RedHanded - Episode 21 - What Killed Zigmund Adamski?

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

One day Zigmund Adamski mysteriously disappeared, and if his family thought that this was strange - nothing would prepare them for what was to come. Because five days later Zigmund was found dead at the top of 12ft coal pile in a locked up coal-yard, and still that was just the beginning of the bizarre events that played out in the summer of 1980 in Yorkshire, England… Who, or what killed, Zigmund Adamski?   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.

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. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And this is Red Handed. And today's episode is dedicated to our brand new patrons. Woohoo! That woohoo is well earned because this week, Friday, we launched red-handed Patreon. And we have patrons and you're listening. You're them. This is crazy. And then Hannah and I went out to celebrate on Friday night. It was basically all everyone had to listen to us talk about. We harangued our friend who is now going to be designing the t-shirts for our lovely folding club member Patreons,

which is very exciting. He has been explicitly told no red boo pants because that's where his mind went first all he was talking about was how we were going to have red boo pan t-shirts he's a legitimate clothes designer for a living tom butler no red boo pants you've been briefed it's not what the people want we'd like to say thank you to some of our patrons did you want to kick us off patron number one you were straight in there like a shot as soon as it launched double a i did tell hannah i had a little joke about this double a after last week's episode are you making a boob joke is that how low we've stooped no red boob hand t-shirts and no boob jokes i'm sorry you can have your boob no boob jokes i thought you were going to make a battery joke i thought you're going to

make a double a battery joke and i was like where what would be the battery i don't know something awful never mind moving on then we've got linda linda mcgurk who actually put a really lovely post on the facebook group as well. So thank you very much, Linda. We really appreciate that. Absolutely. I remember Linda's post. It was, come on, guys.

For the price of a cup of coffee a month, give them some money. Yeah. So thank you, Linda. The way you're gesturing, you were like, come on, tell me about it. I know. I don't know why I was doing that accent. I don't even know. I don't know exactly where Linda's from, but that's what we're going to go for.

And then next we have Marina Hogan. Marina, thank you so much. And Rebecca Manners, who also... How polite. How polite of you to give us. She is polite. I'm sure she's heard that joke her entire life and we've probably just made it worse. I know, it's terrible.

And then we have our very first Mahogany folding club member who joined which is vanessa matt so vanessa also check your messages i sent you a little private message on the patreon as a thank you and asking for your t-shirt size so let me know please but it will not have boo pants sorry it won't have boo pants so there are loads more patrons and we will read out your names in upcoming episodes so stay tuned yes stay tuned and a majority of you will be listening to this episode an entire day early uh so hello from the future but with that we're gonna stop that there thank you very much guys and next week we'll also go back to adding in the reviews that you guys leave and also back to everyone's favourite feature which is social

media of the week. Back next week. So today we have a real puzzler for you because we wanted to give those brains a workout after we got your stomachs churning so much over the Halloween festive period and this case, as Hannah will testify, really annoys me because I don't have any answer so perhaps we're hoping we can crack it as we go so let's get straight into it I've genuinely been like banging my head against a wall with this one I have no answers yet maybe we will crack it you're right I'm being pessimistic or you guys will crack it in the Facebook group later let's get straight into it so our story today starts in the town of Tingley. Tingley? Is that how we're saying it? I really hope that's how we're saying it.

Should we just carry on saying it? Yeah. In the town of Tingley, West Yorkshire, Northern England. In this town, there lived a couple, Sigmund and Lottie Adamski. The pair were originally from Poland and moved to the UK in 1960. They moved here to start a new life, and Sigmund quickly found work as a collier, or coal miner. But their lives weren't easy, and in the 1980s coal mining was suffering a decline due to mechanisation and privatisation, and Lottie was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. This sadly pretty much left her completely housebound. But still, everyone who knew them described them as a happy and hard-working couple who had assimilated well into their small town and into rural life. So this perhaps makes what happened next all the more shocking.

On the 6th of June, 1980, 56-year-old Zygmunt left his home on foot to go pick potatoes, which seems like a completely normal thing to be doing of an evening. The couple had their goddaughter's wedding the next day on the 7th, so they were entertaining guests that night, and what's a celebration without potatoes? And as a person of Irish descent, I can tell you there is zero parties without potatoes. So the weather was good and Zygmunt was off, and on the way he even stopped to have a chat with a neighbour on the mile-long walk to the potatoes. So the weather was good and Sigmund was off and on the way he even stopped to have a chat with a neighbour on the mile-long walk to the potatoes. But Sigmund would never be seen alive again. And that was that. For almost a week he was missing and five days later on the

11th of June in a locked up coal yard in the town of Tumorden, which was 20 miles from where he was last seen, atop a 12-foot coal pile, his body was found. Can I just interrupt quickly? So Tumorden, Todd Morden, if you look at it, it's spelled written down. We don't know how to pronounce it. I don't know, we're British, but still. We're going to go with Todd Morden. That sounds very English. But written down, it's Todd Morden, and my German friend told me that that translates to dead murder. Fuck off. Todd

means dead, and Morden means murder. Oh my god. I mean, she said it made no sense, but it literally translates the German. So it's like double dead, basically. Basically. Fact it. Thanks, Gloria. Trevor Parker, the son of the man

who owned the coal yard, arrived at 3.45pm, ready for the afternoon shift, where he saw Zygmunt's body lying there, on top of the pile of coal. Shocked, but probably thinking or hoping it was just a drunk, he called the police and PC Adam Godfrey arrived at the scene

at 10 past 4 in the afternoon. Parker told Godfrey that he had been at the yard that morning until 11am and Zygmunt's body had not been there. He said that after his morning shift had ended, he had locked the gates and left, saying that no one, to his knowledge, had been there in those five hours in between 11am and 3.45 when he came back. Now we'll come back to this. So just put a pin in it. Before we come back to it, we first need to check in on the state of Zygmunt's body. It was quickly found that Zygmunt had died of a massive

cardiac arrest, but due to the odd circumstances surrounding his death, plus several odd findings with the body, the police suspected foul play. Now firstly, there were second degree burns on his back, neck and shoulders. And covering these burn marks was a strange gel-like substance, like someone had tried to treat these injuries while he was still alive. But he'd been missing a week. Where had he been that he'd sustained such severe burns and had someone tried to heal them? And why? Also, there are no pictures of these burns, but many of the reports say they were circular.

But obviously with no pictures, we can't totally... The definition of a second-degree burn, according to my mum, who is a nurse, that's if it blisters on contact, that's second-degree. If they're circular, are they just fag burns? No, I think they were quite bigger than that. Considering how they were explained, it was like circular, because some places described him as like rectangular. So it's not like fag burns, they're like blocks of burns on his back, neck and shoulders. I think if they had also been cigarette burns,

wouldn't they just have described them like that? So there are no pictures of these. So like you said, we can't be totally sure exactly what they look like. But there were burns. There were these quite severe burns on his back. And next, the thing that was really weird was the way in which he was found and the overall appearance of the body just doesn't seem consistent with death by natural

causes. For example, take how his body was dressed. It was clear, probably, that someone else had dressed him. His coat was buttoned up the wrong way, his shoes weren't tied properly, and his belt and trousers weren't even fastened properly. And his shirt was missing. He was just in his vest and coat. So why was he ever naked and why had someone redressed him? When you research into this case, there's a lot of hype around the fact that he must have been dressed by someone unfamiliar with dressing. So what do we mean when we say unfamiliar with dressing? That's such a weird turn of phrase. What do we mean by that? Well,

we'll come back to it. What kind of a thing or a person might be unfamiliar with dressing? But really, it is quite hard to redress someone, especially if you're in a hurry and the person is dead and you've potentially just killed them. I've been dressing myself for, let's say, what, 21 years. When do you stop dressing yourself when you're like six? Yeah. I have gone to work wearing odd shoes before. It happens. Shut up. What? It was bad. How? I was like I'd just broken up with like a very serious boyfriend and I was a mess and I went to school. I went when I was a teacher I went to school with odd shoes on and I didn't realize until I got off the bus and walked through the school gates,

talked to the principal, and then got into my classroom and realised that I was wearing odd shoes. And they were like bad odd shoes. Like one was like silver and sparkly and one was blue and beaded. Yeah, it was bad. Were you on drugs? No. Imagine if you'd have died that day. Someone would have said that someone had redressed you.

Who was unfamiliar with the art of dressing exactly oh my god how weird so my point is these things happen got your point especially when you've just been dumped another strange point is how spotlessly clean his body apparently was he'd been missing for a week but he was freshly clean his face had also barely any stubble so it's about a day's worth of growth but how is that possible given that he'd been missing a week and that the autopsy revealed that he had in fact died between 11 a.m and 1 p.m on the day he was found so let's remember his he's discovered at 3 45 so that's what an hour and 45 minutes yeah so at least he's on top of this coal heap for an hour and 45 minutes.

Further weirdness, there's no coal dust on his clothes or his skin. So it would appear he couldn't have climbed up to the top of the coal heap on his own. But what was interesting was that apparently the coal was like compacted, processed coal. Like what we'd buy for like a barbecue. So it's not like the raw stuff straight out of the pit. Like I know what I'm talking about about coal. But not straight from the pit. More like barbecue ready.

I don't know. If you touch that barbecue coal, it doesn't really get on your hands. It does a bit, but not like loads. And the reports from the police at the scene of the crime said that there were no footprints or disturbance of the coal pile at all so who got him up there but the ambulance had arrived first and because they're first responders they would have rushed to help sigmunds how could anyone tell whether there was a disturbance or not because obviously they're going to be walking on the coal so i don't really buy that they can be like oh and

it was this perfect pyramid of coal like no it wasn't because the first responders would have gone straight up there and also that's kind of like saying oh the pile of rubble was completely undisturbed like how can you possibly know that it's a pile of coal I know so I think we're pretty much both in agreement that the argument that no one could possibly have put him up there because the coal was undisturbed is pretty rubbish because like you said how could they even tell and even if they could tell it was already disturbed by the paramedics so that's one thing that we can rule out is that we can't say that nobody put him up there. Another quite chilling fact is that Godfrey, the police officer at the scene of the crime as well as the coroner both said that Sigmund's face had been contorted with fear.

They said it was almost like he had known great pain or fear before he had died. But he died of a heart attack. That must be terrifying and painful. Yeah, definitely. That doesn't necessarily mean that someone murdered you. No, exactly. Yeah, like, he was having a fucking heart attack. I assume that's painful

and terrifying. So I don't buy that. Whatever. As in I don't buy that that necessarily proves anything other than that he's dead. But what else did the autopsy reveal? Because this is really important. And there's even more weirdness. So Sigmund had eaten well the entire time that he was missing. So this man was missing for five days and showed no sign of malnutrition or any prolonged dehydration during the time he was gone. But at death, his stomach was empty. So except on the day that he died and was found,

he had been eating well. This on top of looking clean and well-shaped, all of that, where was he all week? And there's even more. It was found that the burn marks on his back, neck and shoulders were inflicted two days before his death. I just don't get that. It's so weird. So he's gone missing and he was well-fed and kept and cleaned and shaved

and eating and all of that business. And then three days after he disappears he's severely burned but still while he's alive and then it looks like someone's tried to heal them by applying gel onto these wounds but oddly during the autopsy the gel was examined by the home office lab and it couldn't be identified as a cream or gel in common use so could it have been some sort of homemade concoction because there's no also no record of his visiting a local hospital for treatment it it seemed that seems like weird information for the home office to release if it's this like unknown substance i don't know unknown and there's a lot made of this on the internet that it's like, oh my God, it was this mystery gel-like substance

and nobody could identify it. And we just had no clue what it was about. And, you know, I want to say that in the 80s, maybe they just didn't have the equipment or the techniques necessary to figure this out. And that was going to be the kind of easy argument. And you see that argument out there a lot while researching this case. So people either will say, oh my God, it's this mystical gel. Or people will say, no, it wasn't, and we just couldn't identify it. But I looked into this, and the mass spectrometer, which is the equipment that you would use to

identify something like this, was invented in the 20s, as if the Home Office didn't have one by the 80s. It seems very odd to me. So saying that we think that the Home Office would indeed have had a mass spectrometer by the 80s and therefore would have had the equipment necessary to tell what that gel was, why couldn't they identify it? Maybe it was foreign. Maybe it was a homemade concoction. Maybe they just didn't try very hard. I think they probably could have identified, and I couldn't find this information so I can't say it, but I think even with mass spectrometry they would have been able to identify

the kind of individual components of what made up this gel. But I think what they couldn't do was put together the formulation and say, hey this was Vaseline or hey this was Pseudocramp. They couldn't match it to a formulation that was out there on the market. I think that's the problem. But we've gone off track. So three days after going missing, he suffers these burns. Then two days later, he dies and he's found in the coal yard. But it's not obvious to me at all how he got up on top of that pile of coal. The investigation felt like the lack of disturbance

makes it hard to see how anyone else could have dumped him up there. But I don't buy the whole no one walked up the coal. The other explanation, in inverted commas, was that there was a train track running by the coal pit. Was he thrown from a train? But I feel like probably not because then he's going to have some sort of impact wounds on his body. He's going to have bruises, possibly broken bones. He's not going to be completely pristine. So that's pretty much the story. Let's have a crack at some theories because I don't know about you listeners at home but I am feeling pretty, pretty confused. There is still no explanation for his disappearance and we've certainly found that everything feels like it just doesn't quite fit. So this is by all accounts, he had no

enemies. He was of sound mind, pretty happy guy. His demeanor when leaving home that day on his potato hunt, he was like chatting to his neighbor. In pretty high spirits, he's going to a wedding the next day. So we're gonna go straight in there and make it weird the prevailing theory on the interwebs about this case is aliens you heard me right to morden the town in which sigmund is found atop this coal heap and the surrounding areas are apparently notorious for alien abductions and it gets weirder with the involvement of PC Alan Godfrey, who would himself go on to become an alien abductee. You couldn't write this shit. So when you look at this case, Godfrey's story and the disappearance and death of Sigmund Adamski become inextricably linked. So what the hell was going on with Godfrey? In November 1980, so six months after Sigmund's body was found,

Godfrey was on duty in the early hours of the morning and he had been dispatched to check out the weird story of a herd of cows appearing and disappearing over an estate nearby. Is this just what happens to people who live in rural areas? They just act mental. Like, what the fuck? So anyway, a call comes in about these cows. He goes out to check it out. And on his drive there, Godfrey sees on the road in front of him what he thinks to be an overturned bus. Firstly, he thinks that there's been an accident because there's buses that ferry the miners around from shifts, so he rushes over. But when he gets near, he sees that it wasn't a bus at all, but in fact it was an object hovering five foot off the ground. Of course, of course it

was. Of course. So he runs back to his car and he tries calling for help, but to his surprise, neither his personal radio nor his dash radio were working not knowing what to do he starts to sketch the object i'd have got the fuck out of there i wouldn't start to sketch it i okay thoughts so last night so i've just moved into a new house i woke up at about half past one in the morning and there's a big bay window and i swear to god i thought i saw a shadow of a person. No, Hannah, don't! Like, looking in. No. And then I thought I saw this torch, like,

so this person, this shadow person at the window, like, flicking a torch up to my ceiling. I did what I never thought I would do. I got out of bed and I went outside to look. You went outside? Yeah, I went outside. You went outside? Are you in a Scooby-Doo outside to look. You went outside? Yeah, I went outside. You went outside? Are you in a Scooby-Doo cartoon?

What? You went outside? Yeah. It was a hedge. Oh my god. That is the... When you watch a horror film, that is rule number one. Do not go outside.

Yeah, but I did. I did do that. You've got some nerve right there. Is it because I would be the first person to die in a horror film though? I wouldn't have gone outside. That's horrifying. I would have pulled the duvet over my head and just pretended it wasn't there and pretended

to be asleep. I wonder what that says about our life coping mechanisms. I wouldn't have gone out there. Fucking hell. No way. I never thought I would have gone but I was like I can't have that looking at me and not know what it was. I hell, no way. I never thought I would have gone, but I was like, I can't have that looking at me and not know what it was. I'm not having it. I'm not having it. Don't worry about it, it was a hedge.

I mean, what if it just left by the time you walked out there? I mean, we'll find out tonight, won't we? Oh, no. Jesus. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

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that he's conducting in the middle of the road. His extraterrestrial life drawing. Exactly. So he's sketching away and then he apparently looks down to continue his sketch looks back up and the strange craft has vanished godfrey's story gets even weirder he said with the craft now gone he looked around and he saw that he was actually no longer even stood in the same spot where he had stopped he was apparently now a full quarter of a mile further down the road. And stranger still, he said when he looked at his watch, despite that it had felt to him like it had just been a few minutes since he'd stopped, he had lost over half an hour.

How bollocks. No, he hadn't. Was he drunk? I mean, yeah, because that's happened to me before. I've lost hours. Oh, yeah. I mean, just before we started recording talking about Friday, I lost hours. What the hell was I talking about? You were comedy gold, though. It was so good. Oh, God.

Oh, God. It's all right. It was only with friends, so it's okay. Also, I don't want to cast aspersions on this man. Maybe something did happen to him. We don't know. But this is pretty weird. Apparently, the soles of his police boots had split at the toe like he had been

dragged along the ground after this incident i assume not knowing what to make of it he found some colleagues to help look for the cows i like how he just goes straight back to work he's like oh got my sketch deal with this later all in a day's work alien abduction put that here losing half an hour chuck that on the later base find them fucking cows though let's go find the cows and they were found the mystery cows in a field that was only accessible through a locked gate and despite the rain soaked ground no hoof prints surrounded them cows are sneaky surely if it's raining that it's just gonna if it's like properly raining it's gonna erase any hoof prints. I don't know Hannah are you a farmer? Surely. Or a rural

police officer? I am a cow expert. I have a PhD in bovine studies. Oh and that and in that PhD you specifically cover how the hoof prints of a cow reacts with rain, sod and dirt. That's an interesting syllabus. Yeah, I actually did my thesis on it. It was called Cloven Hooves, a mystery? The best PhD titles have question marks in them. Moving on. Is this more lying for your CV?

Because if that's what got you that job in that bovine shoe factory then you've just fucking out yourself mate anyway anyway godfrey reported what had happened to him the night before okay would you would you report this would you report this would would i report that i lost half an hour and then my shoes broke and i thought it was i was half a mile down the road no i wouldn't yeah i'd probably just leave it i just write it up to experience exactly i do that to a lot of things i'm like well that'll teach you short out to experience moving on so yeah he did he did tell his police friends and found that another driver on the same road only three miles further along had seen a strange white light in the sky and reported this to the police as well

now two weeks passed and somehow godfrey's report was leaked to the press he was no crackpot he was in fact an outstanding officer he had previously even received two commendations for his police work but not being able to take the looks and whispers he quit the police force and some years later he was hypnotized and recounted the same case in the same way when questioned about the death of Adamski Godfrey said it was one of the weirdest cases he had ever heard of. And whilst despite his own encounter, he couldn't be sure that aliens were involved. But he couldn't rule it out either. Okay, there's also another extended version of the weirdness in which he recounts when he's hypnotized so godfrey in a

previous accident uh during a tussle as a police officer he had had one of his testicles quite severely injured yes which had stopped i like that you lent in once i said that you were like fiddling about and then as soon as i said he got one of his testicles punched in, you were like, oh, tell me more. That's my go word. There was, like, even a little hand to the chin and a lean in. But, um... So tell me more. So this happens.

And then, really sadly, for him, and for his wife, he stops being able to, um, perform sexually. That's a bit of a bummer, you know? But after that night night with the aliens, he suddenly Stop it. ready to go. And when all this comes out later, under the hypnosis, blah blah blah, his wife and him swear that, well his wife says that's what he thinks made him be able to perform again, and he says that that's what made him be able to perform again.

So the aliens fixed his dick. Yeah. Like he was abducted so they could fix his dick. Is that what aliens are now doing? Just roaming around the English countryside, abducting rural townsfolk to solve them of their impotence? I don't know. Why?

I really hope so. Why would they do that? It was just an interesting fact that I didn't have time to type up when we were researching this, but I thought it was quite interesting. I just thought this is all so fucking nuts. But we started now, why not just go full nuts? We will come back to real theories about this, by the way, guys. So now, this is where the real theories kind of begin. the way, guys. So now, this is where the real theories kind of begin. And perhaps in an unusual place, because 25 years later, the British UFO Research Association, that's right, BEFORA, the investigators from this organisation looked into the case. And to be honest, they did it with a lot of credibility,

they wanted to debunk it, they didn't want this kind of crackpot nonsense hanging around their credible work. But of course, they weren't allowed access to any of the actual case information, it's still an open case after all. I always find with this case I feel like it happened way longer ago than it did. This was the 1980s, this wasn't that long ago. What they were able to do though was interview Adamski's family. Sigmund was supposed to attend his goddaughter's wedding the day after he disappeared, he was even supposed to walk her down the aisle. Now, the general feeling at the time was that why would he disappear with such an important event the next day? He had been looking forward to it, right? Well, the Bufora investigators now found, when they were interviewing Adamski's family, that this had not

in fact been the case. That he wasn't in fact looking forward to his goddaughter's wedding, because there'd been a family feud, and a female relative had even moved into the Adamski's house. This relative had taken out a restraining order against her husband and moved out. Had this woman's estranged husband abducted Sigmund? Did he have something to do with Sigmund's disappearance and his death? Had he potentially abducted him, kept him locked up, poured acid on him, burnt him, tortured him, and this leads to Sigmund having a heart attack, so the kidnapper just dumps him? I mean, after Sigmund disappeared, Lottie's first thought was that he had been kidnapped, but then also saying that, yes, of course you would want to think that something really terrible

had happened to your husband, and he hadn't just like run away our question still wonders why was the estranged husband jealous did he perhaps think that sigmund and his wife were having an affair but then if he had abducted him why was sigmund so well fed you don't kidnap someone torture them but then feed them shave them and wash them and also a really weird thing in this is that there were no ligature marks found on Sigmund's body. And still the question remains, why dump him in the coal pile in broad daylight and just increase your risk of being caught? But there are still like so many issues.

Adamski was just a bystander in this feud. He's not a protagonist. What could have taking him and torturing him accomplished enough? He's got new ligatures. He's not being held against his will. He's not being bound. He's not fighting him, accomplishing this. He's got new ligatures. He's not being held against his will. He's not being bound. He's not fighting anyone, it would seem.

And then why has he been undressed? Why bother trying to help to heal the burns? And why dump his body somewhere so odd in daylight? Why not just in a field in the woods? And why not do it at night time? Yeah, I don't feel like that theory. I think, though, people do die falling down coal piles. It's a thing.

Why was he in there, though? Well, I think if it's obviously a mining area, if you're in a panic and you've got... So let's say he's had a heart attack and whoever had him wasn't expecting him to have one, so they need to get rid of him. And they're in their, like, panic state. Their first thought is,

oh, my God, let's just put him on top of a coal pile and then it'll look like he fell down but why would it look like he fell down when he was at the top of the coal pile in a locked coal yard maybe they thought he was going to slide down it and he just didn't maybe maybe we're looking at this wrong and thinking that somebody put him up there what if adamski was fleeing from someone and he was running and he finds an empty abandoned locked up coal yard? He's a coal miner, maybe he knows. I know it's not the one he worked at but he finds a way in. He gets into the coal yard. If I was being pursued, hey maybe I would try find the highest spot you could get to. Maybe he tries to climb the coal pile and he tries to hide at the top but in that panic, in that scrambling to climb this 12 foot coal pile, he gets to the top and

has a heart attack and dies up there. And whoever was pursuing him doesn't find him. And then Trevor comes and opens up at 3.45 and then finds the body. Yeah, but if he is, if he falls, if he falls at all, he would have had a bruise and he didn't but he might not have fallen if he climbed up there to hide say he's like running from somebody sneaks in climbs up the coal pile is hiding up there has a heart attack and dies from the overexertion but then the question is who is he running from and where had he been for five days? People who believe the alien theory think aliens took Sigmund and held him in suspended animation, which is why he looked well-fed and clean and lacking a beard.

And when they woke him up, he was so shocked that he had a heart attack and died. I mean, that would be the natural reaction. To have a heart attack and die. Yeah, probably. But then why were his wallet and watch and shirt missing what would aliens want with a wallet and a watch and a shirt of a of a yorkshireman that doesn't make any sense and why leave any mystery at all surely just take it with you is it guilt is it remorse it just doesn't really make any sense i don't know the more i

think about it i quite like my theory of he was up there hiding, but I still don't have an answer as to why he was hiding from somebody and where he had been for four days before that. There are a couple more theories which we'll go through, but still I don't feel like any of them really satisfactorily answer all of the problems with this case. The other theory was that maybe while he was out picking potatoes he had a stroke and then some nice people saw him have a stroke he couldn't speak they didn't know who he was so they took him in and then he died of a heart attack and then they dumped his body and the reason he was well fed and well groomed was because they were looking after him all that time but this case why wouldn't

you just take him to the hospital why would you just take in a random person you found in a potato field who'd had a stroke? And also, strokes? They would have known in the autopsy, I think, if he'd had a stroke. Almost 100%. So another one, and I did quite like this one for like a hot minute before inevitably it fell apart. Zygmunt was actually getting acupuncture for a back and neck problem. And this acupuncture method also used fire. So it involved putting cotton balls inside bamboo tubes and pressing them against the skin. And lighting this on fire. So could this explain the burns?

That's what cupping is, isn't it? I've seen it. They just look like hickeys. They don't look like burns. No, I think cupping is just like where it's like it draws the blood up there. So it's like, you know how some people do those stupid things to their lips? Where they put it over their lips and then it pulls all the blood in and then it's like pouty. That's, I think, what cupping is.

Where it just does that. So it draws the blood to that area. There definitely is fire involved with that, though. Oh, is there? I don't... I mean, I've never had that. It creates a vacuum with the fire and that's what sucks the skin out. Oh, is that i don't i mean i've never had it creates a vacuum and with the fire and that's what sucks the skin oh no i don't know this method that i read about was with

bamboo tubes and with cotton wool and like cotton balls and like actually setting them on fire against and then pushing them onto the skin either way he was still alive for five days so how long is this fucking acupuncture like is it like a is it a retreat an acupuncture retreat exactly he got the burns what two three days after he went missing so he can't have just gone for this rogue impromptu acupuncture session when he went on his potato hunt that doesn't make any sense and he died after five days so someone held him captive for four days and then he's free and then he's like you know what before i go back to my wife who's got MS, I'm just going to get some acupuncture first. It just makes no sense. Another, another theory that seems plausible at first, back, neck, acupuncture, fire, but what? It still makes no sense because of the timeline of when he got the burns, when he went missing and when he died.

Still don't get it. So the other theory that is one that people do like to talk about on the internet, I still don't quite get this, but let's talk about it. Was Sigmund leading a double life? Was he having an affair? Now there was loads of drama in the family due to the wedding and the relative being in the house and he's got this sick wife. Was he just like, fuck this, I'm gonna go have sex with my girlfriend and he has a heart attack, he dies, she dumps the body. Anyone could have an affair. He's a 56 year old Polish coal miner that lives in Yorkshire. Like is he having an affair? And by all accounts, he really loved his wife. And I know that doesn't mean that he might not have been having an affair, but like when she first got diagnosed with MS and she was getting worse, he tried to get his job to release him and retire him early

so he could stay home and look after her. And does that sound like the kind of man he's also? I mean, he might have. It might have been an escape. But that's not the point because I don't know his character. What I'm saying is, if you were going to have an affair with somebody, why would you go out pretending to go buy potatoes or pick potatoes and then disappear? That is going to draw so much fucking attention to your affair wouldn't you just be like i'm off for an international coal mining potato picking conference back in five days see ya go have your affair who would just fucking disappear and then expect that your sick wife and your goddaughter whose wedding you've just not turned up to wouldn't be looking for you that seems a weird time to go have an affair and even if he did what he just dies and

this person he's having an affair with drags his body to the top of a coal pile and leaves him there i still don't get it did he fall into a coal truck and get delivered but trevor was adamant there was no delivery that day certainly not while he was out and the body was totally clean so he can't have been like rolling around in a in a coal truck and he was well fed until that point so also how would he have ended up in a coal truck if he's totally clean see that theory doesn't make any sense either no and then there's another theory that's to do with the spontaneous fires that sometimes start within coal piles and the smoke is highly toxic i mean according to reddit this can sometimes happen and i guess

if you inhaled enough of this smoke if one of these spontaneous fires started within a coal pile but where was he still for five days and even if it was the smoke then he's not like trapped in a room he's out in the open i mean it would explain the burns and the heart attack maybe it wouldn't explain the like healing no exactly and the burn marks they happened days before his death so it doesn't make sense it would be like he was just lying around in a pile of coal for five days while someone fed him and washed him and shaved him like i don't get it i actually think that i think he was fleeing. I can't say from what, where he had been all that time, why someone had kept him or where he'd been hiding because he wasn't living rough and he wasn't in captivity quote unquote. Like no one had him tied up and starving him.

And the burn marks seem more of an accident because because of the gel applied to them. Oh I hadn't thought of it like that. It could an accident do you know what i am i'm leaning more towards i mean obviously the disposal of the body is bonkers and there's lots of things that don't really make sense but i am leaning towards a double life and something just went wrong and someone like did a bad job of getting rid of the body okay why dump him on top of a coal pile that seems like a lot of effort to go to but it was something i said to you before we started recording maybe it was because they thought we'll dump him on top of this coal pile there'll be another delivery he'll get covered up with another pile of coal but then like i said though that coal it's not like dumping someone into the concrete into the foundations of

the house and then it will be filled up with concrete or into a grave and then they'll put another body over it that's like coal ready to be sold you're eventually gonna find that body wouldn't it be better to just take him out to some woods and bury him in a shallow grave even even that doesn't make any sense to me now i think if there had been another coal delivery and his body was found in amongst the pile of coal then it would be much easier to believe that he he slipped and fell and was avalanched to death by coal. Like, I think that would be... Maybe, but he still was missing for five days. That still wouldn't have been explained. And also, he didn't work in this coal pit.

So what was he even doing there? Yeah, that's true. He worked in a coal pit 20 miles away. This is the one case where I feel like I genuinely have no answer that is satisfactory enough in my mind to make it feel like, yeah, that's good enough every

story every theory has a hole in it with this i know i completely agree it's incredibly frustrating i actually don't know but if you know let us know on the facebook group which has been really active recently which is really great we love hearing your theories so really get your teeth into this one because there's a lot you can do with it. And there's a great community over there. We were saying this is absolutely the most exciting part of doing a podcast like this is watching the community you guys are building around it. So thank you so much. Head over to the Facebook group.

Join in the conversation. I'm really excited to see what you guys think about this. And if you are listening to this early on Patreon, don't do too many spoilers before the Thursday when everyone else hears it. And if you would like to have early access to episodes, maybe get hold of some stickers and some t-shirts and whatnot from us, then maybe, if you can, head over to the Patreon page, take a look. For even a dollar you can get some fun stuff out of us. And we'll see you next time. Bye! Goodbye.

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 mum'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 Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness.

And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.