National Park After Dark - Missing in Death Valley National Park

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

When a family of 4 travel all the way from Germany to the US for a national park trip, they head into Death Valley National Park during some of their hottest days. While on a mission to look for illegal drug activity in the park, a ranger discovers their abandoned vehicle in an extremely remote area. A massive search ensues, but some believe they may have vanished on purpose. Check out Andy Tate's podcast Let's Not Meet at https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts.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!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: Take charge of your mental health. NPAD listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/NPADTodayTix: See the show that you have always wanted to see and find the best prices!  Get $10 off your first ticket purchase at Skylight Frame: Gift a special integrative photo frame to your loved ones. Use our code PARK for $10 off skylightframe.comFor a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com. Relax. As AI does the manual work, while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform, so flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless.

Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Death Valley National Park is the hottest place on the entire planet.

Over the past 15 years, more than a dozen people have died due to heat-related illness in this park, and many more have come very close. While the rule of thumb has always been, you can survive three days without water. Death Valley does not adhere to these rules. Out in the scorching sun, when you finish that third, very last drop of water, the countdown to your death begins. Here you have just 14 hours left to live, and you better hope you're not out hiking when the weather is hot, because now your time left on this earth is even less. In 1996, a family of four headed out into this park during one of the worst

heat waves the park has ever experienced. When their car is found abandoned, with them, nowhere in sight, an extremely dangerous rescue mission ensued. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hey everybody, welcome back to National Park After Dark. Welcome back. Happy brand new week. Happy Monday. We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up.

I mean, Danielle and I, we are about to go next week. We're going to Joshua Tree. We're going to do our first live event, our digital live moment with Moment House. We are going to Joshua Tree. we're going to explore the park a bit, and then we're going to L.A. to a studio where we're going to record live. And we're really, really excited because Danielle is going to talk about some murders that happened in the park while I am going to talk about some survival stories in the park. Yes, we got a little bit of both going on. And there are so, so many that I've discovered

stories within Joshua Tree. It's hard to narrow them down. But we're going to have a little bit of everything the best we can during the show. So we really hope that you come and get a ticket and come enjoy the night with us, my birthday eve, my last day of being 30. We are both very excited to be ringing in my new chapter in L.A. after a beautiful visit to Joshua Tree and celebrating with everybody in our live show. So if you would like to come, there is still time to grab a ticket. You can go to momenthouse.com slash NPAD, or you can go on to our Instagram, our Facebook, our Twitter, all of those places have links to the ticket hub.

So you can grab one, you can grab a meet and greet, we have exclusive merch, we have it all there. And you can't forget the best part. We're doing a Park Pass giveaway live on our show, and the only rule to enter is to be at our live show or have a ticket to our live show. So if you have one, tune in because we are going to announce the winner on our show. Yes. And last thing, I really want to get into Death Valley because I've been there and I really am excited to hear about the story that you have.

But before we begin, one last really exciting thing, fangirling a little bit because we linked up with Andy Tate, Andrew Tate, from Let's Not Meet. this podcast is a true horror podcast. It's an anthology, creepy podcast that I have been a fan of for years and grabbed Cassie on board. I think last year I told you about it when I was moving out here because I literally listened to the podcast. My whole trip out here freaked myself out and we linked up with him and we host read some of the creepy stories that is going to be coming out what today? Yeah, they come out today and they're creepy stories. They are personal accounts and narratives that have been produced by Andrew Tate about these really scary happenings. And Danielle and I got to read two different stories of his on the podcast. We're really excited. We're both huge, huge fans. Check it out. It's Let's Not Meet. You can listen to it on Apple, Spotify, pretty much wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to it. It's our first guest appearance. Very, very exciting. And it's a terrifying podcast. So we think that this is up all of your alley. So go check it out. It's, it's, um, very scary. We were really excited to work with him and read some creepy stories. And you can go check that out and go check out his podcast. It's awesome. Yeah. So I'm ready to go to death valley. Let's go. I've been waiting for a death valley episode. It's time we go here. I had a very lovely time in Death Valley last year, physically there.

And I'm really glad that you're telling me a story about it because my time there was brief. And now we get to explore it more. Yeah, and didn't you say it was like one of the most out there places you've ever been? Yeah, it was, it felt like I know a lot of people are always like, Mars, like anytime they're in a desert or like an isolated place or like life on Mars. But like it really did feel otherworldly. And I think it's just so expansive. I mean, we were there for two days.

We spent one night in the area. And everything we did was very early in the morning, like 6, 7 in the morning. Because even in late October, by like 9 or 10, it was in the 90s. Wow. Yeah, I was reading a lot of the temperature, a lot of the temperatures that are in the park. and it's crazy how hot it really is there and gets there. Actually, right now is one of the best times to visit because it actually is cooling down now in Death Valley.

Yeah, I mean, it was beautiful. Like, I think the highlights, of course, we went to Artist Palette, which is like a beautiful, I think I have pictures. I'll send them to you, but they're just like... Is that like the ice cream cone? It looks like ice cream melting in different colors. Yeah, really beautiful.

And then we went to Badwater Basin, like the lowest part of, is it the lowest part of the U.S.? Yeah, it's at 282 feet below sea level. If you have never been to Death Valley or have never heard of it, Death Valley National Park is located in California, and it's along the Nevada. Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, everyone says it different. I say Nevada, but Al says Nevada. So Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, tomato, tomato, potato, potato, border. Thank you for doing that. Sorry, I just, like, spoke all my thoughts out loud right there while I was trying to. Okay, anyway.

Death Valley was originally established as a national monument on February 11, 1933, but then was later established as the National Park on October 31st, Halloween. in 1994. It's a spooky park. I didn't. It is a spooky park. Wow. It covers over 3,000 square miles or 7,899 square kilometers. And 1.6 million people visit this park every single year. Within this park are zones of the Great Basin and the Mojave Desert. It's full of diverse landscapes with salt flats, sand dunes, badlands, canyons, and huge mountains. The salt flats and Death Valley are one of the largest in the entire world, extending 40 miles or 64 kilometers. And this park is the hottest and driest place in all of North America. The hottest temperature ever recorded here was on July 10th, 1913, at 134 degrees Fahrenheit or 56.7 degrees Celsius. Yikes. Yeah, I would not want to be there on that day.

Yeah, it's hot. But you also have to, there's no shade either. So it's a relentless heat and direct sunlight combination. Like you can't get out of it. And during the summer months in this area, it regularly reaches over 100 degrees, Fahrenheit, 38 degrees Celsius. I mean, it reaches these degrees daily. And July is the hottest month where the temperatures even tend to stick around 117 degrees.

Fahrenheit, which is 47 degrees Celsius, with a low of 91 degrees Fahrenheit, 33 degrees Celsius. I'm trying to add in both of them because we're getting more and more listeners that I wish we were all in the same system. Like, why don't the U.S. have to make our lives so hard? But, I mean, it stays 91 degrees at night. So there's no cooling off at all in the summer months. Yep. I can attest to that.

Staying in my camper. last, well, even in October, I mean, we stayed in my camper in, I'm not even going to get into that story right now because it was one of the scariest nights ever. And it was, I just remember it being so hot. And all of us were just in my little box of a camper like me, my boyfriend, and my two dogs panting and breathing. And I didn't want to leave the doors open or sticky. Yeah, the windows open or anything. Because I'm like, we're going to get murdered or something's going to happen to us. So I'm like, I'll rather...

Why did you think you were going to get murdered? Cassie. Right. You always think you're going to get murdered. Yes. So I'm like, I'd rather just like, trap myself in this sauna of a hot box for the whole night and be super uncomfortable than Ian's like, there's fresh air outside. Like, just open the door.

Like, no. I'd rather live and just lose about 10 pounds in sweat than be uncomfortable. mentally for the whole night. But anyway. Well, you're alive, so I guess your decision worked out. So with 93% of Death Valley being desolate and fully wilderness area, it has a lot of places where many crimes have also been committed. And one problem that happens in this park is there have been illegal pot growing farms

and other illegal drug operations that go on within the isolated areas of the park. Two comments on that. Well, one question, one comment. You literally just asked me why it was uncomfortable and you're like, why were you afraid? Also, there are so much crime in this park. And then second, you said there was a lot of illegal grow operations, even in the dry climate and arid climate, they can do that. Yeah, so I guess there's little pockets of this park where marijuana, I don't know anything about growing marijuana. And it was like this tiny little exploit that I read. So if someone's a pot grower and they're listening to this and they're like, you're so false.

From my understanding that there's like these little pockets within the park that holds more water during certain times of year and have the amount of sunlight that are really good for pot farmers and also the soil, I guess. has a lot of minerals in it that are really good for growing. So there are, there's different types of drug operations that have been busted inside of the park in really isolated areas. Interesting. Yeah. Which kind of moves us into our story because on October 21st, 1996, Dave Brenner, who was a park ranger for Death Valley National Park, was aboard a military helicopter fly. over the southern part of the park, because it had become relatively common

to do aerial surveillance missions with the military and search for these illegal drug farms and operations. So on this morning, Ranger Brenner was scanning this park below him when he noticed something very odd. As he looked over Anvil Canyon, a remote area that could be accessible

by off-roading or four-wheel-drive vehicles, was a minivan. And this was puzzling for a couple of reasons. First, he was familiar with the area and there was just no way that a family van would make it over the tough terrain to get to the location that it was at. And second was that there was actually no official road to the canyon anymore. As of two years prior to that in October of 1994, the Desert Protection Act was put into place and it actually deemed this area an official wilderness area and now prohibited all vehicles. You weren't allowed to drive on it, and the only way you could go to this area was either by hiking or on horseback. Oh, so a couple red flags.

Yeah, he's like, why is there a family minivan in the middle of Death Valley in this extremely isolated area? So with all that in mind, they decided we need to go check this out. what is this. So they land the helicopter and approached the vehicle and they noticed that it was a 1996 Plymouth Voyager minivan with California plates and it looked like it had been abandoned. It was once green in color but now was covered in dirt and dust. The van was locked and it looked like it had been there for quite a while. After a closer look, he saw that three of the four wheels were completely flat and the minivan looked like it was actually stuck in the sand with the tires like deep into the sand itself. The front left tire and the two back ones were flat and based on the path of the tire tracks behind it,

those tires had been driven on long after they became flat. So whoever was driving this vehicle was driving on flat tires. Okay. So it's not like it had gone flat over time being just kind of sitting there. they had been actively used. Like, whoever drove there, got there on flat tires. It's not like it got stuck there and then slowly deflated. After a brief search of the immediate area, they radioed into the California Highway Patrol to identify the license plate and to own the vehicle.

That information came back, and it was reportedly a stolen rental car from the dollar car rentals. It had been rented out to a group of four tourists from Germany at the Los Angeles Airport, and when they never returned it, on July 26, 1996, the rental company reported it as stolen. Wait, so when was this date? I forget. This is October. Oh, shit, okay. So this is a car that's been missing for months now. Oh, wow. Okay.

The family that rented it was Egbert Rinkus, who was 34 years old with his girlfriend Cornelia Meyer, who was 28 at the time. Egbert had brought his son, George Weber, who was 11 years old, and Cornelia brought her son as well, who was named Max, and he was four years old at the time. So they were a couple who had kids with separate people. Gotcha. The group of them had flown out of the Frankfurt Airport in Germany to Los Angeles for this trip. and the car was rented under Cornelia's name and she had planned to keep it until July 26.

And then they had flights back that were already booked to go back to Germany on July 27th. But none of them ever boarded the plane back. Now back in Germany, Egbert's ex-wife, Haika Weber, George's mother, had been extremely worried when they never returned. Haika and Egbert had gotten a divorce and Haika had primary custody over George. The last that she had heard from them was when Egbert had sent her a fax from Treasure Island Resort in Las Vegas asking for money, but she didn't send him any. She described him as unpredictable and clever and that he could be up to anything out in California. This episode is brought to you by Prime.

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And Hika was actually convinced that he had staged his own disappearance and stolen George so he could have full custody. So George is the 11-year-old? Yes. And what about the girlfriend's family? Like, what do they think? So it sounds like they thought that they ran off to be a family together. And we'll get into a little bit more. but he had talked a lot about he wanted to go off and move to Costa Rica and he like wanted to be with his son and Haika was like, oh my God, he went to America, went on this trip, stole my son and disappeared.

Okay. All right. With his new girlfriend. And she thought that before the car was even found, she thought that right away when no word. When it was reported stolen and when they didn't come back on their flight. So she sent multiple texts or not text because this is 1996. They were sending facts. She sent multiple facts over to the car rental place and was like, we're really, really worried. Have you had any word? What's going on?

Because she was just waiting. I mean, it was her son and they went. The last thing she heard was he was asking her for money. She said no. and then he disappeared. Yeah, it doesn't look good. That's for sure. Yeah.

So with all this new information about his family, how long they've been missing, finding the car, Ranger Brenner decided to call in the National Park Service investigator, Eric Inman, along with the Inyo County Sheriff's Office to investigate this.

So Eric arrives on the scene the following day on October 22nd. And the first thing he sees when he looks through the car window as he sees a child's shoe just sitting on one of the seats. And that just brought in the gravity of the situation. He was there to photograph the scene and searched the area for footprints, but he didn't find any. He did find some food wrappers that were nearby the car, and he also found some human waste and toilet paper. They managed to break into the car. They managed to break into the vehicle and search it. Inside they found two unopened with full bottles of bud ice beer and one empty. Along with it they also found an almost full bottle of bourbon,

several large water and juice containers that were empty. They found luggage that was filled with all their clothing, a brand new Coleman sleeping bag, a tent, a pipe with tobacco in it, a credit card, and a spare tire with a jack that had never been used. With their search, they also found a camera, and the pictures showed that the group had traveled along California's coast before they went to the Treasure Island Hotel, where he had sent the fax to his ex-wife. They checked out of that hotel on July 22nd before they drove into Death Valley. It was reported that their next plan after Death Valley was that they were actually going to head over to Yosemite National Park. So with this search and all this new information

and finding all their belongings, they deployed a search team of over 200 search and rescue workers and recruited rescue teams from different branches throughout the area. They had helicopters, and they demanded that at least 45 people be on the ground at all times during the search. And this search ended up costing them over $80,000. Wow. Well, there's so much land to cover. Yeah. And they have narrowed it down to places that they think to look, like realistic places that they could have gotten to on foot. So they did narrow it down so they're not searching the entirety of the park,

but it's still a huge area to cover. And what made the search exceptionally difficult was that summer in Death Valley had been extremely hot. in worse than usual. So for 40 days and 40 nights, temperatures here stayed at an average of 120 degrees, never cooling off. Oh, God. It was unrelenting and unknowingly to this family they had driven into the middle of this heat wave. It seemed as if they had driven to higher elevations to possibly escape the heat because of where their car was found,

So they were at 3,000 feet in elevation. And as we kind of talked about before, parts of Death Valley go as low as 282 feet below sea level. So they went up to 3,000 feet in elevation where temperatures were slightly lower. But it was still about 107 degrees, 42 degrees, Celsius during the day, and 79 degrees, 26 degrees Celsius at night. So it was cooler, but it was still very hot. There were also some indications that they had been low on money. They had visit the Death Valley National Park Visitor Center in search of free places to camp in order to save money. They didn't say where they were going to go.

They were just looking for information. And so they searched around in different campgrounds and inns and areas. And there was no record of them staying at any of those places. Based on the route that they were traveling, they believed that they had camped inside of an area called Hanopa Canyon. So while investigators were searching the areas for other places that the family may have visit in the park, they went to Warm Springs mine site, which is an old mining area within the park, and they found the guest book there, and they had signed it. And it said in German, we are going over the pass, Connie Egbert, George, Max. Now this note that they wrote inside of the

guest book was referring to Mengel Pass, which is located only a few miles from Anvil Canyon, where their vehicle was found. This route that they had planned to go through, though, was only passable by four-wheel drive vehicles and was also a route that definitely was not going to work with a minivan. Do you know was that conveyed? Because it seems like they went to the visitor center for advice on places to stay and obviously to talk to rangers and national park service staff for recommendations so obviously they're not just like a type of group of people that are like we'll figure it out and take our chances at least it doesn't seem like that and then does this road have signage like off road vehicles only or was it just conveyed like that on maps that maybe

they didn't have. They did pick up a map of the area, but it was a map that wasn't totally exact with everything. And also, they picked up, they picked up the German language map. And they wrote in German, which kind of makes me believe that maybe their English wasn't very good. So I think that it's very, very possible that there could have been some miscommunications in what they were looking for and where they were going. what the National Park Service believed was that because they were going to Yosemite,

they were trying to find a quicker way through the park. And they saw these roads on the map and saw that there is a way to get closer to Yosemite that way because there are roads, but their four-wheel drive vehicle only roads. So it's possible that even if there were signs, maybe they didn't understand them, if their English wasn't great, or there was just some type of. miscommunication along the way. Okay, that's a really good point. I didn't think about that.

Yeah. And part of their thoughts to this road that they went, that they were attempting to go through through Mengel Pass, they didn't go through that way because they ended up in Anvil Canyon. So what they believe is that they attempted to go through this pass, but they ended up having to turn around because the pass they were trying to go through was actually even worse than Anvil Canyon that they drove through. So they think that they turned around, changed their direction, went through Anvil Canyon, and they couldn't make it with that vehicle either. And got stuck.

And also pop their tires on all the bad terrain. And they think that this was all because they were trying to get to Yosemite a little bit faster. Gotcha. Okay. So first thing in the morning on October 23rd, the following day, China Lake Mountain Rescue Group, trackers from Indian Wells Valley Search and Rescue Group, and Kern County Sheriff Mounted Search and Rescue based their focus on Anvil Canyon.

And that day, they found an empty, and that day they found an empty bud-ice beer bottle stuck in the sand in Anvil Canyon. It was near a ledge that had just a small amount of shade, and there was a clear indent where someone, presumably Egbert, had sat. because of the size of the indent and where the sand had been kind of moved around. And now this was only 1.7 miles away from their vehicle. Over the next few days, there were helicopters combing the area.

There were search and rescue teams searching nearby locations that they could have got into. They hiked into canyons and up bridges. And they were doing this all in this scorching hot heat trying to find them. but ultimately they found absolutely nothing after that beer can. Which is just so crazy because they're traveling with two young kids. One of them's four. Like how far are they going to get in this heat with limited water? And limited supplies.

All their supplies were in the van. Or at least the supplies that I know about so far in this story, at least things that you would think would be helpful during, I don't know. Like, I just, it seems crazy to me when, I mean, it happens all the time with search and rescue operations that you would think based on paper, it's like, okay, well, how far can you really get? And you have all of these volunteers in search and rescue operations and all that. Like, there's just no trace. It's just, it's really hard to imagine in retrospect. But wild things happen.

Yeah. And a lot of people kind of thought the same thing. They're like, how are we not finding them? They couldn't have gotten that far. But at this point, they had been searching for days. It was really dangerous for the crew. The odds of survival and the severe heat are really low, especially if they had run out of water,

which it had been three months at this point. The chances of survival as a child is even less than the adults. So with no additional clues found and the dangers of having so many people out there, during this horrible heat wave. After only four days of searching, they called off the entire rescue mission and deemed that there was no way that any of them had survived. After that, several independent search parties happened within the park, and even at one point,

someone on an ATV found two canteens from Germany that were 3.5 miles away from the vehicle's location. And then another time, a ranger found a sleeping bag that was discarded into the middle of the road and they ended up throwing away because they just thought it was litter. And this case kind of became a little bit publicized and there were a lot of theories that began to trickle in about what could have happened. So there were some friends of Egbert who had said that he talked about moving to Costa Rica so often that they thought that he staged his disappearance in Death Valley and that he had taken his son and his new family and moved to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica somewhere. But when people would ask him, like, why would he go to Death Valley and do all this stuff for it? It seems like a little out there. His friends had no explanation for why that would be the case. Another conspiracy that people came up with that they thought was going on was that the family had seen something that they shouldn't have in this remote desert that was government-related and the government eliminated them. Government, really?

Yeah. So there's like, there's like these conspiracy theories. And I didn't go super deep into it, but about different government operations that are happening deep into the desolate areas of this park because no one's going to find them. So there were all these theories that were that they were out in this desolate area and they came across something,

that they shouldn't have. Okay. That's a stretch, I think, but all right. I will consider it, I guess. And then there was another theory that the families had come across criminal activity or there was some type of murderer that was lurking out in the desert of Death Valley and they were killed. But no one really knew what happened and years were going.

by and more and more theories were coming about, but no evidence was found. So this case went completely cold. There was no evidence of where they were. They just disappeared, and no one had any explanation as to why. 13 years later, in 2009, Tom Mannhood, a search and rescue worker in L.A. County started to study and read about this case. It still hadn't been solved, and he had his own theory of what the families could have done that led to their disappearance. So I found this on strangeoutdoors.com, and it is a quote of exactly what he said his theories were.

Okay. After studying the details of the case. Yeah, he went super in depth, and he made his own decision on what the families did and where to go to find them. The maps in the Death Valley National Monument Museum text booklet that they had purchased showed a route to the west via Butte Valley and Mengel Pass. Past the infamous Barker Ranch where Charles Manson's followers stayed, then north to the ghost town of Ballarat, and on to Yosemite. The most likely scenario is that on the morning of the 23rd, they left Hanapaw Canyon and continued south to warm spring.

road and turned west. They would have experienced a very fine dirt road at that point, and at the warm spring camp, they probably stopped because they thought it was on an active settlement of some sort to make inquiries as to the road conditions further west. Instead, they found the deserted warm spring camp, so they signed the register indicating that they were going over Mengel Pass. Continuing west toward Butte Valley, they would have encountered poor road conditions before finding the stone cabin. They probably stopped and made another attempt to acquire about road conditions, but when doing so, found it empty and then went on with the stolen flag as they approached Mengel Pass. They could go no further. And actually, I forgot to mention this now that I'm reading it.

They also found a stolen flag from one of the cabins, the stone cabin inside Death Valley. And the flag was to indicate that you were out camping somewhere. And they had found that flag inside of their van. Okay. I'm like, where's this flag in a stone cabin? Yeah, I totally forgot to mention that flag. So that links them to being in that area with the stone cabin. That links them to at least stopping there.

Yes. Okay. I was like, how did they know if they didn't sign a register or talk to anyone that they were at the cabin? But the flag links, I'm following. Yeah. I got it. Their booklet offered an alternative shorter route back down to the valley in the form of a road down Anvil Canyon. Of course, this route wasn't a good one, especially in the late afternoon with daylight fading.

The Germans returned to the intersection at the stone cabin. and turned right onto Anvil Canyon Road, and probably with a desire to get to Yosemite, they were driving way too fast for the road conditions. Then, the rocks burst the tires, and they were really in trouble. With three flats, it was impossible to go on. Perhaps, Egbert, looking at the maps available to him, would have seen the northern boundary of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, to be only about eight or nine miles to the south.

of them. It would be easy to imagine crossing the hills he was looking at to the south and seeing the safety of a military installation just a few miles further. The group then probably spent the night at the van, a stay of some duration as evidenced by the presence of fecal material in dug holes, and then early the next morning locked the vehicle and headed east down Anvil Canyon to a little past the bottle bush, then turned south towards the China Lake boundary in hopes. of rescue. So he believed that they would have head to this naval weapon station, which sounds like it would be an active military guarded base where they would find people, and it wasn't. It was like a place that they would go out to test weapons and do like training. It sounds like they would do like

training kind of things out there, but there weren't people actively there all the time. And when he told the park service or rescue searchers and things his theory, they didn't think he was correct. You know, they're like, no, we didn't search that area because we really don't think that they could have gotten that far or they would have gone in that direction. So they never searched that area at all. Tom was convinced that this was a real theory and a real possibility. so him and a search partner, Les Walker, trained for a while to be able to hike in these arid conditions of Death Valley before they would head out. So they wanted to be prepared to be out eight, nine miles hiking in these really hot conditions to try and solve this case.

After several days of searching, they eventually found scattered bones, along with Connie Myers' tattered wallet, in a very isolated area called Goler Wash. They later identified the remains of Connie and Egbert, and although they did find child-sized bones, forensics were never able to collect enough DNA to officially identify them. but it has been assumed that it was of their children. Oh, my God. And they're retired, you said retired sheriff deputies? Or did I just make that up? I think he just made that up. Really?

No, he's a rescue worker with the L.A. County. Oh, okay. I don't know why I just made that up. But he has some sort of, he's not just like an armchair detective. Like, no, he does rescue missions. Okay. Because there are legitimately, you know, people that don't have official experience and things that do put pieces of unsolved cases or active cases together that investigators don't. I mean, there have been situations like that.

But, I mean, obviously, this one seems way more intense. Like, but I don't know. Have you seen? I'm actually not even going to ask you. I, you probably haven't seen it. But for everybody else listening. the Netflix docu series

Don't fuck with cats. I have seen Don't Fuck with Cats. What? Wow. You have? Yeah, I have because it kept getting in my recommended and I'm like,

what a documentary about cats? Like, what is this? Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? Like, I think his name was John Green and then that woman from Vegas, I forget her name, but they kind of initiated this whole movement. It was like an online thing

where they're like... Yes, they found this guy. So, I mean, that's obviously unrelated, but I just didn't know if it was someone that just had a really sincere interest in a cold case and thought that they could put some alternative theories out there. But, all right, they have experience. Makes sense.

Yeah, he had experience, and he just looked into this case, and he did a lot of research, you know, of the area, and it sounds like he really put himself in their shoes and what someone who didn't know the park thought process would be based on the information that they had and kind of put it together that way. And it sounded like he just really wanted to get closure for the families in Germany that their family members just came to the United States, went on a national park trip and then never came back, never heard from again, no idea what happened to them. And it took 13 years to do it. But he finally

gave them closure. Wow. I mean, it's a new set of fresh eyes on something. Sometimes that's all it takes. Yeah. It also just shows that, you know, cases that are old, I mean, they can be cracked at any time. You know, something can come up. Some new information years and years down the line can come up and might get answers. I just thought that this was a good story to tell because it just felt like a cautionary tale about your adventures out into national parks because obviously this family made a lot of mistakes that ended up leading to their death. And I think it's hard because I think maybe there was a language barrier there. So I think that that probably contributed to this. It's just important to be prepared, know the trails you're traveling to before you get out there. And to just be careful.

And if you're in the desert to really know the conditions that you're in and have enough water, have some type of communication or some plan if you're not seen in a little while or something. You know, like I just felt this was. Yeah. It's just so sad because it was such, I mean, it's sad either way. But the couple was like, what, in their late 20s, early 30s? They were a young family or a young family unit. And taking your family to a national park to have a nice trip.

Yeah, and just like imagining what they went through in their final days or whatever. Because we obviously have no indication of how long they were out there. I'm sure, based on what you said with the lack of water and the extreme heat, during that time, it probably wasn't too, too long. But still, there's a lot of just like you can fill in the blanks of what they probably went through. and especially with children. And then obviously there are family members in another country just so in the dark and so worried for so many years. And it's really sad.

It's devastating and it's horrible. And like I said, I think it's a cautionary tale of things that you can really try and be prepared. Because I think when you hear stories like this, it's like it kind of ingrains in your brain like, wow, bad things really can happen. how can I try my best to prevent it? Mm-hmm. Because obviously accidents do happen, but this, like you said, there were some maybe circumstances in this story where maybe they didn't make the best decisions. But there was also some that I thought was smart. Like they wrote in the log of at least the direction they were going.

Yeah. They had some sort of map and try to. to utilize it, it at least seemed like. And I don't know. It just, it's just hard to try and explain the thought processes of a group of people you didn't know a long time ago visiting from a foreign country that were in a really difficult situation. But like you said, all you can do is learn from it and take points to make yourself a more aware traveler. Yeah, and I think that's the point of kind of telling these really horrible stories too, because what's the point of telling these stories if you're not going to learn something from it?

Mm-hmm. You know, this is such a tragic, sad situation, and if we can take something that's good from it, I think you have at least that, and we can turn it into something like, you know, I went to Death Valley, and I went to the store and picked up a lot of water before I went. and I'm glad I did. You know, or I checked in with the park service. I told them my exact itinerary, and I'm glad I did. Right.

You know, just something like that. Yeah. I mean, how many times have you, like, I remember a couple weeks ago when I went on that solo hike and freaked myself out completely and was kicking myself for going on a solo hike, I was really glad that when I got there, because the trail I went on was actually part of the PCT. I didn't know that, but it was actually like a section of the PCT and at the trailhead there was you had to register. Like you had to get a US for US Forest Service pass, a back country pass because part of it was in the back country. You had to write like your name, how many people

in your group when you came when you're looking to leave, et cetera, et cetera. And that just reassured me so much. And I opened the thing and I put my little half of the tag in and I saw all the tags that were in there. I'm like, oh my God, how often do they actually check this? And then I panicked a little bit. But either way, at least my information was there. And I mean, I obviously told like my boyfriend where I was and I and I had my dog and stuff, but it was still reassuring to know that I at least wrote something down. And then like when you and I went to the Badlands and we registered our name on the backcountry list, even just for a day hike, even though we're like we're going to literally be gone for one hour.

You know, it was still like we got to write our stuff down. Yeah. And I mean, that day in the Badlands was really hot and there was no shade where we were hiking. And at one point we were like, hey, I think it's time to turn around because it's getting really hot and we only brought so much water. So I mean, even just those tiny little things when you're out hiking, it takes two seconds to do and it might feel really dumb at the time. You're like, I'm literally going to be out for an hour.

But who knows? Like, who knows what's going to happen? And, I mean, for the most part, you're probably going to be safe and you're probably going to be fine. But if you're not, you have this little bit of safety that someone is going to know where you are. Well, that was incredible. I mean, I didn't know really much about that case other than the title of it, like the Germans of Death Valley. Yeah, Death Valley Germans is what you hear all the time for it. And I didn't know, like, I knew the basis of it, but I didn't know the details behind it.

So I was excited. We've had a lot of people write into us and be like, hey, cover this story. So I'm glad we got to do it. I'm glad we got to venture into a new park this week. I'm excited. You're going to, you've never been to Joshua Tree, so you're going to be venturing into a new park. I'm so excited.

Oh, I'm so excited. I'm looking at my calendar right now. We literally, so we're recording this in two weeks from today. Today, we will be in Joshua Tree. Amazing. Not flying there, not thinking about getting there, not packing to go, literally there. It'll be lovely. I've been there once, but it was a short-lived trip.

Like, I really didn't spend a lot of time there. So I'm excited to explore other areas and do a little bit more than last time. Yeah. So if you guys want a chance at getting a park pass, so you can go to Joshua Tree and Death Valley and Yosemite and Acadia and Glacier and Yellowstone, then you can enter by buying a ticket to our live show that's going to be happening on December 9th, our virtual digital live event. There's a lot of people who have died in Joshua Tree, and Danielle is going to tell some stories about that. And I'm going to tell some stories about some almost deaths in Joshua Tree. So we have some really exciting stuff planned, some really interesting stories.

We're really excited to tell them. We hope that you're all there to join us for our very first digital live event. Yes, December 9th, 730 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. This show will also be streaming for 72 hours afterwards. So if you are busy that night, have plans, can't make it. It's too late. It's too early. You have several days to join us afterwards. And also, there's an option for a meet and greet after. There's exclusive merch. It's interactive. It's going to be a lot of fun. So we hope to see you there. And in the meantime, enjoy the view.

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