts that we have are from his journal and from his his testimony, essentially. Yeah. Okay.

This is all what he's just telling the police. On top of that, another thing that they thought was suspicious, when they got to the scene, it looked like David's sleeping bag had been set on fire, which I don't really know what that means, but it's also weird. Like, why are you setting his sleeping bag on fire? David's body did not have any burn marks on it or? No. Okay.

No, there were no burn marks on his body at all. Another thing on top of all these other things that they're questioning was how this pair even got lost in the first place. So their campsite was only 240 feet away from the trailhead. So they could have literally thrown a rock to the trailhead. And the trailhead had had a huge carn right at the end of it. So it wasn't hard to find. It was very easy. It was right there.

So they didn't hike the full five point. one miles. Or they did and then came back and camped or whatever. No, they hiked. They actually found where they found them camped was only one mile from their car. Okay. I was envisioning this way different. Mm-hmm. So they found, when they found them, their campsite was one mile from the car and the trailhead was 240 feet from them. God, it's just like, I hate to say this, but it's like twisting the knife, like really. bad. Like, it just hurts. Yeah, it's wild to think about in that retrospect. And then they also noted that if they had just simply hiked to a slightly higher point, they would have been able to see the visitor center from where they were. But Rafi was the one who said, oh, I saw lights over here.

We should go over here in the opposite direction, right? Yes, he was. So whatever intent, if he did have malicious intent to try and do like a mental warfare is and manipulation is something that he may have utilized to confuse his friend, make his friend seem more hopeless, desperate. Like you go all the way over there thinking that, you know, there's hope and then there's nothing and then you go back, you know, I don't know. It's just a theory and I have no idea of what's going on. And it's certainly the investigators don't know either. They're putting putting all these pieces together and they're coming up with theories just like you are. What could have happened? Why did it happen this way? They also noted that they actually still had

food. They had a can of beans, which has liquid in it. Can of beans, if you open a can of beans, there's a bunch of liquid in it that it sits in. So there was some type of liquid unopened. And they also had a first aid kit that had electrolyte packets in it. And they hadn't opened it or used it. Okay, so why are they eating cactus when you have a can of beans? Great question. I know these are all questions that have been asked and are unanswered. No, these are all such solid points. Like, it just makes you think, what was going on out here?

What happened? He gets charged with his murder and he goes to trial. And during the trial, there was a desert survival expert who testified that when you go into dehydration, which they did find their blood work, both of them, they were dehydrated. Your decision making is altered and you are capable of making very irrational decisions. And they also testified that on top of this, both of them were very unexperienced outdoors people, which I imagine. I mean, they're two guys from Boston. They live in a city. They're camping. They didn't follow any of the regulations. The first thing they said was to bring

water got lost on a very simple trail, very close to the trailhead. This person is just saying their inexperienced, they were dehydrated, they could have been making some very irrational decisions because their mind wasn't working correctly under dehydration. And it's not too far-fetched to say that people born in race in Boston, you know, it's not irrational to say that they don't know what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, you're not near any outdoor. You got to drive hours to get really in the outdoors from Boston, and it's definitely not far-fetched for them to have very little hiking experience at all. The prosecution side discussed heavily in detail. There had been lots of people who had been more severely dehydrated than them, had been out in the wilderness a lot

longer than they had in hotter conditions and had survived. And this happened to these two men. So all in all, they were out for how many days? Four? Four days. Okay. On the fourth day, they were found. The first night, they had food and water. Oh, okay. So really, they only got, so really, if you think about it, they finished.

So the first night, they ate hot dogs. The second day, they finished all their water. The third day, they had cactus fruit. And the fourth day, Rafi killed David. So they really only had one full day. full day without food or water. But really, they had electrolyte packets and beans. Yes. At the trial, Rafi stated that he had regretted what had happened to David, but he still believed that he had done the right thing for his friend at the time that he was suffering and he was doing what his

friend wished. And he did state that he felt very guilty for being the only one that survived the trip and that he would be living with this guilt for the rest of his life. And actually, David's family, they didn't travel to Carlsbad from Boston to go to Rafi's trial, but they did send in a letter to the court. And this letter was written by David's father and he wrote, we can think of no reason why Rafi would have wished David any harm or pain. Moreover, we cannot presume what transpired or the thoughts and emotions the two experienced during the days before David's death. To be sure, we have questions. However, we find it very difficult to believe there was any malish intent. Investigators interviewed a lot of people in their lives and no one had a single bad thing to say about Rafi or David.

They never had any fights, altercations in their whole friendship for the past years. There was nothing that made anyone believe that Rafi would have done this out of a malicious intent. And this was something that they had been trying to prove in court. actually even came up with this idea that David had confessed to Rafi that he slept with an ex-girlfriend and that's what triggered it. But there was no evidence of that. It was just some theory that the prosecution was bringing about to try and... Hmm. That's you, that. Yeah. So there was no evidence of that that kind of got squashed really quickly. So at the end of the day, Rafi pleaded guilty to second degree manslaughter, and he pleaded down instead of facing a first-degree murder charge that would

have got him life in prison if he was convicted. So at his sentencing hearing, he stated, What I thought I was doing was keeping my friend from going through 12 to 24 hours of hell before he died. Rafi was sentenced to two years in prison. He served 16 months and was released in November 2001. Well, I mean, to his point, if what he's saying is valid, he was in his mind trying to help his friend and be kind of grant him a final act of mercy. And if that's one of your best friends like begging you, you know, presumably their last leg, like, I can't even imagine. Because what do you do? Do you help them or do you watch them suffer and have them die? in front of you. If that's exactly, if that is what was going to happen to David, if he was going to die,

and he's pleading with his someone he loves and one of his closest friends to help him in his final hours, so many twists and turns and unanswered questions. And you can legitimately see both sides. It does bring up this huge question. If you were in this situation, what would you do? If you really thought that your friend was dying, like genuinely thought that they were suffering and there There's no other way and they were begging you, what would you do? Is that a rhetorical question? No. You're staring at me.

I don't know. I don't know. It's a real question. For me, I sit here in the comfort of my home and my chair with a cup of tea next to me. And I say, I would never do that. But, you know, when you're actually in those circumstances, things change. This whole case just brings the question of was this a mercy killing or was it straight up murder? Yeah.

the only two people who know the answer to that out of them, only one of them is alive. And we obviously know his side of the story. So truly, I do hope it was, I mean, it's a terrible situation to be in. And I can't even imagine myself in it. And I hope I don't have to be in it one day. But hopefully that was the case. My personal feeling, I think that Rafi really did think that he was dying. I think that these were two very inexperienced people. They had a map that neither of them knew how to read. They brought not even close to enough water to survive. I mean, they're in the desert and they brought six cups of water.

You're supposed to drink eight cups of water just sitting on your couch watching Netflix for the day. Never mind actually hiking, even though it wasn't a long distance, one mile, but then they ended up hiking a lot further than that. And I think maybe the confusion, maybe the paranoia, maybe just that they were so scared, maybe they really didn't have a lot of experience outside. And they thought that they were in deep trouble and that there was really no way out. And he did decide to do that. The horrible part about this was that he killed him at about 6 a.m.

And he was rescued around 2 p.m. So there were hours between this. Yeah. He said it. He stated it multiple times that he is going to have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life about what happened and what transpired that day. But I just can't imagine that you go through this whole process of thinking that your friend is dying and assuming he didn't murder him and assuming that he really did do what he said he did for the reasons, thinking he's dying. And then not only being rescued only a few hours later, but also being told. that all of the signs from his autopsy showed that he would have very easily survived for the next eight hours. It's survivors guilt, but there's also an added layer to that. This is a different situation.

This is a whole different type of survivor's guilt going on. I feel bad. I truly do feel bad for him if, I mean, and only if, you know, it truly was out of mercy. If it was murder, then one can only be. hope that at some point he comes out with the truth. I mean, I think David's family, it was very brave of them to give him the benefit of the doubt because you don't know. And to, you know, pin such, it's all so circumstantial and like, you know, it's hard. That's a really, really crazy case. I didn't, I never knew about that. I think it's also a big example of why you should always be

prepared. The fact that they were specifically told that they should each have a gallon of water for each day that they planned to be there. They didn't bring even close to enough. I thought it was just, I thought it was irresponsible and a bad decision, which obviously I'm sure that is a very regretful decision, but also just seeing how literally close they were to the trailhead this entire time. They kept coming back right to it and they missed it. I just have to believe that they were very inexperienced, very unprepared.

You never know if even a short day trip, a short day hike, what it could turn into. So be that person that has everything in their daypack that everybody else makes fun of. Why do you have a first aid kit, bear spray, a knife, waterproof matches, a poncho, a compass, a whistle, etc. These are all very important things that you never know. Hopefully they gather dust and you never have to use them. But you'll regret it if you don't have them when you need them. And it could seriously save your life too. So it's just, it's important to be prepared. I think you should always be prepared. And that is my whole story. Wow. That was a wild ride. Thanks for taking us there. And for begging the question, that really important question,

what would you do? Because, you know, what would you? So I hope everyone thinks about that. And it doesn't keep you up at night because it's a really morbid thought. But it's one. that you may have to think about it at some point. So just be prepared and you won't have to go through anything like that. Thanks for joining us. You can follow us on National Park After Dark. And in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Have a great week, everyone. Enjoy the view. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressives save over $900 on average.

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