National Park After Dark - Panthers and Crocodiles and Death, Oh My! Everglades National Park

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

Fasten your seat belts folks, we are in for a wild ride. Come along if you dare as we wade through Everglades National Park. Walking the line between elegant and eerie, dynamic and deadly this is a park with danger around every murky corner. The largest wilderness east of the Mississippi has larger than life stories, and we have just barely skimmed the surface. 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

Florida is a wild place. Holding the title of the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River, this 1.5 million-acre wetland preserve on the southern tip of Florida is brimming with life. Conversely, one could argue it's overflowing with death. Murder, tragedy, and mystery run as rampant as the wildlife in Everglades National Park. Walking the line between elegant and eerie, dynamic and deadly, this is a part of the park. with two faces. Sunny, bright, and basking in the Florida sunshine while also concealing dark secrets, entangled in the mangroves and seagrass, hiding mysteries in the murky water. This park is not for the faint-hearted. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hey, everybody, welcome back to National Park After Dark.

My name is Cassie. And my name is Danielle. Welcome back to another week. Happy Monday. Happy Memorial day. We hope you're enjoying the weekend. Long weekend, if you're blessed with that. I know a lot of people don't get Memorial Day off, aka Veterinary Field. So. Yeah. No holidays for any type of medicine. Before we go in today's story, we're going back out into National Parks like we do every Monday. But before we get into it, we just wanted to mention that last week we did post a new campfire story on Patreon and Danielle brings us into the petrified forest and talks about some wild curses that are there. So if you're interested in that, you can go onto our Patreon. You can visit it through our Instagram on there and click our link. It'll bring you to our Patreon.

Or you can go on our website, npaddpodcast.com. Also, we did mention it a week or two ago, but we did update our link tree on Instagram to include a good reads list. And we are going to be compiling all of our book suggestions on that site, just so everyone, one has one clear, concise place to access all of the recommendations for books that we use as references for different episodes. So if you're interested in that, you can access that through our Instagram. Yeah. And I think we don't really have that much to catch up on. And we're just going to go straight into the episode today. So I know I did my two-part stories. So we've heard from me the past two weeks. And now it's Danielle's turn. And she has some fun stories for us today.

We are going to Everglades National Park. And this is a national, yeah. So this is a national park that I don't think I've ever been in technically, but I have been to the Everglades area in Florida, have you? No, I've never been down there. It is so wildly different from anything that I am used to as far as when I go out into the wild and into the forest, it's forest. It's woods, mountains, alpine lake. That is what I am used to. And this type of environment is like a different world.

And especially after all this research, I don't know if I would be super comfortable going out there alone. I feel like that's kind of a theme for all the stories that we bring up, though, is like, ah, maybe I don't want to go there by myself. Valid point. But we'll see how you feel after this. So we're going to head to Everglades National Park. And for this episode, I gathered all the information from Murderpedia, Mysterious Universe, the U.S. Department of the Interior's website, the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives,

the Koyer County Sheriff's website, and a bunch of different news articles from Naples News, which will be linked in the show notes and the episode description. Just to touch on the Everglades first, we're going to get into a little bit about the park more in depth than we usually do. and that's because there's so much going on there. Everglades National Park is actually the third largest in the lower 48 states. Do you know what the first two are? Wow, so it's the third largest. In the lower 48, so the largest, my guess would be glacier, but by your face, I think I'm wrong.

I don't know. Okay, just tell me. So the two largest parks in the lower 48 are Death Valley and Yellowstone. I feel like I should have guessed Yellowstone at the least. Yeah, Yellowstone, I thought you would have gotten. Death Valley is a little bit more difficult to guess, I think, just because it's more of an obscure park. Not a lot of people by comparison visit it, but speaking from personal experience and driving through it, it's absolutely huge. So I wasn't surprised by that little fact.

Anyways, Everglades National Park is one of the wildest places in the U.S. This land was first named Pahoe Oki, meaning grassy river, by its original inhabitants, which were the Seminole, a group of indigenous peoples who lived in what is now Florida. Now known as the Everglades, a word that comes from forever and the old English word for grassy open place, it was established as a national park in 1947. Like I mentioned in the introduction, it encompasses 1.5.5. million acres of subtropical wilderness in southern Florida. It is home to one of the largest wetlands on Earth, receiving over 60 inches of rain a year, which I had to kind of Google and

compare to something that I can relate to. And that's almost double what Seattle receives. Wow, that's, when you think of Washington, you guys just get rain. How many days a year? Like 300 days a year? So. And it's weird because when you think of Florida, you think of Sunshine State. The Everglades also has nine distinct habitats, and all of these habitats team with hundreds of different species of plants, animals, and insects that find home in the shallow water habitats, saltwater wetland forests, and marshes, freshwater marshes and prairies, and pine and hardwood forests. Contrary to popular belief, this park is not a giant, still murky swamp. It's technically a river, albeit a very shallow, very wide, and very slow-moving one.

Although the park is the largest wilderness area east of the Rockies, it has shrunk. At one time, it covered 4,000 square miles, but today it covers less than half of that. But despite its shrinking size, you can find panthers, manatees, bears, bats, turtles, amphibians, and over 40 species of snakes inside of the park. Wait, they have panthers and bears, and the birds. Everglades. Yeah. So the Florida Panthers actually making a comeback. I don't know what their numbers are right now. I didn't look at that, but it is a species that is recovering. Have you ever seen the YouTube video of someone's walking on the boardwalks through the Everglades and they round

the corner and a panther jumps in front of them? I never knew that. I actually never, I never knew that I'm Googling it right now because my mind is blown. There's estimated a hundred of them that live in South Florida. Wow. The species were nearly extinct by the mid-1950s. Today, the primary threats to remaining panther populations are habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation. Wow, I never knew this. This is really cool. Oh, wow. They're strictly carnivores. They only eat meat, so they don't eat anything else. Yeah, well, if you think about it, cats are obligate carnivores as well, like domestic cats, obviously. Yeah. They only consume rabbits, rats, and birds and occasionally even eat Alligators.

What? I am telling you the Everglades is like WWE Smackdown. Fights between all these different species, I went down such a YouTube rabbit hole researching this. And I'm actually going to tell you something that I think even creepier. Not to say that Panthers in the Everglades is creepy, but this part is. This National Park is the only ecosystem in the world that you will find American alligators and crocodiles coexisting.

There have even been terrifying reports of Nile crocodiles living in the Everglades. In April 2012, a juvenile Nile Crocodile was cited lurking within a canal bank by a local botanist. Although wildlife specialists were called in to search for it, it wasn't located. For two years. Oh my God. So it was just there? Just to remind everybody, Nile crocodiles are scary as hell. They grow to be an average of 9 to 16 feet long and can weigh up to 1,500 pounds.

They're also very well known to be aggressive, and they kill hundreds of people every year in Africa. Wow, that's really scary. Like, this is another thing. I went down, like, Google now crocodiles, there's, because when you see a picture. I'm already Googling them right now. Yeah, because when you see a picture of a crocodile or an alligator or whatever, just stand alone, and there's no point of reference in the photo. It's hard to get a scale and an idea of size, but there are pictures of them with full wildebeests in their mouths.

They're huge animals. In 2014, a group called the Swamp Apes, who specialized in searching for and removing invasive species from the park, captured the crocodile in a park canal. So this is two years later. It is believed that the crocodile had escaped from a facility in Miami-Dade County. And this isn't an isolated incident. Just as a side note, two other Nile crocodiles were captured in the Everglades in 2009 and 2012.

So they're there. Oh, they're there, honey. And another thing that's there. Bull sharks have been observed swimming through the freshwater of the park. So a little science lesson. Sharks use an internal process called osmo regulation, which helps them maintain and control water and salt concentrations within their body. By using this process, they're able to adjust their kidneys to withstand varying salinity based on the type of water that they're swimming through. And it's thought that a bull shark, not a great white, was the real shark responsible for the 1916 Rhode Island attacks that led to the classic movie Jaws.

What, I know a fun fact? Yes. My aunt is in the movie Jaws. I think I knew this. Yeah, she's in the very beginning when they have the first. fire scene. They're on Martha's Vineyard, and they're all sitting around the campfire. In the very first shot, there's a video and she's smoking a cigarette around the fire. That's awesome. Yeah. Can we just take a moment? Bull sharks in freshwater. Nile crocodiles, alligators,

panthers, bears. This is a place you're going to die. I'm scared. I'm nervous. Now I want to know what your stories are because all of this is terrifying. Well, I'm just trying to set the scene. The scene is set. Not all species that swim, slither, or take root in Everlates National Park belong there. This park has a huge invasive species problem. Plant species such as the Brazilian pepper, which is a bushy evergreen tree, produces chemicals which appear to suppress the growth of other plants. The lionfish, which is a venomous predatory fish from the South Pacific, and insects like the Ambrosia beetle from Asia, have

all made their way into the park. And I would be remissed if I didn't talk about the number one kind of hallmark invasive species of the Everglades, and that is the Burmese Python. This snake is native to Southeast Asia and has really thrived here in the Everglades. According to the National Park Service, they believe the Burmese Python is the main cause of the sharp decline in native mammal populations within the park. That's just one. problem that invasive species can cause because these species typically lack natural predators. They out-compete native species, and they multiply unchecked using up valuable resources such as sunlight, water, nutrients, etc. And native species suffer from this intense competition. So Park staff

actively try to remove these species whenever possible to protect the native ones and the habitat, and they beg people, don't let it loose, to help curate. the release of unwanted pets. Because a lot of people who get these exotic species, especially of snakes that aren't native to the area, they grow too big, they're too difficult to care for, whatever, and they let them go in the Everglades, and it just causes a huge problem. The remote and difficult to access twists and turns of the river system, tangles of mangroves, and fields of sawgrass are part of the reason that the Burmese pythons do so well here. They slither and slip away, largely undetected, blending seamlessly into the landscape.

These features unfortunately attract another type of unwanted visitor. As of 2010, there have been over 175 unsolved homicides since 1965 in Coyer County, which borders Everglades National Park. This county is over 2,000 square miles and is mainly uninhabited Martian Swamp Land. Two main routes that wind through this area are called US 41 and Alligator Alley, which is actually Old State Road 84. And these areas are hotspot dumping grounds for victims of horrific crimes. Many bodies have been found in the waterways or marshes of the Everglades, dismembered, charred, or stashed away. Sometimes all that's left are skeletal remains. And in other cases, all that remains are best guesses as to what happened to people because the Everglades swallow evidence whole.

There have been several cases of missing persons in the area surrounding the Everglades, such as the 1998 disappearance of Wendy Houdicoc, the 2003 disappearance of Terence Williams and Fulife-B Santos, and the 2009 disappearance of Adjitizier. While these cases are all different, none have been solved. No remains of these individuals have ever been found, leaving the door open to the real possibility that they were victims of vowel play, and perhaps they were sadly discarded in the swamps. Infamous serial killers, cannibals, and arsonists Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Tool have also spent time here in the Everglades.

They have claimed to have killed hundreds of people in their quote-unquote careers and have a history of making claims but then recanting them. For example, the murder and decapitation of Adam Walsh, who was the son of John Walsh. And if you don't know who that is by name, he is the host of America's Most Wanted. Oh, wow. Okay. But despite their wishy-washy confessions and recants, they have gone down in history as being some of the most horrific killers of all time. Despite slight differences in detail, they both have stayed consistent with their story of being

initiated into the Hand of Death cult here in the Everglades, where they were instructed to kill, dismember, and consume a man. It was in the remote wilderness of the Everglades that they were also trained over several weeks how to kidnap, commit arson, different methods of murder and child abduction, and how to prepare a human sacrifice. So, yeah, the Everglades is so expansive and remote that a lot of people get away with a lot of different things there. Over the years, several plane crashes have occurred in Everglades National Park. Some are accounted for, such as small private aircrafts and larger commercial flights. But some have flown under the radar, small, single-engine planes loaded with drugs, smuggling illegal paraphernalia, in and out of the U.S.

Many of these crashes remain unknown until wreckage is found by park personnel or visitors entangled vegetation loaded with hundreds of pounds of cocaine. Some crashes still remain obscured, masked by the murk, known only by the alligators, and serpents. These crashes sometimes serve as a tomb as their pilots and passengers remain encased in the rebel, but sometimes the victims are never found. Take this case from August of 1989. A suspected drug smuggler alluded federal agents by bailing out of his small plane. Petty Officer Joe Adams, a spokesman for the Coast Guard in Miami, reported that the plane was first picked up by U.S. Customs radar as it was almost skimming the Gulf of Mexico on its way to southwestern.

Florida. So it's flying really low, trying to kind of sneak under the radar, flying right above the water. The Coast Guard sent out aircraft of their own to pursue it. Once over the Everglades, the plane started to gain altitude, was making different wild turns, and it was clear that the pilot knew he was being followed. So he bailed. He bailed right out of the plane. Infrared video showed a large object, presumably him, jumping out of the side of the plane, at a around 420 in the morning, directly over Everglades National Park. A U.S. Customs Aircraft closed in on the plane and could see that no one else was on board. So this plane is now flying solo, and it was pursued until it eventually crashed about 70 miles

offshore over the ocean east of Marco Island. Authorities later came across the pilot's parachute and some of his clothing on the border of the National Park, about one mile south of the Tammi Trail. the man or woman was never found. Did they escape alive or did they get sucked up by the swamp or, I don't know, maybe eaten by a goddamn Nile crocodile? Who knows? I feel like they survived because they found the parachute and some clothes. I bet they landed, jumped out of there, and then just went off and lived their life as some drug dealer in Miami.

It gives off a little bit of, like, deep. B. Cooper vibes. That's story. I was thinking like Pablo Eskbar. Talk about invasive species. Did you hear that whole thing about his hippos? No. He had hippos at his compound in Columbia. He like imported hippos and now they're like a big problem. Really? Yeah. Okay. So now we're going to get into a story that does have graphic material. It is a, so just a little bit of a warning. And we're going to discuss Flight 592. Close your eyes.

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for you. Notice you're 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. Not 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. One of the most tragic crashes in the park actually just mourned its 25th anniversary. On May 11, 1969, Value Jet Flight 592 departed Miami International Airport on its way to Atlanta. The DC-9 carried 110 passengers and crew, and it crashed into the swamps of the Everett. just outside of the park, 10 minutes after takeoff, and it killed everyone on board. This specific aircraft had its initial flight 27 years prior.

In 1969, when it belonged to Delta. It was retired, sold, and exchanged hands until it was purchased by ValueJet in 1993. Two years before the crash, the plane had some issues, including two aborted takeoffs and eight emergency landings. On the day of the crash, Candy Quebec and first officer Richard Hazen were in the flight deck. They were both experienced pilots and had over 20,000 hours of combined flight hours, with several thousand of those being on that particular aircraft. The flight was delayed a little over an hour due to a mechanical problem. Workers had to replace circuit breakers for the plane's fuel pump twice. The plane finally left the runway at 204 p.m. and at 3.m., and at

2.10, just six minutes after takeoff, passengers began to smell smoke. Almost simultaneously, the pilots heard a bang through their headphones and realized the plane was losing electrical power. The intercom was not functioning, and communicating what was happening in the plane to the flight deck was really difficult. So against protocol, the cockpit door was opened. Fire, fire, shouted the passengers, all captured on recordings through the cockpit voice recorder. Quebec and Hazen radioed air traffic control, requesting a return to Miami. Permission was granted, and one minute later, as Hazen requested the nearest available airport, Quebec began to turn the plane left. Flight 592 disappeared from radar at 2.13,

the exact time it crashed. Eyewitnesses nearby watched as the plane banked sharply, rolled onto its side, and nosedived straight into the Everglades at a speed of 507 miles. an hour. Recovery of the victims, or what was left of them, was extremely difficult. The location was very difficult to access. It was not visible from the nearest highway, and it was only accessible by airboat or helicopter. The recovery was brutal. Several feet of water laid atop silty muck at the bottom of the swamp, and that muck could reach up to 30 feet. Muggy, hot conditions, the murky water, jet fuel greased the surface of the water, swarms of insects, tangles of seagrass, all made it difficult to navigate the terrain and made the efforts really labor-intensive. Seven body bags were removed from the scene, although no complete body was ever recovered.

While investigation was underway, retired Dade County Medical Examiner Joseph Davis, who was assisting with the search, said, quote, I don't hold any hope will recover any large parts of people. Raquel Perry, daughter-in-law of crash victim, Willamina Perry, expressed her frustration with the recovery efforts. They should have had a crane or radar or something, she said. They've got that kind of stuff. They have that equipment. By the time they get out here, with all those alligators and stuff,

she'll be all eight up. Speaking of alligators, sharpshooters were actually positioned around the scene while workers were trying to recover bodies to scalp for alligators and snakes and shoot them on site. Well, that was what I was thinking when you were talking about the muck and the swamp and the recovery efforts. I was thinking of all of the different species of reptiles and whatever is in the water that you were talking about earlier.

Exactly. Yeah. Navy divers were dispatched and high pressure water hoses were used to blow away debris to try and find and locate remnants of the aircraft. Tattoos, fingerprints, dental records, clothing, and scars found on pieces of body parts were all used to help identify victims from the tiny portions of remains, such as fingers and feet that were found. Between the high-impact force disintegrating bodies and the Florida heat speeding up the rate of decomposition, not all of the victims were recovered or identified even with forensic anthropologists and forensic dentists helping the medical examiner team.

Although some were never identified, their families did receive some of their belongings, such as luggage, clothing, or books. Some family members even went to the scene itself. Louise Loughlin was vice president of people and customer relations at ValueJet at the time of the crash. She recalls the company had chartered several buses in full of family members. She stated, quote, they let a lot of family members go in there and peruse the area to see if they could find anything of their loved ones to take it with them. And that was very sad. It was like a funeral.

Nobody wants to go, but you try to remember the good things. Reading that was really heartbreaking because, like she said, it's a funeral you don't want to go, but you need to. but it's also not like a funeral because you're going to the scene of a horrific accident where you may not just be recovering personal effects. You may be coming across body parts of your loved ones or other people's loved ones. That actually really surprises me that they would let them come out there just because of one, how remote it was and how dangerous it was because of the animals in the area. but then also because it is so horrific. It was the 90s, so maybe it was a little different. I can't imagine that happening today in 2021.

I can't either. That's a PR nightmare. And yeah, so I can't imagine that happening. But yeah, I don't know. So the victim's families had a lot of mixed feelings about what should be done with the remains. Sharon Moss, who lost her brother and sister-in-law in the crash, said, it would be comforting to have a burial, bringing home some remains would give us closure. While others, like Brett Rugg, whose wife, her mother, and stepfather were all aboard the flight

coming home from a cruise, felt really differently. He said, we have great memories of her. Seeing her body or part of her body won't change things. She was so alive, seeing her in any other condition would be difficult. I think that's how I would feel. about it too. And to each their own, there's no right way to mourn or what you, how you have closure. But for me, that wouldn't be closure to actually have to collect the body parts and bury it. The only way that that would bring me closure would be something like a murder case where you were looking for their body and you finally found their remains. That's the only time I think that that would bring me closure in a situation like. like, dramatically losing a lot on, I guess.

I think it's, like you said, with that type of situation, it's more of a unknown. You don't know where the remains are, what happened to them, et cetera. This is different. You know they're here. You know what happened to them. Yeah. So there's that maybe that sense of mental closure. Yeah.

I don't know. It's different. Like, normal funeral, like obviously if someone dies of illness or age-related causes something you expect and having a burial that's kind of a goodbye. But in terms of something this horrific and tragic recovering the body and seeing them, I don't think that would be closure for me either. Yeah, I agree. It's like you said, there is no right or wrong way. Everyone mourns and handles tragedy differently. And that's why there was this split in feelings with the victim's families. And while it was impossible to know if the passengers were conscious when the plane

hit the water, Roger Kuback, who is Candy's husband, was a pilot himself, and he said that he believes the crew, at least the crew, was unconscious. Because remember how the eyewitnesses said that they saw the plane banked to the side really quickly before it crashed? Roger says that seems consistent with an unconscious crew, because the angle of the plane never changed. It looked like no one was trying to correct the trajectory, meaning they they must have been incapacitated in some way. Like there was no correction of the plane. It just kind of turned and nosedived.

That theory is actually corroborated by the fact that the Miami Airport Tower tried twice to contact the plane after the crew's last transmission, and they didn't receive any response. So there's maybe a little solace in that. So why wouldn't they have been conscious at that point? There was a fire. Remember there was a fire. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

So the victim's family are also looking for a different type of closure. Morrow Oseill, Valenzula, Reyes, was a mechanic working for the airline's maintenance contractor, Sabreto. In 1999, he faced criminal charges after crash investigators determined he had a role in mishandling and packaging of oxygen generators that were placed in the DC-9's cargo hold. So these generators were discovered to have missing their safety caps, which was a requirement, and those same generators ignited in the cargo area, which caused the crash. So this man fled his federal trial and has evaded capture for over 20 years. He is now on the FBI's most wanted list, and a $10,000 reward for information regarding his whereabouts is being offered by the FBI. In that same year, 1999, a memorial site was built in memory of the 110 victims of Flight 592.

110 concrete pillars point into the Everglades towards the crash site. Remembrance ceremonies are held there each and every year, with the most recent being just a couple weeks ago, where family and friends gather to share memories of loved ones that they lost that day. Years later, remnants of the disaster are still being discovered by people traveling through the Everglades. whether or not they belong to flight 592 or to Eastern Airline Flight 401, which crashed in the same area in December of 1972, killing 101 people, is difficult to know. But what we do know is the Everglades are a very wild, unique, and rugged place. If you visit, be sure to keep your eye out

because you never know what you may find. So that is kind of a very skimming the time. top of the different things that have happened in the Everglades. And for those of you who want to know more, next month, which will be June's Patreon Campfire story, is going to take place in the Everglades. So like I just mentioned, there have been a ton of plane crashes in this park, but none so famous as the 1972 crash of Flight 401 that I just mentioned. This particular crash claimed the lives of 101 people, but there were survivors. There were 75 survivors. And the story that I'm going to tell will cover the crash itself and the stories of the survivors, but we're going to sprinkle in some paranormal because parts of the wreck were salvaged and they were used in other planes. And as soon as

they started being outfitted to other planes, reports started popping up that victims of of flight 401, we're starting to appear in those new planes. Ooh, spooky. Yeah. There is a book about this crash in particular, this big aviation disaster. And it really takes a deep dive into the story. So I want to do it justice. And I want to commit an entire episode solely about that.

So if you'd like to join us for that story or catch up on our other four bonus episode Camp Fighter stories, you can definitely become a Patreon through the a link on our Instagram, National Park After Dark, or through our website, NPADPodcast.com. And we know that Patreon is a great way to support us, but we understand that not everyone is in the position to do so. But if you're enjoying the podcast, you can definitely help us out equally by subscribing, leaving us a message, a rating, or a review. That would be super appreciated as well.

That's it for this week's episode. Thank you for joining us on our journey south. and we hope you have a great week. Yeah, have a great weekend. And thank you for taking us there, Danielle. I learned a lot about the Everglades that I had no idea about before. And it is certainly a place higher on my list to go visit now. Thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Have a nice week. We'll see you next Monday. And in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye, everyone. Bye. You're listening to this podcast. So I know you've got a curious mind.

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