RedHanded - Episode 198 - The Death of Max Spiers

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

In July 2016 Max Spiers, a British conspiracy theorist, sent his mother a series of bizarre texts about how he was terrified for his life. Days later Max was found dead, after having vomited up 2 litres of black liquid. Things only became stranger when people realised that Max was meant to speak at a conference the following day about a high power paedophile ring he’d been investigating... Book! (Including limited signed copies): https://linktr.ee/RedHanded_Book Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dovjXDB69lhDjASbAgnwA  Patreon: patreon.com/redhanded Sources: redhandedpodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

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I'm Sruti. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Yeah, welcome again. I'm sure you're fucking sick of hearing me say this, but I might sound a little bit different because we have been moved offices because our normal office smelled like egg, and we were informed this morning that that's because of the sewage system fan situation so basically we've just been breathing poo particles in the other office

unknowingly so that's why we've moved into a much nicer office we live here now so if i sound different it's because i'm not surrounded by actual poo in the air i'm so glad i'm not there you would have had to fucking sedate me and take me to a hospital I couldn't cope I like just washed my hair before we did this recording and I used a new shampoo I just don't like the smell and that made me feel sick and it just smells like coconuts I couldn't cope with what you guys have had to do in the office so it's really not that bad I was fine before I knew what it was but But also like, it's not like a particularly outlandish thing to have happened. That's just how buildings work. So like every

building has a poo particle fan and sometimes it goes into rooms. So that's what that is. Excellent. Okay. Okay. Let's get off this topic immediately, please. And let's talk about something completely different before I throw up in this tiny box that I'm standing in. Guys, book. Have you had a chance to pre-order the book, the red-handed book? Yeah, well, if you haven't, you absolutely should. Because, just because, just because it's the best thing you can possibly be doing with your time. Absolutely. And to lure you over, if you haven't yet decided whether you're going to buy this book or not, we are back with yet another Red Hot Minute on the Red Handed Book. And it's my turn again. And I'm going to be talking about chapter two, Childhood.

Okay. Oh, okay. I'll count you in. But first, let me get my stopwatch, my antique stopwatch that I got on Antiques Road. I'm kidding. It's my iPhone. Are you ready? Three, two, one. In this chapter, we delve into the psychological link between child abuse and serial killing. You may be thinking, well, duh, of course there's a link. But hold on, because there are some surprising findings about the kind of abuse a killer suffered and the type of killer they go on to become. And this is all because of the impact abuse has on changing a person's brain structure, transforming their personalities and shaping a killer's MO. We also in this chapter take a look at a little known but incredibly sadistic killer

from Germany named Jürgen Barz, who I had never heard about before we started doing the research on this case, but he raped and murdered four boys before the age of 19 i'm guessing as you will find out that his mother and father's behavior particularly his mom who liked to wash him until the day he was arrested with her bare hands didn't particularly help in this chapter we also discuss the slaughterhouses of the soul or child gulags of romania the unending mummy issues that most serial killers contend with and explore the challenges of child psychopaths. I may have finished before a minute. And that is exactly time.

Yes. Fucking hell. Well done. Just got this down to a fine art over here at Red Handed. What, the twice you've done it? Yeah, exactly. That's all it takes for Sariti Bala to get something to fine art status. She just has to do it twice.

Nailed it. So there you go, guys. That is chapter two. Yeah, so links in the episode description below. By the time you're listening to this, there may still be signed copies available. We have just been like, fuck our wrists. The first lot of signed copies that we had that we announced to you guys last week sold out within the first like 24 hours. So a bunch more have been ordered. So you can get your hands on one still. I don't know how long stocks will last.

Head on over. We're not going to do any more. After this batch, we're not going to do any more signed copies. So if you want one, get one now. That's it. The only other B I have before moving on, shout out to my new neighbours, Abby and Aki, who when I first moved in, I had no external keys to the building. The estate agent didn't give me any keys or a form or anything. So I literally couldn't get in. And Abby threw me her key out of her bedroom window at like eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. And I bumped into her by the bins the other day and she was like, we've been listening to your podcast for ages. So I said I would say hello. And they're extremely nice to have around. I'm also convinced that Arlo Parks lives on my floor.

I think I've seen her twice. Well, there you go. You heard it here first, people. Get the book and Hannah may have seen Arlo Parks. So there you go. Top information here. Right. Speaking of possibly outlandish theories, shall we talk about today's case? By possibly outlandish, do you mean the most batshit fucking mental shit we've had on the show for quite some time? That is exactly what I mean. This case, we are going to be delving into like a whole shit ton of conspiracy theories. There's a lot going on. Brace yourselves. On the 16th of July 2016, British father of two, Max Spears, was in Poland. He was set to speak at a conference the following day, where he was going to expose government cover-ups

related to a paedophile ring that he had been investigating. But Max would never make it to his keynote, because that night, after vomiting up two litres of black liquid, he died. In the days before his untimely death, the 39-year-old had sent his mother back in the UK, Vanessa Bates, an ominous series of WhatsApp messages. He had said things like, And so, of course, Max's death became the perfect storm for online sleuths and the conspiracy theory community that he belonged to. And headlines like, Childhood pal of Orlando Bloom was sacrificed by Satanists as he investigated UFO conspiracy theories.

That's going to sell you a paper, though. Oh, it is. It is. It's like that one guy who claimed to be a time traveler and there's this like one very shaky picture of video of him and he's got like i took this picture in like 2040 and it's just like people like the mirror and the express have been republishing that like nobody's business absolutely the mirror the star the sun they're your fucking culprits in the propagation of this particular story and all of the absolute fucking nonsense that we're going to discuss.

Also blogs, the blogosphere, the conspiracy theory blogosphere has been lighting up like a fucking mad, mad Christmas tree since this happened. And obviously, like we've been working, we're in the final stages of Bookland and the final stage of Bookland is legal reads right so like lawyers read the book and then they're like this person could sue you for this this this reason and like when pointing to like sources and like referencing correctly the American lawyer was like has someone put this in between two covers or is it a blog because it's not the same absolutely we have learned a lot of things about that but we're going to continue to say whatever we want on this show because the legal ramifications

around slander seem a lot less because it's only slander exactly it's not liable if it comes out your mouth exactly so basically a lot of fucking crazy headlines like that have been absolutely running rampant on the internet ever since max died in 2016. Quick note about Max Spears and Orlando Bloom. They did apparently go to school together in Canterbury as children. However, I can't confirm, as this headline did, whether they were pals or not. So you'll have to figure that one out for yourself. I actually did look up Orlando Bloom, which is something I'd never done before in my entire life just to check that he was actually from Canterbury and this was the remote possibility that they had gone to school together.

I didn't know that he thought his dad was his dad until he was 13 and then his mum was like no that's not your dad your dad's like this random guy who is like a friend of the family. I didn't know that either. I thought you were going to be like I didn't know he was with Katy Perry. And I was like, for God's sakes, Rue, like I just got that in my head. But no, actually, no, I also didn't know that about Orlando Bloom. I think he went to Guildhall, his drama school. Yes, he did. He did. I think he was plucked from Guildhall before he finished being Lord of the Rings. I believe it's the rumor. I'm not sure if that's

true. Do you know, I didn't even realize before this case that he was British. I thought he was Australian. Stop it. Let's just keep moving on. So anyway, while some other people who discuss this case are a little bit less sensationalist than the headline I just read you, it does seem that the more authorities have tried to explain Max's death, the more fuel it has thrown on the fire of it's a massive cover-up. After all, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you. And that is literally the sentiment you see again and again and again repeated under like every single article in the comments section of every article published about this case. It's just so like self-fertilizing, isn't it? Like it's, oh, like I'm not like this because

I'm just nuts. It's because they're after me. And then it's just this complete cycle that goes on forever and ever and ever. Absolutely. And paranoia sits like firmly rooted at the center of this entire case. And Max was most certainly paranoid. He consistently spoke about how he was being psychically, astrally and even physically attacked because he was investigating high power politicians and their connections to satanic cults. And now of course with the absolute avalanche of conspiracy theories that this case has thrown up. You just need to stick Max Spears into Google and it will lead you page after page after page into just conspiracy theory abyss. And given that, unsurprisingly, there is a lot of misinformation out there.

And so the research on this case was particularly tough in terms of deciphering fact from fiction. But we have done our very best to pull it all apart and get to the truth of things to try and understand whether Max was really murdered as a result of what he knew or not. In this episode, we're going to dig deeper into Max's life, his beliefs and the bizarre world of conspiracy theories. We're going to talk about black magicians, super soldiers, all powerful aliens, Richard the Lionheart, moon Nazis, reptilian Charlemagne and the apparent rise of the Fourth Reich. I am always fascinated when it's like space and medieval leaders are the same. I love that. That's it. That's the fucking bread and butter of the conspiracy theory world.

That's what I've taken away from this past week of research. It seems to be just sort of, they love like a secret order of knights, but also space. They love the pastors and they love the aliens. It's basically like, I don't know, I guess like if you think of something like Game of Thrones, it's sort of like period-y time piece like no actual specific time it's not like it's set in our universe or anything but then there's also all this magic and like I guess it's not really alien shit in there but you know what I mean it's like that mashing together of old and timey period drama with sci-fi shit they love it they're fucking

nuts for it which is when I eventually produce my masterpiece, David Icke the Musical, in which everyone is a puppet except David Icke, that will be the setting. I cannot wait to get the lawyers to check that script. Can't wait. We've got to get David Icke on side first. He's the hero of the piece. That's the key thing. He's a very litigious man. But let's get to a less litigious man. But let's get to a less litigious man, Max Spears himself. His real name, his full name, which is quite a full name, is Maxwell Lindsay Herbert Bates Spears. Of course, someone called Bates hyphen Spears went to school

with Orlando Bloom. Like, of course. And he was born on the 22nd of December 1976 in Canterbury in England. Canterbury is very nice. There's a lot of pubs. It's what they tell you if you go to the University of Kent on an open day. They're like, well, there's 365 pubs. From a very young age, Max had extreme anxiety. His mum, Vanessa, said it would sometimes be so bad that she would have to sit with him for hours just holding his hand.

Max also openly recounted strange stories about aliens from when he was a little kid. In the BBC documentary on this case, which is called Fractured, they do delve into some of Max's stories from when he was about five years old. Not having spent an enormous amount of time with European five-year-olds, spent loads of time with Korean five-year-olds, it's difficult to say whether what he was writing then is specifically odd or not if it's stories about aliens and shit like that I feel like that's pretty standard five-year-old stuff like I feel like kids have fucking crazy imaginations yeah this is the thing I was like watching the BBC documentary which we will link below it's on YouTube it's like broken up into four parts is very annoying. They're obviously just making that fucking ad revenue. Are they

allowed to do that? I don't know, but it is in four parts, but I will leave the links down in the episode description. In that they are like having a child read out Max's stories from when he's five. And I don't have any experience at all really with children that young. And I was like, some of this stuff is so like specific. I'm'm like where are you getting this from at five but then his mom is also like he was obsessed with shows like monkey magic which I think is like well before our time but I did look it up and it's like something about space aliens and like a buddhist monk which just like obviously would never get made today but uh yeah I don't know but even stuff like the clangers everyone was watching the clangers there's like a space chicken the soup dragon and kids do hang on to very specific details of things

like when my brother was a kid he thought a twig tapping on his window he called it the bone lady and he'd imagined this like hag tapping on his window with a bone but it was just a tree and he was so young but he was able to like completely form this character I don't think it's that out of the ordinary but like I don't know I've also always had like a super overactive imagination so maybe I'm like being a bit too sympathetic because I'm like everyone imagines monsters following them for the rest of their life no no fair enough fair enough I can take that on. I feel like I don't even know what a five-year-old looks like, so I'm finding it quite hard to comprehend. So Max, in his stories, talks about seeing flying saucers and beams of light that would move him out of his room and into the night sky.

He talks about seeing people who had been bitten by a creature and had become brainwashed. Little Max would also regularly talk about seeing aliens and witches everywhere and that he would float out of his bed every night and travel to other dimensions. Given who Max grows up to be and how he died, people make a lot about these childhood stories. But yes, children have massive imaginations. But again, even for five-year-old children, it is extremely specific. And we know so much about Max's experiences as a child and then later as a grown-up because he spoke about them regularly at paranormal conferences all over the world. Usually, Max's talks would focus on trauma-based mind control and occult rituals. And Max wasn't just

doing this in his spare time. He was a professional. He earned actual money that you can buy other things with from speaking at paranormal events. Like, I know you can make money out of everything. Like, if people want to listen to it, you can make money off it. Yeah, I mean, we're living proof of that. Yeah, living proof, yeah. I don't know who's going to these paranormal conferences.

Who's paying money? I mean, clearly they are. Clearly they are. So who am I? Mate, there are so many of them. So many of these conferences. The only thing I thought when I was reading this is, as a former conference producer,

who is fucking paying Max to come and speak at these? I'd be like, you can come speak at this. I'm not fucking paying you. But no, they were giving him actual money to come and tell his stories. So when in April 2016, given that we know this was Max's like actual full time job, Max left his girlfriend and his two kids in England to go and speak at a conference in Poland. And there was nothing unusual about this. At the conference, Max met a woman named Monica Duval. Now, Monica is a sci-fi writer and publicist. Always nice when you can do your own press, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. She doesn't

have to hire anyone. And I believe that she has written a book called The Persistence of Yellow, which I haven't read, but I thought it was quite a fun name. I appreciated the name. That is a pretty good title. I'll give her that. I'll give her that. So at this conference, Monica and Max, they hit it off straight away. And Monica actually invited Max to come and stay at her place instead of his hotel. According to Vanessa, who's Max's mum, Monica apparently has several businesses and she wanted to recruit Max. I would argue that you probably don't need that person you've just met at a conference to come live with you in order to recruit them into one of your many businesses. And there are many rumours that the two of them were actually having

an affair. I strongly suspect that this was very much the case. But I do also think that the two were kind of mixing the paranormal and pleasure. I think they were trying to do some business together, but I think they were also probably banging. I'm certainly not meeting anyone at a conference and then going to their house unless I'm sleeping with them. Like, no way. No, no, no, thank you. And also, this is where it gets even stranger,

is because Max, he was just meant to go there and speak at this conference and, like, come back, right? Once he moved into Monica's flat, Max stayed in Poland for the next three months. And he would actually never make it back to the UK because he would eventually die, as we said, on the 16th of July 2016, right there on Monica's sofa. So when Max had originally flown out to Poland in April 2016, he had gone to speak at a conference about, quote,

secret military programs. Namely, the super soldier program and a secret underground alien base in New Mexico where children are used as fuel. I just feel like there are better fuels than human beings. Just build a wind farm. Don't worry about it.

We're going to come back to this. Let's just keep going for the moment, right? And hold ourselves together. Because we're actually now going to listen to some clips from Max's speech at this event three months before he died. And what you're about to hear might sound a little bit choppy. It's because you've got to go watch the YouTube video that we will also link below to understand how fucking awkward this is max is standing up there and there's a woman standing next to him who i feel like has been told to sort of just like not draw that much attention to herself but she really looks like

she fucking hates her life and she's translating everything max says into polish for the polish audience and i'm just like fuck's sake And the reason what you're about to hear might sound a little bit choppy is because the Polish translator's bits have been cut out. And we can't play the whole thing because the entire speech he gives is like well over an hour long.

And I don't know if I'd recommend watching it, but I do think it's interesting if for no other reason than to read the comments that are posted below because there's something so yeah let's have a little listen so this has been the most uh this has been the biggest audience really i've spoken to about such personal things um but i feel it needs to be addressed now because um it's coming to a climax. This 2016 year, everything is sort of climaxing now, and it needs to be addressed imminently.

It needs to be addressed immediately. The build-up over the last six months coming to Poland has been tumultuous, to say the least. I have been under psychic attack, under astral attack and under physical attack to stop me from coming to Warsaw to be able to convey this information to you. Specifically why the attacks have been over these last two to three months is because of not the technical things that I'm going to address, not because of those technical things. It's because I'm going to lay out what the war is about and why it's going on. And if the people understand and know why it's going on, and what it's about, then that gives the ability of the people to be able to stop it from happening. Okay, so, just to give a very brief outline of who I am and why I'm here,

and why I'm standing here in front of you in the first place so you understand. I'm just not Bob off the street. So essentially I was born into a specific blood okay, I was targeted as an individual from birth. The trauma begins, with me, the trauma began whilst in the womb of the mother. So whilst the fetus is inside the woman, if the mother is then traumatized that then that in turn traumatizes the child immediately it's difficult if not entirely impossible to delve into everything max believed in and spoke out about because there's just so much of it any conspiracy theory you can think of he's all over it loves it it, can't get enough. And I think the most interesting thing about Max is it's the most blatant example of unjoined up thinking I've ever, ever seen.

There's no line that he follows. There's no development of argument. He just literally just talks. Yeah. And what's particularly like, I don't know, difficult to wrap one's head around is what you just heard is Max at his most coherent, I would say. It's just about to go downhill, my friends. So we can't cover it all because I think our sanity would also leave the building. But let's pull out some key points. Max believed that he was one of 45 children who had been placed in the aforementioned

secret soldier programme. This secret project was led by, quote, high-vibration beings, or the masters, in which a group of male children born in the 80s were selected from mothers born in the 50s. You will note that Max himself was born in the 80s were selected from mothers born in the 50s. You will note that Max himself was born in the 70s. Doesn't stop him though, he's that special. So the children who were chosen were altered as fetuses. Apparently altered meant that the masters induced some form of trauma in utero to turn these kids into super soldiers. These boys would then grow up to

be controlled by the masters and they would be used to fight wars in other dimensions. Not saying that I'm gonna jack in the podcast but if I were to just decide to just start sprouting this shit would people pay me to appear at these conferences? The thing is, I think from the outside, it feels like it's an easy thing to just talk nonsense, right? But I think that these people have such a, like, esoteric understanding of what they're talking about and such a, like, clandestine series of narratives.

But although it doesn't, like seem to connect up and sure, if you just got a basic grasp of all of them, I'm sure you could just like blag your way through it. But I think that they're so naturally suspicious as well. I do also wonder that they must go after people who step even a little bit outside of their pre-agreed stories. So maybe it wouldn't be that easy. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I think you're right. I think it's like anything. It always looks easy until you give it a go. Including podcasting. Podcasting's full. Max truly believed that by speaking out about the super soldiers program

that he was taking back control. And as we mentioned before, Max also thought that whenever he fought the system, he would be psychically, astrally, and even physically attacked. We will come back to this in a bit when we talk about how Max used this belief system to explain away some pretty serious issues. Aside from what Max is actually saying at these events, though, because they absolutely don't make any sense, like we've said, I do think it's however

interesting, though, like we have talked about, he is fairly coherent. Now don't get me wrong, even if you accept the crazy things that he's saying, a lot of it, like Hannah says, doesn't actually connect up. It's kind of like how if you watch a sci-fi or a fantasy film or TV series or something, no matter how like crazy it is, as long as what's happening makes sense within the rules of that particular story, you how like crazy it is, as long as what's happening makes sense within the rules of that particular story, you can like, you know, suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in it. The problem for me here is that like Max's narratives don't match up. It's all so like disjointed. But despite this, he was able to make a living talking about the stuff he talks

about. And we will discuss later in this episode why people believe conspiracy theories, even if they make no sense, even if the stories contradict each other. But I do think it's important to state that Max was successful because I think he was pretty eloquent in the way that he spoke, especially when you compare him to some other people that I've come across this week who are, you know, yelling about very similar things on the internet. In comparison, Max is quite together. And Max has also been described by most people who knew him as being very charming and charismatic. So as far as like oddballs go, Max's beliefs were odd, but he seems to have been able to package them up and deliver them in a way that was quite appealing. Which is why he's getting paid at conferences.

Exactly. But his coherence wouldn't last, because during his time in Poland, something happened to Max. Soon he was texting his mum about how scared he was about being murdered. And these text messages aren't the only thing that we have to indicate Max's deterioration. In the weeks leading up to his death, Max had taken part in a three-part interview series

with a Polish YouTuber called Alex Berdovich. In the first two interviews, Max sounds more or less like he did at the Polish conference that we listened to. He's saying weird shit but sounding coherent. But in the third and final interview, which was recorded on the 12th of July 2016, just four days before he died, Max sounds anything but okay. He'd just come back from a holiday in Cyprus with Monica Duval and he's just a mess. He's slurring his words all over

the place and making absolutely no sense. In this interview, Max talks about false flag operations, crop circles near Stonehenge, Richard the Lionheart, Alistair Crowley, how 9-11 was an attack on the human heart. I don't know exactly what that means. And in all honesty, it doesn't really sound like Max knows either. Yeah. And like literally as soon as the interview starts, he starts talking or implying that he like met Richard the Lionheart in Cyprus. It's very, very, very strange right from the off. And it's not even like I find like when drunk people are

talking, often they repeat themselves. That's like the key thing that I observe. And they tend to get louder and louder and louder. It's not that. it's just not that at all it's this complete disconnected ramblings of stuff like the youtuber will ask him her question and then Max just starts talking about something entirely unrelated and then just like jumps from point to point to point it's meaningless stuff like it's so difficult to describe you just have have to watch it. Yeah, we just can't stress, like, how either unwell or, like, just being honest, how high Max sounds in this interview. You really do have to understand it.

Again, the entire interview, the third and final interview, is well over an hour long, so of course we cannot play the whole thing. But we're going to listen to some clips together now. What I didn't know about cyprus is that it was um uh richard the lionheart's uh space and that he had a castle there so i visited his castle there and i have connections to richard the way um if you look at the actor who played Batman is Baphomet Man. Or Bad Man. Bad Man or Baphomet Man. So there's an interesting word play in there. So it's O1, 227. O being an orifice,

1 being a phallus, 227 being a top-heavy fraction of pi, which is 3.141. Right. Pi is

critical to time travel in every way. You have to have Pi for time travel. And P is 2 in numerology because it's the 20th letter of the alphabet. alfabet. Felly, pp, yna 22. of me that wonders why I wasn't protected from that. And then me thinking that starts to make me think, well then what else wasn't I protected about? Yeah, and even now you have difficulties with speaking. Yeah, yes, I know, it's funny, isn't it? It's strange. Yeah, it's got worse. What do you feel now in your throat? None. Not only that. That's what it feels like.

And these are just the ones that we picked that you could actually understand what Max was saying, because much of the interview, it's hard to even really, like, listen to what he's saying because of how rambly he is. So let's go over some of the key points together. And I think it's important to say that the reason we're digging into what Max was saying in this final interview that he gave four days before he died is because we need to understand what he had been talking about in the time leading up to his death. Because this is what those who believe Max was murdered think that he was killed over. I don't want people to think we're just sharing clips from this interview of Max to laugh at him or anything like that. He doesn't make any sense. What he's saying is completely like nonsensical. But it's this that people have latched onto to say

this is what he was going to expose and this is why he was killed. So to understand that like crazy group thinking, we do need to understand what people are fixating on. And also it's important to say that Max isn't just saying all of this crazy shit because he's gone off the deep end, because he's clearly dealing with some level of mental impairment during this interview. This is what he's been saying for years. It's just that he's slurring all over the place in this particular interview. So yeah, bear in mind, all of the stuff we're about to tell you, as crazy as it sounds, there are literally thousands of people who think that Max had it all figured out, and that's why he was killed. So in this interview, Max talks at length about his theories on a fourth

Reich and also on something called Dulce. I struggle to say Dulce without thinking about Dulce de Leche immediately afterwards, which I despise and I never ever want to eat ever, ever again. I've told you about the time that I was like abandoned somewhere and only had dulce de leche to eat for four days, right? I am familiar with that tale, yes. Oh, no, I'm sure I've talked about it before. If I haven't, then I will talk about it in Under the Duvet because we do not have time to get into me being trapped in a fucking wooden shed with a bat and a tub of dulce de leche for four days. Anyway, while explaining his ideas in this interview on a fourth Reich, Max says that the Nazis have been hiding out on the moon ever since the end of the Second World War. And that Zionists are now, quote, working in alignment

with fucking like moon gerbils or whatever the fuck is going on. Moon gerbils. Yep. That's my fucking Reddit name. Oh, amazing. I support it. I'm here to support it. And Max elaborates on this union between the Zionists and the Nazis by explaining, quote, if you look at the word Zion and just change a vowel around and switch the letters around, then you have the word Nazi. If you just completely change the word, it's a different word. Great. Thank you, Max. I don't think that that's how symbolism works, where you just change letters. No, no. It's like saying if you completely and entirely change the Bible, it's the human genome.

Like, it's just not it. It's not it, exactly. So what about Dulce? Well, this is the idea of a subterranean alien base. In this interview, Max says that he has been to this base and, quote, seen a vat of children in disassociated states, some crying, some not, and some completely gone. These children are being drained of their life forces to fuel the aliens. And Max clarifies that these children aren't just being abducted

because the aliens, quote, also have female breeders down there constantly breeding children, thousands of them. I feel like Max maybe watched The Matrix a little bit too young. There's a lot of, like, references that can be linked very clearly back to movies like The Matrix. That's just, it's there. It's all over the place in his interviews.

Oh, in this interview, Max also says that he's been to Mars. That's something I forgot to mention. Oh, good. Because as you say, like, it's low-hanging fruit to just rip the shit out of him. Like, he's clearly really not very well at all. No, there's something going on. But it's like I said as well that although he's clearly in a very bad state when he's doing this interview, this is the stuff that he's been saying

for literally years at conferences, standing up on stage. And, you know, we'll come on to like what specifically is going on with Max. But this isn't just like suddenly he starts rambling about these things in this final interview. This is all consistent with what he's been saying for a long time. He just sounds particularly out of it in this interview. Max also talks about current conspiracy theories' favourite thing, chips implanted into his body, including one that he discovered in the back of his neck three days after this interview.

And again, super easy to laugh at this, but it's important to realize that there are people who sincerely believe in what max is saying and think that he died trying to expose or whistle blow on these atrocities you know you can't swing a cat without hitting some anti-vaxxer who thinks that it's some sort of like chip implant thing like to be honest at this stage i don't care if the vaccine turns me blue and means that bill Gates can sell my thoughts to China. Like, I just want my life back. Like, I literally don't care anymore. Let's go. Give me that fucking vaccine passport. What's also important to say is that we're going to come on to like

the whole QAnon conspiracy stuff later on in this episode where we talk about why people believe conspiracies. But I think it's important to state, like, these people genuinely believe these things. And I do have to ask myself, if I genuinely thought that atrocities like a bunch of aliens in a subterranean alien base were using human children as fuel, I'd be pretty fucking pissed about that, too. Yeah. I mean, it's hard enough to get people to believe in ethnic cleansing. Yeah. Like, imagine if this was actually happening. You would be outraged, wouldn't you? Exactly. We've got a lot of issues with the particular interviewer, the YouTuber who is interviewing

Max, and he's clearly very unwell. If you watch the whole thing, sorry, actually listen to the whole thing, you can't watch the third interview because, interestingly enough, although the first two interviews were videoed, the third one is audio only. And the YouTuber says at the start that it's because they couldn't find anywhere to film. Why couldn't they just film it in the place they filmed parts one and two? That seems to make little to no sense. I'm pretty certain that they decided not to film the third interview because Max was in such a bad way. It's very obvious and they knew it. Something else the interviewer does, which I find deeply uncomfortable,

is that every time Max starts to slur really badly or say something in an odd way, the guy repeatedly says, Are you being astrally attacked now? I think you are. Which is completely feeding into Max's delusions when he's clearly extremely vulnerable. Yeah, absolutely. If you go and watch the whole thing, sorry, listen to the whole thing, you will see that the interviewer repeatedly says things like this and repeatedly gets like really angry at Max or like frustrated at Max. The whole thing is very, very uncomfortable. And during this interview, not only is Max like barely coherent, as you could hear from the clips we just played, he falls asleep multiple times. Just falls asleep while he's there in an interview.

And at points, you can even hear a woman in the background reminding Max to breathe. At one point, the interviewer even stops the interview because Max is so tired that he's again fallen asleep. So guess what? They wake him up and have him jump up and down on a trampoline to re-energize him. You know when all of the cyclists in the world ever were blood doping? Come for me, I don't care. And they would wake up in the middle of the night to go on exercise bikes because their blood was so thick with red blood cells that it would stop. Like it would just

like stop in their veins unless they were physically moving. It's like that. Oh my god. Yeah, that's what I think they were trying to do to Max they were just like and re-energize isn't my term that's the term used in the interview like that's what we're going to do Max let's get on this trampoline and jump up and down for half an hour and then we'll carry on I don't know I find the whole thing very hard to fathom that not only did these people doing the interview record it because clearly Max turns up in not a very good state and they continue, they go ahead with it, they record it. But they also released the entire thing on YouTube just days after Max had died, which seems not ideal, really. So what's wrong with Max? Many people on the internet seem to believe that he has been poisoned.

Max also made claims about having been poisoned while he was still alive, so in the like days and weeks leading up to his death. And he also obviously explained away any particularly strange behaviour by continuing to talk about those psychic attacks. But I wouldn't be surprised if your mind, dear listener, hadn't jumped to drugs and mental illness. Let's start with my favourite, drugs. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, it was for comic effect. I've never touched any in my life. It's no secret that Max had struggled with substance abuse

and addiction problems for a long time. In July 2015, he contacted Turning Point, which is a health, social care, drug and alcohol help service here in the UK. He told them that he injected, and this is a quote, two bags of heroin and crack cocaine daily, and he occasionally used cannabis. Vanessa, Max's mum, has also confirmed that Max was a heroin addict. Apparently, it had all started when Max had been living in the US and had an accident in which he cracked his pelvis. And then, surprise, surprise, he was put on opioids like Percocet or OxyContin. And once they cut him off, as there are billions of documentaries about this exact thing,

he felt like he had no choice but to turn to heroin to feed the addiction that the healthcare professionals had inflicted him with. But according to Vanessa, Max had sorted himself out. She says that in the three years before Max had gone to Poland, he had been completely clean. She does admit, though, that she doesn't know what he had been up to in Poland and thinks that he might have relapsed. Yeah, because his mum listened to bits of that interview

that we just played you, the final interview, and she says that he sounds how he used to sound when he used to take heroin. I have never interacted with someone who's taken heroin, so I don't know if that's like how somebody sounds. It's like you said, I don't think he sounds drunk to me. He sounds something else. Maybe it's heroin. I don't know. Now, we don't know for sure if Max managed to kick the habit. But it's certainly clear that for a long time, many people in Max's life knew about his issues. Miles Johnston, who describes himself as a paranormal and UFO researcher, is a particularly interesting friend of Max's. If you go and check out the BBC documentary called Fractured on this case, Miles features very heavily in that show and he describes max as a

quote fun intelligent and erudite guy but one with a darker side and this darker side that miles is referring to is in relation to max's drug and alcohol abuse miles and max had actually met at another super soldier conference in nevada and they had become good friends. This is the other thing that these people who are like involved in this conspiracy theory community like Miles and Max and they're doing it full time. Like Miles, this is his full time gig. They've got like enough money to like fly off to Nevada, buy a ticket to this conference, stay there. Like it blows my mind. How much money is in this stuff? Tax deductible, mate. Business expense.

That's all it is. That's why I recently put two and two together. You know when YouTubers do massive clothing hauls or they go to Target and they're like, my $10,000 Target, blah, blah, blah. It's because they can write it off their taxes. They make a video. No problem, mate. 100%.

So back to this. Anyway, so yeah, they had met at this super soldier conference in Nevada and become good friends. And when Miles had once visited Max in Canterbury, he claimed that they were being followed by four agents who were controlling Max. And in this documentary, Miles explains in genuinely the most sincere way that these mysterious agents were using quote trigger words to program Max and change his behavior. Miles goes on to say that this control was why Max was using drugs. So how does this work? Well it all comes back to the trauma-induced mind control theory that we introduced you guys to earlier. Miles says that these aliens create trauma in a person usually

when they're like just fetuses in their mother's wombs and then that person when they're born seeks to kill that pain with the use of drugs and the aliens then use that drug abuse to fracture the person's mind and then control them. Remember when we said that this altered state belief system was being used by Max to explain away some pretty serious issues? Well, this is it. Trauma can play a very big role in substance abuse and the issues that it causes, but it feels like a bit of a worrying way to try and rationalise addiction in this particular case.

Instead of focusing on mental illness and dependency, these people are blaming all of Max's problems on mind controlling aliens. And we're really not making light of it because this kind of thinking is incredibly problematic. And it brings us on to our next topic of discussion, which is Max's mental health. We don't know exactly what Max was coping with. It doesn't seem that he has been officially diagnosed by a mental health professional ever. In the BBC documentary, the team did manage to get their hands on some emails sent by Monica Duval to a quantum therapist named Dr. Christoph. Exactly what kind of doctor he is, we don't know. In these emails, which were sent just days before Max died,

Monica seems scared. She tells Dr. Christoph, like, if you just start calling yourself Dr. Whatever. I mean, the only thing I can think, because I did try to look up this guy, but, like, I have no information on him. I don't have a first name. Couldn't find anything.

The only thing I can think is I looked up quantum therapy. It's like healing shit, you know, like maybe crystals. I don't know. Sure, sure, sure. Maybe. At the very most maybe of maybes, Dr. Christophe had a PhD. You know, you can get a PhD in any old fucking crazy shit, I think. Oh, sure. Can you get a PhD in quantum therapy? Maybe. I'm not sure. Maybe he has that. I don't think that he's a medical doctor though. I can confidently say that. No I think he's printed off a certificate from British London. Exactly. With four stars on it. Five would be too many.

So Monica's telling Dr Christophe that she thinks Max has paranoid schizophrenia and on top of that a personality disorder. Whatever kind of doctor Dr Christophe that she thinks Max has paranoid schizophrenia and, on top of that, a personality disorder. Whatever kind of doctor Dr. Christophe is, I don't think that Monica, a sci-fi writer slash publicist, was in any position to make an official diagnosis of this nature. But it's, of course, possible that Max was a paranoid schizophrenic and it's obviously possible that he had a personality disorder. It's possible that anyone has a personality disorder.

But what's interesting is that the day before Max died, Monica knew, she knew because she's sending these emails, that something was very wrong with Max. But Dr. Kristoff didn't seem to be much help. He just tells Monica to give Max some B3 and niacin. It doesn't seem that Dr. Kristoff and Max ever really met each other. So wherever he trained to be a doctor of quantum whatever the therapy, they're not big on doctor-patient interaction, it would seem. No, it apparently seems you can do it through a third-party email and fix paranoid schizophrenia and a personality disorder with B3 and niacin. So there you go. Who knew?

No problem. Done. Before we get on with the rest of this particularly bizarre case, we're going to take a very quick break. If you're a patron, you wouldn't have to be listening to this right now. You would just be listening to the next part of the story, but you're not. So listen up. If you do become a patron, not only could you escape ad land, you could also get your hands on a ton of extra content like for example at the end of every show hannah and i head off and record under the duvet which has become like basically a podcast in itself that we release every single week it's an hour long we talk about all sorts of things we don't know what we're going to talk about this week because we haven't recorded

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between the ages of 16 and 30, which somewhat does match Max's experience, because although Max did have odd experiences from his early childhood, he says that he first saw a change in 2006, at which point he would have been around 29, which could fit in with the emergence of the condition symptoms at that age. I don't know. I've got some paranoid schizophrenia in my family, but I've never, you know, it comes in phases like brought on by stress, like particularly delusions. I've never been around when one of those has happened.

But I can imagine that, and obviously not diagnosing Max with this because we have no idea, but in the sort of familial experience I have is someone sort of going into a delusion and needing proof from the sort of like quote unquote sane people around someone sort of going into a delusion and needing proof from the sort of like quote unquote sane people around them that that's not what is happening. Like for example, I'm going to try and do this in like the loosest way possible. For example,

this person thought that they had caused some sort of international incident and they needed proof that they weren't in the paper. And when they had the proof that they weren't in the paper, then they could sort of bring themselves back down again. But no one's giving Max proof of anything. They're all saying like, yeah, you're absolutely right. So I can understand how it could possibly spiral. But it's so hard to say. It's so hard to say. Part of me when I read this, I was like, okay, if he started in 2006, and he dies in 2016, how did Max go with untreated paranoid schizophrenia, undiagnosed, untreated for a decade? I can imagine that that could happen. There are a lot of people around him. He's very close to his mother. He has a partner. He's got two kids. He's got a lot of

friends. He's not like isolated. But then I do also appreciate that paranoid schizophrenia shows itself in different people in different ways. It can also be gradual. There's nothing definitive that we can say. I'm just not 100% sure if Max actually had paranoid schizophrenia. We don't know. This is the diagnosis you'll most often see associated with Max on the internet, if there is anybody talking about his mental health at all. But it could also have been any other number of things.

It could have been something like schizotypal personality disorder, which is the condition most closely associated with things like magical thinking. It could also have been paranoid personality disorder. But there is, of course, also the possibility that Max may not have had any of these. And it was possibly anxiety and depression and substance abuse coming together in a terrible way. The reality is, now we are never, ever going to know. But whatever was going on with Max, it is pretty shocking that so many people listened to what he was saying

and didn't think that he sounded totally out of his mind. There are literally thousands of people defending the things he said and calling him a genius, saying that he was murdered because he knew too much. And it's like we said at the start of the show, that's completely cyclical thinking. and calling him a genius, saying that he was murdered because he knew too much. And it's like we said at the start of the show, like that's completely cyclical thinking. Like there's no way. You know, it's like when Richard Dawkins says that you can never have a considered debate with a religious person because you will always get to the point where they'll just say, well, that's just what I believe.

Yeah, we will come and talk about this a little bit. But like facts also don't change a lot of people's minds when they're thinking in this kind of way. And, you know, that's to be expected from the videos posted by other conspiracy theorists. But the comments on the BBC documentary are the same. There are people in the comments that are screaming that it's a hit piece and it was just a subversion tactic to discredit Max and undo all of his work. We, of course, would never insinuate that the BBC ever have any nefarious motives about anything ever. But these people are arguing this with total conviction, not even a sign of a smirk anywhere. So do these people all have a serious mental disorder?

Statistically, that doesn't make too much sense. So how can we explain it? Conspiracy theories and our belief in them are not new, but they do seem to be on the rise. And 2020 certainly seems to have been a bit of a conspiracy renaissance year. First, there was QAnon, whose followers believe that the world is run by a deep state, cabal of satanic paedophiles, and that Donald Trump, of all people, was the one who was going to stop them. The least satanic paedophile of all.

The anti-satanic paedophile. And then, of course, COVID happened, bringing with it all sorts of new fantasies, like that the virus was created in a Chinese lab, the pandemic was due to 5G, and in order to stop it, we had to burn down 5G mobile cell towers. The virus was spread by Bill Gates so that he could use a vaccination program to implant microchips into people that would let him track and control them. Guys, you're not that interesting. I was in the pub the other day and like, you know, you have to do like the track and tracing on your phone and it's like this faff. And I like offhandedly said, I was like, I just can't wait until my phone is just a chip implanted directly into my eye. So like, I just don't have to worry about losing it or dropping it or whatever. And like, it's embarrassing and I have to like fumble this off and like the lady behind the bar was like oh my god no like they'll have all of your stuff and I'm like I'm not interesting they already have

all of your stuff yeah exactly they already have all of your stuff what do you think is happening exactly of course the final conspiracy theory that we're going to put on our list is the fact that a lot of people think that the virus isn't real at all. And that the crashing and burning of the global economy was entirely planned and wanted by everyone. The other interesting thing, which we did briefly mention before, is that some of these people who believe in these kind of conspiracy theories will even willingly believe in conspiracy theories that directly contradict each other. There are people who will believe that 5G is causing COVID covid but they'll also believe that covid isn't real like there are no barriers to like what people will believe they'll believe any sort of fucking like mishmash of this subset of bizarre beliefs and you know bizarre beliefs they certainly are but they don't actually make someone by default delusional or even mentally ill.

Perfectly mentally sound people by whatever metric you want to use to measure sanity, like a sane stamp on your hand, like in The Simpsons. Sane people believe in conspiracy theories like that. It's just a fact. Absolutely. I think that is the key thing that we want to hammer home, is that you do not have to be delusional or mentally ill or quote-unquote crazy to believe in conspiracy theories no matter how bizarre they may seem to the rest of us. There are several substantive differences between conspiracy theory beliefs or even like conspiratorial ideation and outright delusions. But one thing, surveys, I looked this up multiple places, all of the

surveys showing me the same results. The study showed that about 50% of the population, and in this we're talking about Europe and the US really, because that's all the data that I could find, believe in at least one conspiracy theory. But only 0.2% of the population can be clinically diagnosed as delusional. That is a big fucking difference. 50%? Yeah, 50%. Fuck me. Believe in at least one.

What's your conspiracy theory? Sands. Sand mafias. Is that your chosen conspiracy theory? Mate, it's true. People are dying. Honestly, it's so true. If you don't know what we're talking about, come listen to Under the Duvet.

Sand mafias, big problem. And I think the important thing to also say when we're talking about conspiracy theories, that it's not even correct to deem all conspiracy theories to be like false beliefs. Because if we define a conspiracy theory as a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event, which is how it is technically defined, well then real life conspiracies such as the CIA's MKUltra program have clearly really happened. So you can't even just say all conspiracy theories are false because that's clearly not true. So I really basically don't want us to get into the idea that anyone who believes anything that is, you know, mildly even conspiratorial is a crazy person and to be discredited. I firmly stand

against that because that's how the government totally take fucking control, right? Because healthy scepticism is good. It's just that bottomless, endless scepticism about everything is dangerous. I think that you do have to have an element of like people falling in line for the sake of society and for the sake of the individual. And when you have bottomless scepticism, it's dangerous for everybody. And it's very destabilising. But we should still question everything, don't believe, or we should question lots of things. Maybe we should say that, not everything. So I think it's better to explain conspiracy theories the way that doctors Ronald Pies and Joseph Pierre do

in their 2014 Medscape article. They say that, quote, conspiracy theories are distinct from psychosis and more closely resemble extreme but subculturally sanctioned religious or political beliefs. This also ties in with what the research shows, which is that people who are religious and people who are also very politically either to the far right or the far left are much more likely to believe in more conspiracy theories.

However, we do have to say that the line between believing in conspiracies and being delusional does become more blurred when the person acts on their beliefs as a part of some sort of personal mission. In the Medscape article, they consider Edgar Madison Welch, a.k.a. the Pizzagate shooter. Welch was a 28-year-old man who absolutely, truly, in his heart of hearts, believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. And if you are unfamiliar with that particular gem, it's the claim that Hillary Clinton and Democratic elites were running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizzeria. In December 2016, Welch took an AR-15 style rifle, drove 350 miles from North Carolina, it's always a Carolina, to this pizzeria and opened fire. But thankfully, no one was injured. So why are we seeing a rise in conspiracy theories now?

Well, according to the BBC in the documentary you watched for this episode, they speak to a man in Poland who says that the reason so many of those paranormal and super soldier conferences take place was because Poland had been a communist country for so long. And now they no longer are. There's a total lack of trust in the government. It's like when we did the Nepalese Royal Massacre, everyone forgets that Nepal only became a democracy in the 90s. So obviously, like things are going to be different and tricky and people are going to misunderstand things. Absolutely. I think that's the key thing. I try to do some research and look into which countries in the world have the least amount of trust in their government. I think that's the key thing. I try to do some research and look into which

countries in the world have the least amount of trust in their government. I wasn't really able to find that. What I was able to find is countries that have the most amount of trust in their government. Would you like to know which country came top of that chart for having the people have the most amount of trust in their government. Yes, please guess. Russia. China. Oh, duh. I'm so stupid. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Well done. And I was like, wow, that is just so fucking... Where do you even begin with that? And if you look at a country like the US, not wanting to sort of give over total power to the government, not completely trusting your government, it's all part and parcel of like the foundation stones of that nation. And that's why I think conspiracy theories are again so rife there. In summary countries where trust in the government is quite low it's a natural breeding ground for misinformation

and the propagation of conspiracy theories. Interestingly enough I had never particularly considered before that the sort of right to bear arms situation in the States is very much about protecting yourself from the government sometimes. And I had not thought about it in that particular way before. Oh, yeah. Max actually talks quite in depth about that. He says, you know, in like Nazi Germany, I don't know if this is true. He says one of the first things that Hitler did when he came to power was to take away arms from the people so that they couldn't defend themselves. Obviously, that's not like why all the stuff with the Nazis happened, because the Germans were like, yeah, we fucking love Hitler, let's do this. But absolutely, the whole idea behind the right to bear arms is so the government can't just come and fuck you up.

Apparently. Let's move on. We're in dangerous territory. Yes, please. So looking specifically at the rise of this way of thinking in recent years, it seems that COVID is a pretty unavoidable catalyst. It's completely changed the way we live in a way that I don't think any of us thought was possible. And it made us super dependent on the government because we're waiting for the right information to know what we are allowed to do and what we aren't. So whether it's that increased government control or the virus itself that has terrified people, scared people are much more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

And we listened to an interview with a lady named Dr. Karen Douglas on the increase in conspiracy theories. And we will link the podcast in the sources for this episode description on our website so you can check it out. But basically Dr. Douglas in this interview says that people are drawn to conspiracy theories to satisfy three basic needs. Number one is epistemic motives which is like the need for knowledge or certainty and conspiracy theories offer people the chance to feel absolutely certain about something in a world of rampant uncertainty. Typically, the research shows that those with lower levels of education who lack the ability to think critically or to distinguish credible versus non-credible sources are more susceptible to believing in conspiracy theories. And again, the point to make is it's not because they're stupid. It's because a lower level of education has like prepared them less

well to be able to think critically. That's the key thing. Then the second motive is an existential motive, which is a need that all of us as humans have to feel safe and secure and to feel like we have both power and autonomy over our lives. It's pretty basic to say, but it's true that people don't like feeling powerless. And so those who are drawn to conspiracy theories are usually disillusioned and powerless. And reason number three is a social motive, which is a desire that we all have to feel good about ourselves and the groups that we belong to. It feels good to believe that we have access to information good about ourselves and the groups that we belong to. It feels good

to believe that we have access to information that other people don't. It's what religion's about. Yeah, absolutely. Religion, cults, anything you want to say, that is the crux of it, isn't it? That idea of feeling in possession of the truth, it makes you feel superior. And interestingly, studies also show about conspiracy theories that narcissism and insecurity are fundamentally rooted in those who are drawn towards them. So as you can see, the research all indicates that what draws people to conspiracy theories are normal human motivations. Again, hammering this point home, it's not necessarily mental illness or straight out delusion. So armed with what we now know, let's explore Max's death and why it sparked such

a conspiracy firestorm. So we know that Max was staying with Monica Duval in a suburb of Warsaw and on the night of the 16th of July 2016, he started to run a fever and then according to Monica, he began vomiting. She called an ambulance whilst trying to resuscitate him and Monica says that when she turned Max to one side, this black liquid just began pouring out of his mouth. When paramedics arrived, they too noted that Max was vomiting a dark black tea-coloured liquid, perhaps up to two litres worth, which sounds very scary, like anything black coming out of your body isn't it?

We're not used to it. It just means you're internally bleeding. It's literally all it is. Yeah absolutely. It's just like blood has found its way into your digestive system and the longer it's in there the darker it becomes.

It's also known as coffee ground vomitatus or something like that because it can look like coffee grounds. Max was pronounced dead at the scene. A doctor who attended stated that he'd died of natural causes. And then Max's body was just left in Monica's flat. All night. Polish police were also not informed about Max's death.

In fact, they wouldn't find out about it until his body was already back in the UK six days later. When a post-mortem was carried out in Kent, a week after Max died, the medical examiner was unable to determine the cause of death and ruled his death to be inconclusive, which is, of course, conspiracy theory gold. Now, there are other few things that people also latch onto with this part of the case. One being that Vanessa, Max's mum, was on the phone with Monica the night that Max died and she says that long after the paramedics and the doctor had left, there was still a group

of people at the flat. And remember, Max's body is still also at the flat. According to Vanessa, these people were talking about trying to bring Max back from the dead. They were apparently talking about cups of milk, cups of vinegar and energies. According to our old friend Miles Johnston, apparently you have six hours to bring someone back before their energy leaves for good. He also says this in the BBC documentary and he says that it is well known scientifically.

Is it? Now, another thing that people also you know fucking clamber all over is that Vanessa has a picture of Max's body from the night that he died. It was sent to her by Monica. In this photo on Max's forehead there's a dark black mark. The woman in the BBC documentary describes it as like a big like blood blister. But this mark was never reported by the doctors or the paramedics who saw Max's body or treated him that night. In fact, there are no reports at all of any physical injuries to Max whatsoever. I think that's quite easily explained though. Like I feel like the paramedics and the doctors are like,

he's dead, later, and then she starts fucking around with him. Like I think that's pretty easily cleared up I guess the only thing I would say is like after death would a blister form or is that like kind of a you have to be alive for your body to react that way I don't know also haven't seen a picture of this blister it could just be a black mark that's the thing if it's just a hole in his forehead then definitely yes like if it's like a formed proper blister, then I don't know. And we don't know because we haven't seen that photo. Now, if you just leave all of this aside, there is a glaring question that does remain for me, however, is how did they get Max's body out of Poland without telling the authorities?

I don't know what the rules are around this. Do you need to tell the police if you're moving a dead body? I feel like maybe. How? How? I don't know. I know exactly how. Oh. They teleported him. Oh, okay. I see. Duh. And that was the burn to his face maybe in the preparation process. We don't know. Exactly. Some people on the internet are also very much like, why didn't Monica call the police and tell them that Max had died? But like a doctor and paramedics had seen him. And yeah, I do feel like she should have.

There's a lot of weirdness about it. But we also know that these people are incredibly super paranoid of the authorities. So whether Max was murdered or not, and whether Monica was involved or not, and whether Monica was involved or not, which is what these people are obviously insinuating, whatever happened, I don't think that she would have called the police. No, I don't think so. But however they got him out of Poland, the body made it back to the UK. Vanessa was told not to look at Max's remains because it would be too upsetting. So her daughter went to ID him and apparently she was distraught because Max was, quote, unrecognisable.

Apparently his face was completely black and decomposed, which did seem weird. So we had a look at the decomposition journey of a human corpse. And this is according to somewhere called Aftermath.com. Which is the best domain name for a website dedicated to the world of human decomposition. Please donate me to one of those body farms. Oh, happily. So apparently here's what happens. 24 to 72 hours after death, internal organs decompose.

Three to five days after death, the body starts to bloat and blood containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose. Eight to ten days after death, the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas. Several weeks after death, the nails and teeth fall out and one month after death, the body starts to liquefy. So he should have just been in the bloating stage. Well, yeah, yeah. Max had only been dead for six days. So why did he look quite so horrendous? We don't know because we have no idea what happened to him in those six days.

And also, then again, perhaps it was never going to be easy for Max's sister to see him dead. And we haven't seen a picture, so we don't actually know what the state of him was. In fact, we know very little at all about, like, Max's cause of death or anything surrounding that, because Vanessa, his mum, hasn't been able to get from the Polish authorities anything except for a death certificate that said that Max had died of natural causes. But this is the thing, right? You turn up at a house, a man is vomiting black liquid. Yes, as we said, it's most likely just like blood in his stomach. But they don't do any post-mortem. They just leave the body there and then say that it's natural causes.

How can you know it's natural causes if you don't do a post-mortem? He could have been poisoned. Post-mortems are only carried out in cases where someone has died of very obviously unnatural causes, or it's like at request. Like it's not like anyone who dies in a hospital undergoes a post-mortem. Like I think it would have been the doctor who pronounced him dead would have been like natural causes and they'll be like, okay, no need to open him up then, possibly. And Vanessa wasn't happy with whatever explanation she was given, though she felt that

she needed more answers. But whenever she queried the Polish authorities, they just refused to release any of the paperwork linked to Max's case, saying that Vanessa couldn't have it because she didn't have Max's written permission. I'm not making this up. Great, fantastic. Another thing that is often cited as odd is that when Max's body arrived in the UK, all of his belongings came with him, except his phone and his laptop. Monica sent these to Vanessa a month later. And when they arrived, they had been wiped clean and the SIM from Max's mobile phone was gone. People make a big deal of this, but I'm like, okay, either Monica did it or Max just did it before he died. Yeah, totally. Monica's a shady bitch, like, obviously. All that says is that

Monica's a dickhead. So since all of this has come out, Max's popularity in the world of conspiracy theories has exploded and people genuinely believe that Max was a super soldier who was being directed through mind control by the British government and the BBC. I'm kidding, I made that up. Max's friends, Miles Johnston, told BBC Radio 4 soon after the death that Max has been working to expose, quote, enemies within other realities. Johnston, who regularly posts about how COVID isn't real and is seemingly very passionate about the hashtag Stop the New Normal, also runs The Basis Project. This group have now been banned from YouTube, probably because they won't stop saying that COVID doesn't exist. But aside from that, they also believe that humanity and all life on Earth will be wiped out by a predator species within the next three generations and miles said in his interview with the bbc we have now got an

unthinkable situation max has died for his country and the people on this planet we're dealing with aliens we're dealing with a predator within humanity a fifth column which has been successful so far in causing us a great deal of damage and harm people like max were involved in exposing that fifth column he knew he was going to die he knew he was in a trap he told his mother that and this is the thing you have to go and watch miles johnston saying these things because he doesn't seem crazy. You know, he sounds crazy. And it's not just Miles. Max's former girlfriend, Sarah Adams, is also convinced of foul play. And she says that he was being kept in Monica Duval's house and it was surrounded by electrical fencing. And Max wasn't allowed to leave. And Sarah believes that it was either Monica or someone else who was there in

the flat that night who killed Max. According to Sarah, Max wanted to come back to leave and Sarah believes that it was either Monica or someone else who was there in the flat that night who killed Max. According to Sarah, Max wanted to come back to England and marry her. She claims that, quote, he rang me secretly because they wouldn't let him talk to me. They were doing very dark black magic and satanic rituals to deprogram him and get rid of the demons. This is very sad because Sarah was obviously the girlfriend Max left in England and pissed off to Poland for three months and definitely started having an affair with Monica in my opinion and then Sarah's back in England being like no they were keeping him hostage he actually wanted to come back here and be with me. Was Max telling her that? We don't know. We don't know but that's what Sarah believes and I'm like no, he went on holiday to Cyprus with her. He wasn't behind

an electric fence. I'm sorry. Now, Sarah has also spoken openly about the fact that before his death, Max was researching a circle of black magicians, mainly made up of political leaders and celebrities. Again, we're telling you this to show you that not all of these people can have paranoid schizophrenia. Not all of these people can be severely mentally ill to the point that they believe these delusions. Sarah also claims that both Max and her had been getting death threats about his investigation. Whether this is true or not, we don't know. But sadly, Sarah is now really facing endless online harassment from people who believe that she was the one who killed Max.

She's not even in Poland. I don't know. She hasn't seen him in three months. Okay. So basically the general feeling in the conspiracy theory world is that Max was onto something and that he was killed for it. And if it just ended there, then okay, you could be like, fine. Interestingly, it wasn't just this group who thought that something was odd because an inquest into max's death here in the uk was started in 2019 and this is the thing like this was never going to fucking clear anything up for these conspiracy theorists because whatever they were going to say whatever the inquest found unless they were literally going to say that max was actually murdered by the government or by like space aliens it was just going to spark more controversy and it absolutely did that at the inquest it was stated by the coroner christopher sutton mattox

we've been recording for a long time and i just read that as like something just i can't even remember what it was but it made me laugh at the time i've read it a few times as buttocks and i don't know why yeah yeah sutton buttoow. So Christopher Sutton Mattox stated that Max Spears' cause of death was pneumonia and intoxication by drugs, which caused an aspiration of gastric contents, which explains the now notorious black liquid that

Max vomited up. And the second post mortem examination that was carried out for the inquest also found deadly levels of oxycodone in Max's system. The Polish prosecutor's office told the inquest that also found deadly levels of oxycodone in Max's system. The Polish prosecutor's office told the inquest that before his death, Max had bought 10 packets of a Turkish version of Xanax that didn't require a prescription. This is backed up by Monica, who also testified at the inquest.

It was concluded that Max had ingested at least 10 of these Turkish Xanax tablets, possibly thinking that it was a lower dosage than it actually was. I would argue that whatever the dose you think it is, don't take 10 tablets of anything. No, especially in a foreign country where you don't know what it is. No, don't do that. Stop immediately. So coroner Sutton-Mattock seriously also goes after the Polish police in his report for their handling of Max's death. Fairly so, in my opinion. He says, you know, the fact that they left Max's body in Monica Duval's flat overnight with no examination and no investigation was, in his words, wholly incompetent.

He actually closed the inquest by stating, Max was a conspiracy theorist and a well-known one at that. If there was anything bound to excite the interest of other conspiracy theorists was the wholly incompetent initial investigation into his death. And again, it's kind of a typical thing we see all the time, especially in true crime cases. Conspiracy and cover-up or incompetence. I'm leaning towards incompetence here. Me too. As much as I love a conspiracy, I just don't think this is that. No, the closest we've come to conspiracy-ish theories or cases before

would be the case of Danny Casolaro or that of Chuck Morgan that we have covered in the past. In those two cases, I absolutely believe that those men were murdered for something that they were investigating. I don't think Max was murdered for something he was investigating. But of course, the inquest was nowhere near enough to quiet the conspiracy theorists, and the coroner's verdict has just deepened people's mistrust, and also their certainty in a large-scale government cover-up. So what happened? We don't know. But

bottom line, like I said, I don't think Max was murdered. I think that this is just a sad story of a man who had been battling with drugs and depression for a lot of his adult life. And I think that he died as a result of this, and as the coroner said, of pneumonia. And I think what's so tragic about this story is that while Max was obviously fully into the world of conspiracy theorists, you know, it was his life. It's how he made his living. He was totally immersed in it. I do think that in his final days possibly even longer than that he was being so heavily exploited while he was in such a vulnerable place by those around him who were a part of that community and the only other thing I'll say is that I think when you see this case reported everywhere that people just seem to forget they get swept up in all the

craziness of it which is understandable but they forget that Max was only 39. He was a young man who was clearly dealing with a lot of substance abuse issues. And he leaves behind two children. You know, it's just a sad story. But I don't think he was murdered. That's the overwhelming through line is that it's just really, really tragic and sad. Like he wasn't very well

and then he continued to be not very well and then he died. And loads of people are taking advantage of it. Absolutely. So, yeah, that is the case of Max Spears. Hopefully, you know, if you have just a cursory knowledge of this case or have ever Googled it, it's going to make you believe that this was some big conspiracy. Hopefully this clears some things up and does something to, you know, sweep away some of that misinformation.

Hopefully you enjoyed it. If you would like a little break from this, from the world of true crime, possibly. We don't know what we're going to talk about. I've got a date, so we'll talk about that and Under the Duvet, as I promised. I have enjoyed the tweets. So yes, you've got that to look forward to on Under the Duvet if you're a $5 and up patron.

And if you're a patron from October, you've also got your name possibly being read out now to look forward to. So thank you very much to Hannah Antonsen. Happy birthday, Fel. Liz and Carl. Garonne Ellen Gisler-Stotter. Sorry. Sarah Humphries.

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Vicky Robin, Tracy Helps, Steph Springett, Megan F, Kendra and Gracie Tanner. Jesus Christ, how are we still on October? We've got many months to go and we'll see you for them soon next time whenever you care to join us once more absolutely goodbye bye They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season

of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now,

exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

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