The Lets Read Podcast - 271: THEY CALLED HIM THE ANGEL OF DEATH | 13 True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 259

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about nightclubs, missing 411 cases & evil doctors and nurses HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music, Audio Mix & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca locations On March 16th of the year 1911, a young German couple in the southern state of Bavaria welcomed a son into the world. As they doted on him, the two new parents wondered what exciting adventures life had in store for their darling baby boy. Yet little did they know, the name they gave him would become synonymous with some of the most hideous acts of cruelty the world has ever known. They named him Josef, Josef Mengele, but he would go on to earn the nickname Todesengel, which in English means Angel of Death.

Little Josef displayed signs of advanced intelligence from an early age and showed talents for music, art, and winter sports. He graduated high school in April of 1930, then went on to study philosophy at the University of Munich. And it was here that Josef first took an interest in the politics of the extreme far right. The following year, he joined an organization known as the Steel Helmets, a right-wing paramilitary group comprised mostly of First World War veterans that had close ties to the Nazi Party. So close, in fact, that just a few years later, they were willingly absorbed into the Nazis' own paramilitary unit, the Storm Detachment, or SA, with young Josef following close behind.

Two years following his graduation from the University of Munich in 1935, Josef found work at Frankfurt's Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. By this point, Hitler and the Nazis wielded absolute control over the German state, and as the name suggests, the Institute for Racial Hygiene was merely a tool by which to implement their nightmarish plan for the German people. By the time he was hired by the Frankfurt Institute, Josef was a fanatical Nazi and was fully invested in their hideous racial pseudo-sciences. Yet it wasn't just race that fascinated Josef, it was genetics as a whole. And during his tutelage under German geneticist Othmer Freier von Verschuer, Yosef developed a near manic obsession with identical twins. In 1938, Yosef submitted his thesis, which focused on the genetic factors that result in lip, chin, or palate clefts. His work earned him a doctorate

in medicine from the University of Frankfurt in 1938, with his examiners praising his reliability and his ability to verbally present complex material in a cleaner manner. The young medical student and rabid Nazi was now Dr. Josef Mengele. A year before he earned the title, Mengele had officially joined the National Socialist Party. Then, not long after becoming a doctor, he applied to join Hitler's elite personal protection squadron, the SS. He became a medic in their military wing, the Waffen-SS, and served during the invasion of Poland as the equivalent of a second lieutenant. Once the territory had been conquered and the Polish state dissolved, Mengele was assigned to the SS Race and Settlement Office in Poznan, where he evaluated certain candidates' racial backgrounds prior to their potential adoption as a genetically Aryan citizen. A few years later, during the multinational fascist invasion of the Soviet Union,

Mengele was seriously wounded following a battle near the city of Rostov. He was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, the Wound Badge in Black and the Medal for the Care of the German People, but later declared medically unfit for further military service during the summer of 1942. Unable to fight, but still itching to serve the Third Reich, Dr. Mengele was transferred to the SS-Raisen settlement office in Berlin, where he continued his work with Otmar Freier von Verschuur, who by that point was head of the Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Mengele and von Verschuer enjoyed a fruitful working relationship. But after just a few months of researching together, the elder scientist made a suggestion to his younger colleague. Von Verschuer had gotten word of a top-secret Nazi science program which was involved in a cutting-edge research project somewhere in southern Poland.

Mengele was told that if he joined the project, he'd have access to the kind of laboratory conditions that those back in Berlin could only dream of, and would have the potential to become one of the most preeminent scholars in his field. Mengele needed no time to consider the proposition, and within days he boarded a train which took him on a 350-mile journey to the small Polish village of Brzynka. At this point, many of the train's passengers disembarked, but for Dr. Mengele, this wasn't his terminal destination. For him, and just a handful of other passengers, the train would roll on to one more stop, to a 15 square mile barbed wire compound that he and his comrades called Auschwitz. The site, which later became known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, was originally a Polish army barracks.

But following the German invasion, the SS, Hitler's elite political cadre, converted it into a prisoner of war camp. The camp's original inmates were Polish soldiers, but as time went on, more and more political prisoners were sent to the camp, along with German criminals brought into function as brutally sadistic prefects. The first executions by Gassing took place in August of 1941, which served as a successful dry run for the industrial-scale horrors that would follow. Construction of a larger sister camp began the following month, hence the name Auschwitz II, and then over the next two years, 1.3 million people were imprisoned there, while just over a million of them would be murdered for things as arbitrary as the circumstances of their birth,

or who they were attracted to. Millions were gassed, but an unfathomable number also lost their lives to starvation, disease, or summary executions. Others were killed during sickening medical experiments, many of which were led by none other than Dr. Josef Mengele himself. While Auschwitz was operational, it functioned as both a labor camp and a death camp. But this forced the camp's functionaries to divide them into two categories upon their arrival, those that could work and those that would be murdered. Of those declared unfit for work, around 75% of them were women, children, and the elderly.

The vast majority of these people would be gassed just hours following their arrival, but some were selected for what is arguably an even more sinister purpose. Medical experimentation. Upon his arrival at the camp in 1943, Dr. Mengele was appointed physician of the portion of the camp which housed Romani prisoners. One of his deputies was to evaluate the recovery process of any sick prisoners, and if Dr. Mengele decided that they weren't recovering fast enough, they'd be dumped into the gas chambers with the next shipment of the condemned. Dr. Mengele also took part in the process by which workers would be separated from the condemned. But unlike most other SS doctors who supposedly viewed selections

as one of their most stressful and unpleasant duties, Dr. Mengele relished the opportunity to play God, and could often be seen smiling or whistling before or after the process. Yet perhaps one of the reasons Dr. Mengele enjoyed selection so much was that it provided him with a vast selection of human guinea pigs. As we've already discussed, Mengele was particularly fascinated with identical twins and triplets, and it's commonly believed that it stemmed from his desire to swell Germany's population. Essentially, Mengele believed that if he could isolate the specific biological process whereby a fertilized egg splits into two separated embryos, he could engineer a massive boom in the number of so-called Aryan Germans.

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed mothers could undergo a treatment whereby their single Aryan baby would become two Aryan babies, exploding Germany's population growth by up to 200% over the course of a single generation. Dr. Mengele's theories so impressed the higher-ups that he received hundreds of thousands of Reich marks and funding, and he was even granted his own personal laboratory located in one of Auschwitz's crematorium compounds. Unlike the majority of the camp's victims, Mengele's test subjects were relatively well-fed and were housed in comparative luxury. This good-natured facade meant that, in a sickening twist of irony, Dr. Mengele was an alarmingly popular figure. He often gave out candy to the camp's children, who either, out of affection or trepidation, referred to him as Uncle Josef.

He was capable of being so kind to the children, said one of Mengele's former colleagues. He'd bring them sweets, he'd learn their names. It was like he really cared about them. Then the next minute, he was picking them out to be sent to the crematorium. Whenever he performed tests on twins, Dr. Mengele oversaw weekly physicals to ensure that they were at peak health before beginning the experiments. It's also important to note that Mengele rarely experimented on both twins at the same time, as one child could serve as the test subject while the other played the part of the control subject. These experiments included things like amputating healthy limbs to see if one twin felt the pain of the other, deliberately infecting them with diseases such as typhus to see how each twin reacted,

or transferring the blood of one twin into another in order to trigger an antibody response. Hundreds of children died during the procedures, and even those who survived were eventually executed and dissected for the benefit of comparative post-mortem reports. On one occasion, Mengele murdered seven pairs of identical twins within minutes of each other by injecting chloroform directly into their hearts. On another, he surgically removed the healthy kidney of a Polish prisoner of war. Then, during what should have been a period of recuperation, Mengele forced the prisoner to perform hard labor without painkillers in order to observe

the physiological effects of the man's unimaginable suffering. Other twins were surgically attached to one another in a sickening attempt to create sets of conjoined siblings. Mengele also injected chemicals into his victims' eyes in attempts to artificially change their eye color and sometimes force them to undergo unnecessary drug and x-ray treatments for the purpose of recording the results. As covered earlier, the human experimentation that occurred in Auschwitz was a highly classified Nazi military secret, resulting in the utmost security measures being enforced to ensure that it remained classified. For the prisoners, this meant that when their time as a human test subject came to an end,

they were almost immediately put to death. The monsters of the SS could not risk their enemies discovering the full extent of their crimes against humanity, and dead children tell no tales. When Dr. Mengele convinced his horrifying experiments, Nazi Germany was still confident that it would win the war. However, by January of 1945, the Nazis were looking at a very different outcome. France had been liberated, Italy had been knocked out of the war, and the Soviets were pouring through Eastern Europe using their vast manpower to outpace the Western Allies

in their bloodthirsty quest for revenge against the German invader. By the time the Red Army reached southern Poland, the SS began the evacuation of those working at Auschwitz while coordinating the liquidation of its innates. Tens of thousands of Russians, Poles, homosexuals, and Jewish people were gassed in shifts that continued completely unceasing for days at a time. Then one day, the SS simply vanished. By the time Soviet soldiers were gazing in horror at the industrial-scale death machine the Nazis had created, Dr. Mengele had already rid himself of all SS insignia and disguised

himself as an unremarkable army officer and escaped westward to Czechoslovakia. From there, he continued his journey west, then surrendered himself to the Americans under an assumed identity in June of 1945. Many members of the SS had their blood type tattooed on their inner bicep, and were thus easy to identify as belonging to the hated Schutzstaffel. For some reason, Dr. Mengele did not have this tattoo, and, owing to the general disorganization of the Allies' denazification process, was able to remain undetected. He was eventually released just a month later and obtained false identity papers under the name Fritz Holmann. Incredibly, Mengele then traveled back to Soviet-occupied Poland, sought out the paper trail which implicated him in the Nazis'

crimes against humanity, and almost completely destroyed them. He remained undetected until 1949, when his fear of discovery led him to flee to Argentina under the identity of a Bavarian farmhand named Helmut Gregor. In the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, Dr. Mengele found work as a carpenter while staying in a quaint suburban boarding house. Incredibly, he became so comfortable living in Argentina that he became a salesman representative for his family's farm equipment company, Carl Mengele and Sons. Files released by the Argentine government in 1992 indicate that Mengele may have practiced medicine without a license

while living in Buenos Aires, including performing abortions. Then, in 1956, Mengele managed to obtain a copy of his original birth certificate, then used it to apply for an Argentine passport in his original name. Once he was able to travel internationally, Mengele made an emotional pilgrimage to the nation of his birth and met with his widowed sister-in-law, Martha, before spending a week in his hometown of Gunzburg in Bavaria. He also had a tearful reunion with his only son, Rolf, albeit under the impression that Mengele was his paternal uncle and not, in fact, his father. After returning to South America in September of 1956, Mangala was so confident that he'd gotten away with his crimes that he dropped his forged identities and began living out in the open.

He was soon followed by his sister-in-law, as well as her son, and the trio began living together in Mangala's Buenos Aires home. Mangala and Martha married in 1958 and for a while, the future seemed bright. But after being charged with practicing medicine without a license, Mengele began to worry that his Nazi past was about to catch up with him. He relocated his new family to Paraguay and was granted citizenship shortly afterwards under the name Jose Mengele. He made trips to Argentina on several occasions to settle his business affairs and visit his family. Then slowly but surely, he began to feel comfortable again. But little did he know, the gears of justice had been in motion for a long, long time,

and his masquerading as an innocent man was drawing short. Back in the 1940s, during the now infamous Nuremberg trials, Mengele's name had been mentioned several times during the proceedings. However, since he'd completely slipped through their Nazi dragnet, those responsible for his apprehension had assumed that he was dead. This was also down to the fact that Mengele's relatives, back in his Bavarian hometown, had also reported that Josef had been killed in action during the frantic Soviet advance. However, while performing research in West Germany, two dedicated Nazi hunters made an intriguing discovery. If Dr. Josef Mengele was killed during the final days of World War II, why was his name on a set of Argentinian divorce papers dated

after the cessation of hostilities? Convinced he'd foiled the escape of a genuine Nazi war criminal, Longbine pressured the West German authorities to begin extradition proceedings within Argentina, and an arrest warrant was issued on June 5th of 1959. Longbine was as shocked as he was delighted when Argentina openly admitted to harboring Dr. Mengele, yet was disappointed to hear that he'd absconded to Paraguay. Frustrated with the lack of South American cooperation, Longbine informed the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, that he suspected Mengele to be living on a farm in Roa Paraguay, somewhere near the border with Argentina. The following summer, in May of 1960,

Mossad's chief hoped to bag Mengele in the same operation that saw Nazi official Adolf Eichmann brought to justice. Yet unlike Eichmann, Mengele proved much harder to track. He stayed one step ahead of his pursuers and contacted a secretive cell of Nazi sympathizers in Brazil who smuggled him into the country towards the end of the year. Whilst in Brazil, Mengele met a pair of Hungarian expats who paid him to manage their coffee and cattle farms in a place called Sierra Negra. The Hungarians were initially unaware of his identity and attempted to evict him once they learned of his past. But Mengele and his Nazi friends essentially blackmailed the couple and threatened to implicate them in the plot to hide

him in the event of his apprehension. Mossad called off the hunt for Mengele in 1962, and he lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle as an unrepentant Nazi until his death ten years later. Mengele had been swimming in the coastal waters of the Ber fraught with pain and suffering, spent his final hours in relative peace, enjoying the comfort and luxury of sun, sea, and sand. Years later, in February of 1985, the mystery behind Mengele's whereabouts gained a great deal of public interest when a mock trial for him was held in Jerusalem. The trial prompted the Western Allies to mount a huge coordinated search effort, one that aimed to bring Mengele back to Germany, either dead or alive. This led to a raid on the home of Hans Settlmeier, a lifelong friend of Dr. Mengele, whereby a coded address book was recovered. Investigators also found copies of letters written by Mengele, whereby a coded address book was recovered. Investigators also found copies of letters written by Mengele, many of which gave clues to his whereabouts in South America,

but it was through the address book that they were able to locate Mengele's grave. On June 6th of 1985, the 41st anniversary of the D-Day landings, representatives of the US, Israel, and West Germany convened at a small cemetery in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. There, they sought to exhume the corpse of a man they believed to be none other than the angel of death himself, Dr. Josef Rudolf Mengele. It took seven years, but in 1992, DNA testing proved beyond all doubt that the corpse belonged to Mengele. However, in what seemed to be one final display of defiance, Mengele's surviving relatives refused to allow his corpse to be expatriated from Brazil to his native Germany.

Instead, Mengele's skeleton is stored at the Sao Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine, where it's used as an educational aid during forensic medicine courses. In a way, it seems apt that a man who conducted human experimentation is now himself a tool for education. But unlike his victims, Josef Mengele escaped a painful and untimely execution. It's a comfort to think that so many of his fellow Nazis faced justice following the horrors of the Holocaust, even if it did take more than a decade in one or two cases. But the life and death of Dr. Josef Mengele are not only a reminder of man's ability to commit unfathomable acts of evil,

but also that some stories don't have a happy ending. During the summer of 2015, Vernal Kuntz and his girlfriend Jessica Mitchell were living head out on an impromptu camping trip to Timber Creek Campground in the Salmon Chalice National Forest. Vernal, Jessica, and little Dior packed up their things, loaded them into Robert's truck, and then were joined by one of the latter's fishing buddies, Isaac Reinwand, before they set off on the two-hour drive to the National Forest. Aside from a quick stop at a convenience store along the way, Dior and his family made the journey in good time and arrived at the campground on the evening of July 9th, 2015. The group set up their tents, lit a campfire, ate some dinner, and then got an early night. The following morning, the group was relaxing around the campground when Vernal's girlfriend approached his grandfather to ask a favor. Jessica explained to Robert that she and her boyfriend needed to talk in private, then asked if he'd watch Little Dior for the

duration. Robert agreed before Jessica walked off with Vernal to have their private conversation. Around a half hour later, the couple returned. But to their horror, two-year-old Dior was nowhere to be seen. Both Vernal and Jessica each contacted emergency services at approximately 2.30 p.m. They described Dior as wearing a camouflage jacket, blue pajama pants, and miniature cowboy boots. Jessica also reported that Dior's blanket, sippy cup, and toy monkey, three things that he never went anywhere without, had all been left behind at the campsite. Local sheriff's deputies quickly joined Vernal and his family up at Timber Creek, with a search party growing larger and larger as the day wore on.

They scoured the area surrounding the campground, covering as much ground as possible while simultaneously trying to calm Dior's frantically terrified parents. Yet their efforts were in vain. Despite scores of family members, sheriff's deputies, and forest rangers swarming all over Timber Creek until dawn the next day, not a single trace of little Dior could be found. To some, it was as if the boy had simply vanished into thin air.

An intense search and rescue effort continued for around two weeks before it was finally called off. Jessica Mitchell was despondent, and in the presence of one police officer, blamed Vernal's grandfather for Dior's disappearance. He'd been the one who'd supposed to have been watching the boy at the time of his disappearance, and if anything, they should be asking him where Dior went, not flying helicopters over a forest that a two-year-old couldn't have walked a quarter mile in. However, when confronted with this assertion by police, Robert claimed to have no idea what Jessica was talking about. She hadn't approached him before leaving the campsite.

She hadn't asked him to watch Dior. She'd simply walked off with Vernal to avoid a public argument, leaving the boy almost completely unattended. Isaac Reinwand, on the other hand, claimed to have been fishing in Timber Creek at the time of Dior vanishing, but mentioned that he'd spotted him wandering near a small stream around half an hour prior to his disappearance. As the investigation continued, all but one of the party gradually changed their stories. Dior's great-grandfather, Robert Walton, who'd said that he hadn't seen the boy prior to his disappearance, claimed that he too had spotted the boy wandering by the stream. Some then suggested that Dior

could have fallen in and been swept away or drowned in complete silence as he failed to keep his head above the water. Yet both Robert and his friend Isaac claimed that this was impossible. If the stream had been deep enough to present a danger to a two-year-old, there's no way they'd have allowed him to simply toddle along next to it. Jessica Mitchell also changed her story slightly, following the confrontation with Robert over his failure to watch Dior. She backed down almost completely, claiming the request hadn't been overt so much as implied. She also completely denied that she and Verno had been arguing that day,

and asserted their private conversation had been terse but amicable. Yet when local media outlets reached out to Lemhi County Sheriff Lynn Bowerman, he told a very different story, and it was the one that set the general public aflame with speculation. Mom and dad are being less than truthful, Sheriff Bowerman said. We've interviewed them multiple times and every time there are changes to parts of their story. The little things all change every time we speak with them. The revelation led some to posit a truly terrifying proposition, that Vernal Kuntz and Jessica Mitchell were involved in the disappearance of their own two-year-old son. Finally, in January of 2016, the Lemhi County Sheriff's Office named Vernal and Jessica

as their two prime suspects in the disappearance of little Dior. This followed a private investigation by renowned professional sleuth Philip Klein, who publicly announced that he too believed the boy's parents were somehow involved. Klein stated that not only were the parents' stories chillingly suspicious, but that Vernal had failed a total of five polygraph tests which questioned his sequence of events. Jessica underwent the exact same number of tests. She failed four of them. In my 26 years, I've never heard of a person failing that bad, Klein said, and personally, I think, someone knows where the body is. Although the charges against Vernal and Jessica were eventually dropped, subsequent developments did not paint them in a favorable light. Not long before the charges were

dropped, the couple were evicted from their home after failing to keep up with rental payments. When they moved out, Philip Klein asked the owner of the property for permission to search it, permission which was granted towards the end of 2016. Klein must have spent a great deal of time searching the home as he was spotted entering and exiting the property for months. Then, in early 2017, he released an online statement detailing the conclusion of his findings. Firstly, Klein shocked his followers by declaring that, during a search of the couple's former home, he had recovered a child-sized camouflage jacket.

One which matched the description of the jacket Dior had supposedly been wearing at the time of his disappearance. Then secondly, Klein compounded said uproar by asserting that Dior was dead, and that while his parents might not have been the ones to kill him, they most certainly knew who did. On the other hand, Lemhi County Sheriff Lynn Bowerman had been much slower to condemn Vernal or Jessica, despite having once announced them as prime suspects. He claimed they only did so after a careful process of deduction, and the intense questioning they underwent served only to rule them out to suspects. Bowerman also claimed that he put no stock in the discovery of the

camouflage jacket, saying that he wouldn't be surprised if a little boy like Dior owned three or four tiny camo jackets seeing as his paternal role models were such avid outdoorsmen. The sheriff was also quick to add that with a case like Dior's it would be foolhardy to rule out any plausible explanation while agreeing that Robert Walton and his friend Isaac could not be completely rolled out to suspects. I had personally placed the parents higher on my list of suspects, Sheriff Bowerman said, but even then, I'm not 100% sure.

Robert would pass away in 2019, having never learned the fate of his missing great-grandson. Isaac Reinwand took part in a series of media interviews in the years that followed, making repeated claims that he had nothing to do with Dior's disappearance. Vernal Kuntz and Jessica Mitchell separated in late 2016, not long after their eviction and Mitchell had since remarried. Both have denied any direct or intentional involvement in their son's disappearance and claim to share the belief that dior is still alive somewhere since his remains have never been recovered trina clegg dior's maternal grandmother echoed the sentiment telling a local news outlet that we will do everything we can until the day we all die to find him to To this day, Dior's disappearance remains an ever-perplexing mystery. No arrests

have ever been made, and no one has ever been charged related to the case. Yet the eye of suspicion remains firmly locked on Vernal and Jessica. But what if they were telling the truth? And what if the slight inconsistencies in their story are simply the manifestations of a feverish and all-consuming anxiety? After all, the only thing that would be more concerning than inconsistent accounts would be if every member of the party gave the same robotic recitation of the morning's events. Eyewitnesses can be frighteningly inconsistent, and parents are often the first to come under fire whenever an injury or mishap with their child goes unexplained. But such incidences of serious parent-on-child violence are extremely rare, and when they do occur,

most occur inside the family home. It makes perfect sense that Dior's parents would organize a spur-of-the-moment camping trip if they had sinister intentions, and it wouldn't be the first time someone has used a last-minute trip into the woods to cover for a serious violent crime. But if they truly did plan on murdering their own son, why invite his grandfather, who by all accounts would have given his own life before allowing him to come to harm? And why allow Robert's friend to attend, risking a further witness to an unforgivable crime? Like Sheriff Bowerman said, it's foolhardy to rule just about anything out, and it is indeed possible that the four adults came together in some hideous conspiracy to murder a two-year-old for no apparent gain. But to some, it's just as likely that something equally terrifying,

but far more unexplainable, is to blame. The world is full of unexplained phenomena. Even subjects of considerable academic studies such as the origins of life, the source of human consciousness, and the passage of time, remain shrouded in anti-Diluvian shadow. Perhaps one day, scientists will be able to properly explain the placebo effect, or the biological function of our nightly dreams. And perhaps one day, scientists will also be able to properly explain why some people just disappear. On July 25th of 1981, 14-year-old Stacy Aras of Saratoga, California,

accompanied her father and a party of seven others on a horse-riding trip in the Sunrise Meadows region of Yosemite National Park. After trotting for a few hours among the serene, snaking streams of violet-tinted lavender fields, the group decided to take a break at a site known as Sunrise High Sierra Camp. The camp is around three miles southeast of Tenaya Lake and includes sleeping and washing areas. So rather than plow on through the high heat until sunset obscured their path, the group decided to bed down at the campground and then set off again in the morning. After arriving at the cabins, Stacey took a shower and changed her clothes. Then, when she emerged from the washrooms, she spotted an older man named Gerald Stewart sitting on a rock around 30 meters away from the cabins.

Gerald's perch looked out over a beautiful alpine meadow, which in turn was backdropped by the snow-capped twin peaks of Mount Florence and Mount Clark. When Stacey spotted the vista, she grabbed her camera and told her father that she wanted to take some pictures of the scene. She invited him to accompany her, but he declined. At the time, Stacy was wearing an off-white windbreaker along with a white jersey blouse, some riding pants, and a pair of flip-flops. As she walked off, her father reminded her to change into hiking boots before they set off. Stacy acknowledged the reminder, then continued off towards the older man perched up upon the rock.

Once she finished taking pictures of the meadow, the older man informed Stacey of another beautiful view that he knew of, one down by a lake just a short distance away. Stacey was unfamiliar with the area, but the man offered to show her the way and, after getting to his feet, they began to walk down the lake. Their route down the hillside was in plain view of everyone at the cabins, and those that watched saw the pair slowly make their way downwards. But around halfway down, the older man stopped to take a short break, perching himself on a rock as he'd done just a few minutes previously. Stacy, on the other hand, was not feeling tired. She carried on down the trail, then disappeared from view behind a dense patch of trees.

Minutes later, the old man followed, but when he reached the lake, Stacy was nowhere to be seen. He tottered around for a minute or two, looking around in confusion. He even called out for his young, camera-toting companion, yet there was no reply to be heard. The man assumed that Stacey had somehow returned via an alternate route, and then made his way back to the cabins on the assumption that she'd be there.

But she wasn't. Stacey Aris was gone. The older man, whose name is believed to have been Gerald Stewart, quickly informed Stacey's father that he was concerned for his daughter's well-being. George Aris was unconcerned at first and believed that his daughter would return in due course, with a camera full of photos and a sheepish look on her face. Yet, it appears Gerald persisted, and professed his concern that Stacey was there one moment and gone the next.

It wasn't like Stacey had ran off. He was old, but he wasn't completely infirm. To him, it was more like she'd simply walked out of sight and disappeared completely. Once George Aris understood the gravity of the situation, he contacted the local park service to request their assistance in the safe recovery of his daughter. 14-year-old Stacy was no shrinking violet. She had a lot of experience with the great outdoors, but at the same time she was still highly vulnerable to the many dangers of the American wilderness.

After all, such a sudden disappearance had sinister implications. And with that in mind, the Park Service swiftly organized a massive search and rescue effort, one which involved just less than 150 full-time and volunteer personnel. The teams concentrated their efforts on an area of around three to five square miles, with their focal point being Sunrise Lakes. But only a single trace of her was ever recovered. Behind the dense patch of trees she walked behind before seemingly vanishing, search and rescue volunteers found the lens cap to Stacy's camera. There were no footprints, no drag marks, no signs of any struggle whatsoever.

And according to Park's superintendent, Robert Benaviz, it was as if the girl had simply vanished in the thin air. The implications of Stacey's disappearance became even more sinister when a spokesperson of Yosemite National Park met a reporter from the Fresno Bee. What concerns us is that Stacey didn't change into her hiking boots before she set out for the lake. She was still wearing her slides, said Linda Abbott. If she planned on walking far, she would have changed her footwear and, to us, this is the best indicator of foul play.

Linda's answer came as a response to the Fresno Bee reporter's suggestion that Stacey had planned and to us, this is the best indicator of foul play. Linda's answer came as a response to the Fresno Bee reporter's suggestion that Stacey had planned to run away, possibly owing to some kind of strife in either her personal life or at school. Yet this was something George Aris had always denied. He approved of his daughter's lifestyle, and just a few days prior to her disappearance, had invited Stacey's boyfriend into their home and even took a photograph of the young couple on the evening of their middle school prom. In George's opinion, there's no way Stacey would have had to sneak off in order to see her boyfriend.

And what's more, coordinating such a meeting without the use of modern cell phones would have been next to impossible. The decision to stay the night at the Sunrise High Sierra camp was an entirely spontaneous one, and the itinerary of the riding trip was made flexible owing to the wide age range of the participants. With no outside phone line, there's no way Stacey would have been able to coordinate any kind of secretive romantic meeting. And so, if Stacy didn't wander off to meet anyone, where did she go, and why? Many dismiss the idea that Stacy had simply gotten lost on her way to the lake, as the path between the sunrise-high Sierra camp and the nearby body of water is relatively clear and easy to follow. But what if the lake wasn't Stacy's intended destination? And what if taking photographs was

simply a cover for her doing something else? Many months following her disappearance, it emerged that Stacy had a very secret smoking habit and might even have been carrying cigarettes and a lighter on the day of the horse ride. Naturally, she couldn't just light up in front of her father or the other riders, so she was forced to wait until an opportune moment to sneak away for a smoke. At first, it seemed that Stacy and the elderly Gerald Stewart were willing walking companions, but the reality is that Stacy had been trying to shake him off. She might have even suggested that Gerald take a short breather while she went on ahead to take her pictures. Then once she was out of sight, she took a sharp turn off the trail and ran off into the woods to smoke her cigarette out of sight.

Yet once she was off the trail, the style of terrain would have changed dramatically. According to one experienced climber who is familiar with the area in question, the forests surrounding Sunrise Lake are, and I quote, heavily wooded, with a very short line of sight. If someone ran off the trail without thinking about what they were doing, the climber explained, then it would be incredibly easy to start heading the wrong way on the trail, and if she got to the wrong meadow, which Shaw looked very similar, she could have walked an entire mile before realizing that she's been going the wrong way. Someone craving nicotine, whilst being compelled by the fear of their father discovering their nasty new habit, could easily have ran off into the trees without paying attention to where they were going. Cigarette smoke travels, and the glow of lit tobacco can

be seen from even further away, so it stands to reason that Stacy would have ran deep into the woods to put enough distance between her and old Gerald Stewart in order to smoke her cigarette undetected. In that area of the world, mid-July sunsets occurred around 8.30pm, meaning that if Stacy did indeed manage to get herself lost, it's reasonable to assume that she would have remained so as light began to fade. In her flimsy slide footwear, progress would have been painfully slow and depending on her position, the onset of darkness would have increased the danger exponentially. If a person walked off trail in the darkness like that, they would be

incredibly easy to fall into a crevice and never be found again, the aforementioned climber added. I can't stress how dangerous it would be to get lost in this area at night without a flashlight. After 12 days of continual search and rescue efforts, local authorities scaled back their work until the operation ceased entirely. Stacey's parents were assured that neither the police nor the park service had given up hope of finding her, but that under the right circumstances, it would behoove them to assume the worst. After a nationally syndicated appeal for information, there were reported sightings of Stacey from as far as Colorado and

Nevada, but none proved fruitful to the investigation. The tough part is not knowing, said her mother, Carol Aris. You would have thought some trace of her would have shown up by now. And therein lies the reason why Stacy's disappearance has captured the imagination of so many people. There's always the chance that after walking deep into the woods, young Stacy came across a violent, predatory psychopath who clamped a hand over her mouth, dragged her into the forest, then did God knows what to her at some secret woodland hideout. Yosemite is a huge place, and perhaps Stacy's remains lie at the bottom of a derelict shaft at the old Sierra mining site, less than three miles away on Tioga Hill. But perhaps something else happened to her, something that conventional science isn't quite ready to explain. According to Occam's Razor, the philosophy by which the simplest explanation is always the

most probable, the poorly outfitted Stacy fell down a steep incline and suffered sudden but fatal blunt force trauma. But if that was the case, where are her remains? Again, there's always the chance that her corpse was discovered and consumed by hungry scavenger animals. But if that was the case, why did the search team's tracker dogs fail to lead them to any remains? One article from the Fresno Bee stated that one of the dogs that took part in this search was a two-year-old German Shepherd named Duke. One might assume that German Shepherds make perfect tracking dogs, and they do indeed possess a highly powerful sense of smell. But skip one paragraph down and the same Fresno Bee article

says this. Unlike bloodhounds, who chase the scent of a particular person, German Shepherds will pick up on any human scent and hone in on the person emitting it like a missile to a target. The dogs are efficient but not infallible. They need to be upwind and just a little lucky to find whoever they're looking for. Long story short, the dogs might have missed Stacy's body. But given the rugged nature of the terrain in question, she couldn't have gotten very far. The operational areas of some search and rescue missions have been upwards of 20 square miles, but an article from the Fresno Bee dated July 28th of 1981 states that the search for Stacy only occupied between three and five square miles. At the height of the search, the ground team was over a hundred strong.

There were several different teams of tracker dogs and two different helicopters logging a combined flight time of 40 hours over sunrise lakes. A team of specialist divers even trawled the three bodies of water in the hopes of uncovering human remains, but none of their attempts were successful. As one volunteer put it, it's like she disappeared into thin air. So when all the evidence points to such a bizarre ultimate explanation, is it really so unthinkable to entertain it? The Reverend Maurice Dometz was born in Blue Rapids, Kansas on June 24th of 1896. After graduating high school, Maurice briefly attended Hastings College up

in Nebraska, but dropped out just months before his final examinations in favor of studying at Omaha's Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He then attained a master's degree in theology from the University of Denver before continuing his academic study at the city's Rockmont College. From 1923 to 1943, Maurice earned a living as the associate editor of the Christian monthly magazine, Grace and Truth, and it was during this period that he met his wife-to-be, Myrtle. They were married on June 1st of 1930, settled in Longmont, Colorado, and soon welcomed a daughter named Martha Ann into the world. Throughout his life, Maurice continued work as the editor of various Christian magazines, to which he often contributed, as well as serving as the Longmont Chamber of Commerce, the Denver Bible College Board of Trustees, and the Rockmont College Alumni Association.

Maurice also had many passions in life, but perhaps the most eccentric of them all was his passion for what he referred to as his beloved rocks. It was an affectionate nickname, as in truth, Maurice possessed a fascination for rare minerals and gemstones. He was a keen member and avid contributor to the American Federation of Mineral Societies, while holding a senior position at the Flatirons Gem and Mineral Club. And throughout his life, he regularly engaged in one of his favorite hobbies, mineral hunting. Even in his advanced years, Maurice would enlist the help of a more mobile friend, then drive out into the woods to hunt for rare quartz or hematite.

And that's exactly what he was doing on April 29th of 1981, when he and a man named David McSherry traveled to the Topaz Point picnic area near Devil's Head, Colorado. Topaz Point, named for the high quantities of the eponymous mineral present in the surrounding rock formations, is located in Colorado's Pike National Forest. Stretching west of Colorado Springs, the forest encompasses over a million acres and is spread out over several of the surrounding counties. Splitting the forest in two is a 45-mile-long unpaved track named Rampart Range Road, which has magnificent views of Pikes Peak, the surrounding prairie, and the rugged Tariel Mountains. The forest is popular with campers and mountain bikers and boasts Colorado's only functioning fire lookout tower, which sits atop of Devil's Head.

On the day in question, Maurice was wearing a white baseball cap, a maroon plaid flannel shirt, and brown ankle-high work boots. Once they'd found a suitable parking spot, David helped the 84-year-old Maurice to reach their digging spot, a small sandy pit not far from the Rampart Range Road. He and David had spent a short while digging through the sandpit before Maurice suggested his much more mobile companion begin another trench around 50 to 60 yards away.

A few hours went by with each man burrowing away at their respective dig sites. Then, around 3 p.m., David walked over to Maurice's trench to let him know that it was time to drive home. He agreed. Then, when David returned from his dig site after collecting his tools, Maurice was gone. Since the Reverend's own tools were nowhere to be seen, David assumed that he'd simply pack them away, then walked uphill to meet him at their car. There were no signs of a struggle at Maurice's dig site, meaning David had no reason to be alarmed. But when he too trudged up the hill and his car

became visible at the crest, the Reverend Dometz was nowhere to be seen. David honked his horn a few times, hoping it would summon the elderly Reverend to their vehicle. Yet he remained out of sight and failed to respond to any of David's cries. David then walked in circles around the place that they were parked, hoping his elderly companion might be taking a pre-ride pee against a tree trunk, but became increasingly panicked when Maurice was nowhere to be found. It wasn't so much the man's absence which frightened David. Despite his age, Maurice was a fit and capable individual, and wasn't imperiled by simply being outdoors. What frightened him was that Maurice had seemed to suddenly, and quite inexplicably, disappear. And by 11pm that night, the Douglas County Sheriff's Department had its dedicated search and rescue team on the scene,

who conducted preliminary oversight searches before daylight could aid their primary effort. In total, just shy of a hundred people descended on the area surrounding Topaz Point to lend a hand in the search. Human chains made up of volunteers walked slowly through the trees, eyes glued to the earth while teams of dedicated tracker dogs ran roughshod through the hills, trying in vain to locate any kind of scent trail. Many involved expressed incredible frustration at their inability to locate any trace of their missing person. At the very minimum, the tracker dogs should have at least given them an idea of which direction Maurice went, yet they only ever seemed to alert at the trench that he'd been digging at. It was almost as if he and his digging equipment had simply vanished into thin air. Despite their failure to achieve any meaningful progress, the search continued for around two to three weeks before it was finally discontinued.

Maurice's wife, Myrtle Dometz, expressed tearful indignation at the decision and accused the Colorado governor of abandoning her husband. In an open letter, she publicly begged him for help and insisted the case was much more sinister than that of a regular missing person. Many believed Myrtle's claims were nothing but manifestations of her inconsolable grief, but others, volunteer searchers included, voiced their agreement. Many claimed that in their experience, Maurice's disappearance had to involve some kind of foul play. The fact that the tracker dogs were unable to pick up his scent suggested that Maurice had been transported out of the area by

vehicle and quite possibly against his will. Nothing else could explain why the tracker dogs couldn't find a trail. Nothing natural, anyway. Finally, in the year 1990, the Reverend Maurice Domitz was officially declared deceased in absentia by a Colorado Supreme Court judge after being missing for a total of nine years. Relatives petitioned the judge to have Maurice's death declared unlawful, which would have in turn forced police to reopen the investigation into his disappearance. But since there were no signs of any struggle at the Topaz Point dig sites, and since there had been no blood or cries or help suggesting some kind of attack of abduction, the judge refused the family's request and refused a verdict of unlawful death in favor of one by misadventure. Since then, a number of prevailing theories have emerged, each of which attempt to explain Maurice Domet's sudden and rather chilling disappearance. The first, and perhaps the most feasible, is that Maurice suffered severe complications due to the blood disorder he'd been suffering from for many years. Others say he could have quite possibly taken his own life, having considered it a less painful, less drawn-out alternative to dying in a hospice bed. It would have been just like Maurice, they say affectionately,

to want to spend his final day digging for those beloved rocks of his, rather than face a time when he'd be unable to do so. Yet to the contrary, Domitz was a lifelong man of God, who tried to weave the Bible's teachings into every one of his conscious acts. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that he'd opt to take his own life over a natural, God-given end to his life. On the more ridiculous end of the theory scale, some have suggested that David McSherry murdered his friend Maurice in order to secure a huge stash of topaz for himself. But the man has been questioned extensively and has never once been considered a legitimate

suspect. And so, what else might explain a man's sudden and rather chilling disappearance? Did David McSherry murder his elderly companion out of malice, or did he assist in the voluntary end of a sick man's life? Or perhaps, something far more sinister, but far less explainable, is to blame. The End Maureen Anu Kelly was born on September 26th of 1993 and was raised by a single mother named Mapuana in Spokane, Washington. Following her graduation from Lewis and Clark High School, she listed her occupation on Facebook as Guru at Spreading the Love, but told friends she aspired to become a singer-songwriter. Owing to her heritage as a Pacific Islander,

Maureen's instrument of choice was the ukulele, and she often posted videos of intimate bedroom performances on the video streaming site YouTube. Maureen's half-sister, Cherry Kapu, later described her as a very laid-back, carefree girl, and mentioned how in June of 2013, 19-year-old Maureen had called her to request a favor. She called me before she left, saying she was going camping with friends and asked if she could borrow some of my camping gear, Sherry said. She was excited about going and told me she loved me, and that was totally normal for her. She was a very affectionate person. The next day, Maureen stopped by Sherry's apartment to collect the camping gear.

When Sherry asked where she was headed, Maureen replied that she and her friends planned to visit the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The reply surprised Sherry. Maureen was very much an admirer of Mother Nature, but she was not an experienced camper. She had previously expressed a desire to spend a prolonged period living outdoors, but had never been suited to the realities of wilderness living. I asked her why now, Sherry later said, and Maureen told me that she wanted to go on a spiritual quest, and that really concerned me. As she departed, Sherry waved Maureen off after wishing her the very best of luck, but little did she know, it was the last time they'd ever see each other. Located around three hours' drive southeast of Seattle, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest

extends more than 70 miles along the western slopes of the Cascade Mountain Range, from Mount Rainier in the west to the Columbia River in the east. The forest consists of broad, old-growth woodland and high mountain meadows, along with several glaciers and numerous volcanic peaks. The forest also features the Canyon Creek Campground, a small, lightly used camp tucked in the forest adjacent to the eponymous body of water. Eight campsites are available for tent camping only and come complete with a small dining table and a fire ring for warmth and cooking. To get there, Maureen and her friends drove out to Chilachi near Highway 503 on June 9th of 2013. From there, they traveled east on Road 54, then turned down a series of

small back roads until they reached Canyon Creek. They found the campsite, along with the trail that led to it, completely unmaintained, but Marine's companions were experienced campers and set about making the area much more comfortable for themselves. The group set about clearing away all the fallen pine needles from the camp stove and table, then, after setting up their tents for the evening, they enjoyed a small campfire dinner. Yet following their meal, the group noticed that Maureen's behavior took a turn for the bizarre. Her fellow campers were well aware of her desire to embark on some kind of spiritual journey, but had no idea what that entailed. So when Maureen approached her tent and began to strip completely naked, her companions were nothing short of flabbergasted.

By the time she was ready to begin her spiritual journey, Maureen was barefoot and wearing nothing but a small fanny pack containing a knife, some matches, and a compass. Her friends advised her against heading out into the woods in such a state of undress, but the 19-year-old insisted. She reassured her companions that she wouldn't walk too far and would be back by midnight at the very least, as well as insisting that her state of undress was essential to the completion of the aforementioned journey. And so, with trepidation, Maureen's friends watched her disappear among the trees and never to be seen again. When midnight came and went and Maureen failed to reappear, her friends began to panic. They fanned out into the darkness of the woods, flashlights in hand and called out to their missing companion, but there was no reply to be heard. Unable to rest while Maureen

remained unaccounted for, her friends contacted the local sheriff's department to report her missing. Around an hour later, the first deputies arrived at the campground to begin their investigation. Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox later recalled this interaction with unease. Maureen's friends told us that she'd talked about doing this spiritual quest thing for quite some time, he said. Apparently, she felt it was something she needed to do. Cox said his deputies told the teenagers to be brutally honest with them, before asking if Maureen had been under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of her disappearance. Each vehemently denied any kind of drug or alcohol use, and according to Dave Cox,

their position seemed more than plausible. They could have quite easily tidied up the campsite prior to the deputies' appearance, but upon their arrival, the teenagers seemed alert and focused, with deputies observing no evidence of drug or alcohol consumption at the campsite. Within just a few short hours, Under Sheriff Cox was helping orchestrate one of the largest search and rescue efforts Skamania County had ever seen. But right away, the prognosis was grim. The area that Maureen had ventured into, almost completely nude, with nightfall rapidly approaching, is one of the steepest and most hazardous in the entire region. Sharon Ward, a representative of the Pacific Crest Search Dogs Association,

personally participated in the search and rescue effort. The area Maureen walked off into is amazingly steep. It's called Canyon Creek for a reason, Sharon said. How she got down there is a mystery, but then climbing up again in her bare feet, that had to be tough going. It's a remote area, lots of timber and brush, so her feet would have been cut up by the time she made it up to the other side. And she did make it up there, we're in no doubt of that. A total of 75 professional and volunteer rescue workers combed the woods around Canyon Creek for

five whole days. They did so in shifts, employing a multitude of search and rescue techniques over an area of four square miles. But by far the most effective asset at the disposal was the team of dedicated tracker dogs. After honing in on Marine's scent, the dogs traversed the entirety of Canyon Creek, then headed north into the woods towards a pathway known as Forest Road No. 54. Expert trackers followed close behind and quickly detected a series of human footprints in the soft dirt. Investigators were in no doubt that these belonged to Marine, but after following them north towards the service road, the footprints suddenly and inexplicably disappeared. Investigators then looked to the tracker dogs to continue marking

out the trail, but they simply wandered among the trees for a while before returning to follow the scent trail in reverse. For those present, they must have made for an extremely chilling moment. For all intent and purpose, they were standing in the place where Maureen Kelly has simply ceased to exist. It was a truly baffling turn of events, but the search teams followed standard operating procedure and spent the next four days using Maureen's last known location as the focal point for their operation. Rescue workers combed the area around road number 54, carefully searching for any new tracks or scent trails, but as the days went by,

the weather grew worse and worse. Thick cloud cover prevented helicopter teams from circling the area, while heavy rain impeded the ground team's ability to conduct a proper search. A person could literally walk right on top of somebody and never know it, one volunteer later said. Then if they were rolled over a log or something, forget about it, we'd have to dig up the whole forest to find them. By June 15th, just less than a week after she'd initially disappeared, Maureen's loved ones began to consider the possibility that the search teams were no longer looking for a live person. Despite the weather on the day of her disappearance being relatively mild,

nighttime temperatures would have quite possibly dipped into the 40s. Then, coupled with some light rain, Maureen could have found herself developing hypothermia at an alarming and unexpected rate. This theory became increasingly popular following the rescue effort's conclusion, which came at 6 p.m. on June 15th of 2013. Skamania County Sheriff personally promised Maureen's mother that the investigation would continue and that no matter how tragic her daughter's end, her remains would be brought home. Professionals and volunteers alike continued the search area surrounding Service Road 54, albeit on a much slower and ad hoc basis. But as the months went by, something very chilling became evident.

Given that the prevailing theory was that Maureen had fallen victim to the elements, it stood reason that it was only a matter of time before her body, or what remained of it, was recovered. Yet time after time, both professional and amateur search teams headed out into the woods and came back empty-handed. Some posited that Maureen's remains had been set upon by hungry scavengers and that they could now be spread out over a much wider area. But if that were the case, surely one of the many search and rescue teams would have reported such a discovery. Not even an animal bone was isolated and analyzed as possibly belonging to Maureen, which leads us to believe that her fate may well have been very different from those suggested by search and rescue experts.

Last June marked the 10-year anniversary of Maureen's mysterious disappearance, and as frustrating as it is, an entire decade has brought us no closer to understanding what truly happened to her. Yet perhaps the best insight into her ultimate fate can be found in a Facebook status that she posted on June 6th of 2013, just three days before she wandered off into the woods with not a stitch of clothing on her. Happiness, she wrote, is something that cannot be found. To be continued... memories of the place, but as a teenager it was very, very boring. Kilarin is a small village, and back when I was growing up there in the mid to late 80s, only about 1,500 people called it home. These days, the pubs had a lick of paint and there's a lovely cafe and restaurant opened up on the high street, but back then, there was basically nothing for younger people to do on

the weekend. Kilarin is great for an older couple nothing for younger people to do on the weekend. Kirlaren is great for an older couple looking for somewhere quiet to retire, but for a bunch of restless teenagers, it felt more like the arse end of nowhere. Me and my friends used to get the number 10 bus into Glasgow most Saturdays, but it was an hour's journey each way. So unlike the girls who lived on the outskirts of the city, who would wobble home in their stilettos or jump a taxi home for a fiver, we had to fork out 30 or 40 quid between us just to get home. And that's if we could even find a cab driver who could be bothered to drive that far out of Glasgow city centre

when they could be making a mint ferrying drunk people from club to club and all that. It was difficult, but not impossible, and we tried a fair few times when we were 16 and 17 to sneak into clubs without getting ID'd. But the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, as they say, and we resigned ourselves to waiting until we were all 18 before really having a crack at that legendary Glasgow nightlife. It was all a bit depressing, really.

We felt proper left out in the cold. But then one day, during the summer before our final year of sixth form, which is the same as a high school senior in America, we heard about this DIY nightclub even taking place in an old farmhouse not too far from home. In the past, all me and my mates had done was hang around a few crappy clubs in the center of Glasgow while being turned away from the better ones because we were 17 and had no IDs. So the idea of going to an unsanctioned rave, that would be way crazier, way cheaper, and wouldn't require us to have any proof of age. It was exactly what we didn't know we'd been waiting for.

Now don't get me wrong, we were a bit nervous at the idea when we first heard about it, but after learning that a few other people from our sixth form would be going, we warmed up more and more until we were dead set on attending. It helped that we heard that we had to buy tickets for three pounds, which made the thing seem much more official. But they were literally just printed off of a computer using old school Microsoft Word art and the organizers used the proceeds to rent their sound equipment. It was a completely guerrilla operation, which was a big appeal on one level. We just didn't consider the other implications of it being such an off-the-radar,

do-it-yourself kind of party. So, on the night in question, we had to lie to our parents and say that we were going to a party in Glasgow. Not a nightclub, just a friend's birthday thing or something. Then, when it was time, we ordered a taxi that our parents thought would be taking us to the train station.

But really, it was taking us to the farmhouse a few miles outside of town to where the rave's organizers had set up their sound system. It looked like an absolute pigsty. They'd barely cleaned the place out before setting up, and even though we walked in with our tickets in hand, no one gave us a toss if we had them or not. But most importantly, not only they just assumed that we were of age, but one of the guys was so chuffed to have some girls arrive that he gave us a half drunk two liter bottle of vodka when we mentioned not having any drinks with us. And that was the

other awful thing about living in Killern. You couldn't get on to the lady in the shop that you were 18 when she'd personally attended your 17th birthday party just a week before. So getting our hands on alcohol and cigarettes had always been our biggest challenge. But then, there we were, all dolled up, and these lads were literally giving it to us for free. It was like we'd died and gone to heaven. We started dancing in our little group of three, passing around the half-empty bottle of vodka as more and more people started to arrive. By the time we were all feeling nicely tipsy,

there had to be at least a hundred people packed into all the different rooms of the old farmhouse. There were even more people chatting and dancing outside, and as the party really got going, the music got even louder and the atmosphere got even better. It was just wild. Total chaos, but with the best vibes, at least until my friend Lucy noticed that someone was going around selling pills out of a clear plastic baggie. We'd never seen actual drugs up close like that before. I mean, we had trouble getting our hands on a bottle of Buckfast, so forget about Soap Bar or Whiz or anything like that. The guy gets around to us, we ask what he's selling, and when he said

ecstasy, we told him thanks, but no thanks, as we didn't have any money. Unlike the raves organizers who gave us some of their booze, the guy with the pills wasn't nearly as generous with his stash and just moved on when we said we didn't have any money. But that suited me fine. I was feeling more than adventurous enough as it was. Anyway, we'd carry on drinking, carry on dancing, and eventually we're all bursting for a wee. We knew the toilets in that place would be shocking to say the least, so we avoided going for as long as possible. We even floated the idea of just running off into a bush somewhere if it were too disgusting. But when we finally got the courage to go, we found the queue was absolutely massive. There was one single outside toilet that had working plumbing, which is what made me think the organizers rented the place or something,

as opposed to it being a complete derelict. God knows if the owners knew what they intended to do with the place. If they'd known, I'd doubt that they'd be so quick to hand over the keys. But either way, we were in no position to wait and queue for that long, so we went with the original plan of just scampering off into a bush for a wee tinkle. Just down the way from the farmhouse was this long overgrown hedgerow, and behind it a patch of trees. It looked like a nice concealed spot, so we made our way over to it, skirted around the edge and then walked off into the trees to get a bit more cover. The last thing we wanted was for any boys to wander after

us and catch us with our knickers down so we walked for a minute or two to put some distance between us and the hedge. But then suddenly I remember looking to my left and getting an awful fright. Because standing there, leaning up against a tree, was a girl with very pale features, and she was just staring at me with this very hazy, vacant look. She didn't look well, but she didn't look scary at all, it was just her sudden presence that gave me a bit of a fright. But then after that initial reaction, me and my friends started asking her if she was okay, because as I said, she looked very unwell. The poor girl was slurring her words, her jaw was swinging, and she just kept mumbling, I don't feel well, I just want to go home. We asked her what her name was and she repeated, I don't feel well. We had to ask her several times just to tell us what her name was. We then tried asking her if she was taking anything,

but by that point we were pretty certain that she needed some sort of medical assistance. So instead of continuing to ask her questions we weren't going to get answers to, one of my friends threw one of her arms over each of our shoulders and we started to walk back towards the farmhouse. It took us a while to do it but we managed to get her around the edge and all the way back to the farmhouse before sitting her down outside against a stone wall. We then asked the people around us for help and were shocked by how little some people seemed to care. Some total idiots there openly just didn't give a toss and made fun of the girl as she sat there looking all pale and ill.

But enough good people did care, and eventually we found someone who knew one of the organizers who said they had a van with them that had been used to transport all the sound equipment. Essentially, he was this girl's ticket to the hospital. There were no mobile phones back then, and the farmhouse might have had a bit of plumbing work, but there was no working phone line for us to use to call an ambulance. We could run to the nearest tarmac road

and hope that we caught the attention of a passing car, but the situation seemed far too urgent to risk relying on something like that. We needed someone with a vehicle, who could drive, and we needed them immediately. The nice person who knew one of the organizers said that they'd go and get him, so we waited where we were and hoped one of the sick girl's friends might spot her while walking past. We tried getting their names from the girl, but she kept saying her own name in confusion, so there was no way of us to get the word out that she was unwell aside from just kind of advertising her to passers-by in the hopes that they'd recognize her. It all felt a wee bit hopeless, really, and the worse the girl got, the more and more panicked we got.

But there was a momentary feeling of relief when one of the rave's organizers showed up after having heard that there was some kind of emergency. We told him what the situation was, that this girl had too much to drink, etc. And at first, he's being good as gold, saying, oh yeah, I'll take your friend to the hospital, it's the least I can do, no dramas, and all of this. But then, when we showed him the girl that we were talking about, he took one look at her, and his face changed. It was like he knew her from somewhere, or recognized something about her that we weren't seeing. There was this dramatic change in his expression too. He went from calm and confident, stepping in to be the knight in shining armor to a group of young damsels, to what seemed to be almost scared.

I asked him what the matter was and he said that he'd be back in a minute, that he just needed to talk to someone. I told him that we didn't have time for that, blah blah blah, and went to grab his wrist as he walked away. He responded by violently throwing me off and then shooting me this very furious look before he disappeared into the crowd. Fair enough, I shouldn't have grabbed him like that, but that feeling of helplessness got ramped up to a thousand. We suddenly went from everything is going to be fine to what the bloody hell is going on. The worst thing was is that very few people seemed to be taking the situation remotely seriously. Drunk lads were walking up to the semi-conscious girl and asking,

yeah, all right, hon, want to just cab back to my place and sleep it off and other horrible, pervy things like that. We had to tell them that wasn't funny and that people get really sick from having way too much to drink. And that's when one lad said something like, she's not had too much to drink. She's had a pill and it's not agreeing with her. She needs water and an ambulance. We asked how he knew she'd taken a pill, like he was some kind of wreckhead whisperer or something, able to silently communicate with those who'd taken the knock. But he just replied, because I watched her take it. I'll be back with a bottle of water. And that's when we really started to panic, because it became more and more obvious that the girl hadn't just had too much to drink. She was overdosing on ecstasy.

She was overheated, sweaty, confused, and she was beginning to lose consciousness, so if the organizer person with the van didn't get her to the hospital soon, she was going to be in some very serious trouble. I got sick of waiting for the guy to come back, so I went looking for him. I found him a few minutes later, and although I couldn't hear what he was saying, the guy he was saying it to was hanging on to every word. I walked up to him saying something along the lines of, what are you waiting for, we need to get that girl to a hospital. But then the second he realized I'd followed him inside, he got really angry and started telling me to go wait outside and that he'd be there in a few minutes. But then I realized something. The same guy he was talking to, the one who was hanging on to every word, was the same guy that had offered to sell us pills only about an hour earlier. The organizer knew the girl was overdosing, and he was prioritizing his drug dealer friend

over a girl who was in serious danger after taking something he'd sold her. Obviously, I don't know exactly what they were saying to each other, but I imagine the organizer was warning his dealer friend that the police might be on their way at some point because he was about to drive a girl to a hospital after taking one of his pills. The thing was, I couldn't understand why that wasn't just a two-sentence conversation. Someone's life was at stake, and this pair of clowns were having a small discussion about it instead of doing the right thing and coming to the rescue. I didn't just go back and wait with my friends.

I stayed put, and the more they talked, the angrier and angrier I got. Where was the oh-so-manly savior who claimed to have it all under control? He seemed to have disappeared the moment he realized his actions might affect his friend's profit margin. If just hearing that makes you angry, imagine how I felt having to stand there looking at him. But sadly, this is where I made a huge mistake. I lost my rag, and I started to hit him. I didn't proper close fist punch the guy or anything like that, but I started open-handed smacking him on his shoulder. It was mainly just to get his attention, but I was so angry that it instantly became a minor assault as I'm screaming at him,

what are you waiting for? We need to go, we need to go now. He turned around, shoved me back into the crowd of people, and then everything went to hell. I'm not saying I didn't deserve a shove. It's never okay to put your hands on someone like that when words could do just as well. But all anyone really saw was this big, quite husky bloke shoving this wee girl before she went flying. To the crowd of people, it was him that was in the wrong. And immediately, a bunch of hard cases start stepping towards the guy like, oh, shoving a girl, are we? Well, why don't you shove me, big man? If that gets lost in translation somehow, they wanted to kick his head in because he'd pushed a girl, and they had a proper good go of

it too. It was the organizer and his dealer friend versus about five lads who emerged from the crowd to start throwing punches. It was horrifying, not just because of how much violence had erupted so quickly, but because I thought that I'd buggered up our one good chance of getting this overdosing girl lift to hospital. I tried to break it up, got knocked over again, and I just remember starting to cry as some kind stranger pulled me away from the fight and asked me if I was okay. I couldn't get the words out so I just dragged the guy outside by his wrist basically and showed him the girl and my mates.

It was a terrible scene and the girl was unconscious and even though me and the kind stranger could see that, my friends kept saying, Oh my god, Rosa, she's unconscious now, we gotta do something. That's when we did what we should have done about 10-15 minutes ago by that point, which was pick up the girl and carry her to the nearest road to wave down a passing driver. I remember it was the summer before our Mach A levels, so even though it was about 10 o'clock, there was still enough light for us to be able to follow the path back to the road relatively easily. The kind stranger had enlisted the help of two of his mates as well, so they carried the unconscious girl to the road while we ran ahead to flag down a car.

There was another few minutes of feeling hopeless as we stood there, waiting for a car to appear and when one finally did, there was the added fear that it wouldn't stop for us. I personally remember thinking that it wasn't out of the question that someone would see a load of screaming teenagers carrying an unconscious girl and just think, no thanks. But luckily, they didn't. The person driving pulled over their car, wound down a window, and then asked what was going on. They only had to hear the word overdose before they were shouting, get her into the back. The bloke was driving on his own, so there was room for me, my two friends, and the girl who was overdosing, but obviously no room for any of the lads.

But they just waved us off and told the fella to drive, and he did, all the way over to Vale of Levin Hospital over in Alexandria. Pretty much everyone, from the driver to the doctors and nurses at Vale of Levin, assumed that we were the girl's friends, which I suppose we were, given the absence of the people that she went to the rave with. We had to tell them that we were just some strangers and didn't know the girl, but even if we did, once we got her to the hospital, that was where our time with her ended. There was a waiting room with a payphone, so instead of walking out into town with no way of getting home, I called my parents and begged them to come pick us up. Of course, there was the whole issue that we'd lied about where we were going,

and my mom was furious at first. But by the time she and my dad arrived to give us a lift home, they changed their attitudes completely. I suppose they must have talked about it on the drive over. Yeah, we'd lied, but all we'd done was drink a bit of vodka, and not even all that much before we went off to pee and found the girl overdosing. After that, what we'd done was take responsibility for a girl who probably would have died if we hadn't have done something. Now don't get me wrong, I had my social lives scrutinized for months afterwards, but I wasn't punished for lying as I would have been otherwise

and neither were any of my friends. Obviously it wasn't a big media story or anything like that, so it's not like we could stay up to date with the girl's condition by watching some TV or listening to the radio. I think the girl's family would have gone mental if something appeared in the papers anyways, but we didn't even know her name. The only thing I could have done was phone up the hospital to try and speak to some of the nurses that were on shift that night, but I don't know, I just didn't. I think because it was such a sensitive situation involving an overdose, I didn't really want to interfere or inject myself, if that makes sense. So, I just went on hoping that she made a full recovery and assumed that I wouldn't hear anything else about it.

That was proven untrue as when the police showed up at my parents' house. They wanted to know if I knew anything about who might have given the girl the pill. And since I was pretty sure that I got a good look at him, I passed along the man's description to the police. I know that might make me a grass or whatever you want to call it, but I honestly don't care. If that dealer and his pal had jumped into action, rushed that girl to the hospital, and generally taken responsibility for the situation, then I might not have been so quick to grass them up. But since they acted like a pair of complete cowards, dilly-dallying while a girl was having a serious health episode, I didn't think twice about dropping them in it. I doubt the police would have found the guy,

based on my crap description of him alone, but if it helped, then good. I know the teenagers are always going to go out and take drugs, but if the people selling them are going to take their money, and not even bother to help them when they have a bad reaction, then they deserve to be in jail nightclub that stayed open until 5am, and those last couple of hours could get pretty rough. We operated a pretty strict door policy, but there's very little you can do about the folks who turn up semi-sober at like midnight and then end up trashed and shirtless come closing. Closing time was always a messy process, especially on weekends, when all the patrons would spill out onto the streets outside at roughly the same time. There'd be romance, drama, fights, and slowly but surely the crowd would disperse and cabs are on foot. Then, this one time, we had one particular guy get kicked out around closing for trying to start

fights with people. He was wasted, it was all posturing and sloppy shoving, so not exactly a huge threat to really anyone. But then after he gets himself kicked out, he stays outside the club, talking crap to anyone who could come outside. The bouncer's presence alone was keeping him at bay, and then when we closed, he carried on harassing people, but somehow managed to avoid any violence. I think he was just so wasted and incapable that people didn't think that he was even worth the effort. Plus, by the time people were dispersing, he was shirt worth the effort. Plus, by the time people were dispersing, he was shirtless and looked like he might have just puked on himself a little, so I imagine people didn't even want to be near him, let alone get close enough to fight.

And little by little, the crowd of people began to disperse until it was literally just the shirtless drunk guy wandering in and out of the streets trying to harass passing cars. I remember my co-worker called me over like, get a load of this guy, he's still out there. And at first, we were just kind of laughing at him, trying not to get spotted through the big glass windows in the process. He's walking into the street, and at every passing car, he's posturing like he's challenging it to a fight. And every time he's doing it, me and my coworker are just laughing our butts off and recording him on our phones. A car is only coming along maybe every few minutes or so, because it's still like 6am at this point so the streets hadn't quite woken up yet, so we had to wait between all of his challenges.

But then suddenly, a car drives past the guy, and he lands a kick on it so loud that we heard it from the bar. The driver of the car blasts their horn, stops for a second, and then just speeds off. Shirtless guy starts laughing, giving the driver the finger, and right as he's celebrating this sort of little victory over the car, my co-worker says word for word, if he keeps doing that, man, he's going to get himself hurt.

Well, no sooner does he say that, the same car shirtless guy kicked comes back speeding the other way. And it smashes into him so hard that he literally went spinning in the air. I remember just recoiling from the window in shock and my co-worker doing the same thing. She just kept saying oh my god oh my god but then as the car reappeared and reversed over the guy as he was lying there the picture of her voice picked up so that she went from talking to screaming. Seeing the guy smashed into the air was one thing, something I'll remember for as long as I live. But seeing him get his torso crushed by the reversing tires, both sets too, is something I think that I'll see in my nightmares every so often till I die.

Just the sound of it alone was one of the worst things I'd ever heard. Just this sort of deep gunk, gunk, gunk, as each set of wheels ripped over him. And I do mean ripped, because after the second hit, you could see the blood where the rubber had dragged away the skin of his chest and back. I didn't look for too long. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, pacing back and forth on the floor in front of the bar as I focused on telling the dispatcher all she needed to know. The EMTs were outside first and then two cops showed up to ask us all a few questions. Our manager bought us all drinks, then stayed after we all left to get all the relevant security camera footage for the cops. And the following evening, we all had the night off

because it was Sunday, but me, my boss, and my co-workers were all talking in this group text, updating each other on what was going on. We all wanted to know if the shirtless guy was going to be okay. Like I know it might sound kind of naive, but people do survive some crazy injuries sometimes. But the very next morning, we found out that he died. The cops had reached out to our manager saying that since the guy died, the investigation has become a homicide. And this meant that we'd have to talk to the cops all over again, but this time it'd be with two homicide detectives who wanted to talk to whoever was on shift that night, which obviously meant me. They basically wanted to know

if the person who ran over this shirtless guy could have been someone he clashed with earlier that night. But from where I was standing, it just seemed totally random. We don't really get people walking out of the club wasted and getting straight into their cars, and for obvious reasons. So from where I was standing, the shirtless guy was unlucky enough to kick the car of someone in a very bad mood who had to be up early that Sunday morning or something. And honestly, that's what I find so scary about this whole thing.

It all happened so fast, and the guy confronted so many drivers who just ignored him and drove off before he finally just so happened to come across that one psycho who turned around, hit him, and then reversed over him afterwards. And that's why I'm always polite with people, especially during tense situations. I don't let people just walk all over me. A person can be firm but respectful, make concessions but set boundaries. But the thing I never ever want to be is careless enough to trigger that one psycho who's been waiting all day and night to take their spite out on someone. I'm not talking about that psycho who's looking for trouble either, because God help you if you're that person that comes along. I'm talking about the real psychos, the buttoned down repressed emotions, hair trigger psychos who see red, totally lose

themselves, and then do something terrible. They're the ones I'm scared of. Because they're the ones who won't hesitate to kill you. During the mid-1940s, the most powerful nations of the globe were engaged in a top-secret race to develop the world's first atomic weapon. In the United States, the research program was known as the Manhattan Project, and at one point its scientific director, the now infamous J. Robert Oppenheimer, was faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem with his theory. As he and some of the Western world's most talented physicists convened to solve it, one of them muttered, if only Etheray were here, he'd crack this one in no time.

When Oppenheimer were asked who Etheray was, and why such a talented physicist wasn't right there with them, he was told that many years before, Etheray had gone missing under very mysterious circumstances, and that untold scientific progress had been lost with him. But just who was Ettore, and how did he disappear? Born in eastern Sicily on August 5th of 1906, Ettore Majorana grew up in a highly respected and highly wealthy Italian family. His father, Fabio Majorana, was a successful engineer who served as the director of the Catania telephone company

and later as the Ministry of Communications general inspector. As a result, the Majorana family moved around a lot during Etre's childhood, meaning that he found it difficult to maintain steady and long-lasting friendships. He became a shy, thoughtful child who retreated into books, but by the time he started school, Etre's parents noticed something incredible about him. At the tender age of just seven years old, Ethere was able to multiply three-digit numbers and extract square and cube roots using nothing but mental arithmetic. When presented with an equation that he found difficult, the boy would hide under a table or walk to a corner and face the wall,

then concentrate intently until he excitedly called out the answer. Then, when Fabio tried teaching his son to play chess, he found Etre exceeded all expectations. It was quite clear to his mother and father that they had something of a boy wonder on their hands, and as a result, they made the difficult decision to send him to an elite Jesuit boarding school in Rome. In 1923, when Ettore was 17, he earned the prestigious equivalent of a regular high school diploma, and at first, it appeared as if though he'd followed in his father's engineering footsteps. Yet after four years of study, and whilst on the verge of gaining an engineering diploma at the University of Rome, he suddenly withdrew from the course. His peers and professors were stunned, but to Ettore, his decision made all the sense in the world.

Engineering was a respectable, enjoyable subject, but another had captured his imagination. Pursuing a career maintaining essential public infrastructure would no doubt lead to fortune and prominence. But the study of physics was the key to unlocking technological wonders the likes of which mankind had never even dreamed of. History has since vindicated ETHERE. Atomic energy is perhaps humanity's best short-term solution to the green energy problem, whilst nuclear weapons have brought about a period of relative, albeit uneasy, peace among the nations of the globe. But, at the time, the study of particles was considered a somewhat frivolous pursuit. The late 1920s and early 1930s constituted something of a golden age for engineering, with the likes of the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge being constructed during this period.

Many claimed that engineers were the architects of the current epoch, but what Éthéré understood is that physicists would be the architects of the next one. On July 7th of 1929, Eteré submitted a thesis entitled On the Quantum Mechanics of Radioactive Nuclei. Following a careful analysis by university professors, it was accepted, given a grade of 110 out of 110, and awarded a distinction. Three years later, during the late fall of 1932, Éthéré obtained his university teaching diploma in theoretical physics. The examination board, which included pioneering Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, reported that Éthéré possessed a complete mastery of theoretical physics.

After receiving such a glowing review from Fermi himself, Éthéré received a grant of 12,000 Italian lire in 1933 and was invited to Germany to work with another world-famous physicist, Werner Heisenberg. At the time, Heisenberg was based in the German city of Leipzig, which had become a place of pilgrimage for Europe's most talented theoretical physicists. So from January to June of 1933, the relatively boyish 27-year-old Etere spent his days rubbing shoulders with his scientific idols. He talked unifying concepts with Friedrich Hund, discussed quantum mechanics with Rudolf Peils, He even took a short trip to neighboring Denmark to attend lectures at the Copenhagen Institute.

Knowing all that we do about young Etere, his visit to Leipzig sounded like a dream come true. But upon his return to Rome in the autumn of 1933, Etere seemed different. In the past, Etere had devoted almost every waking moment to the study of theoretical physics, but following his return from Germany, he ceased his regular study patterns altogether. Instead of regularly publishing his findings and conclusions, Etheray began dedicating only sporadic periods of study to what appeared to be one singular issue. When

asked if he was suffering from malady or melancholy, Etheray replied that he was perfectly healthy, but had suffered a terrible case of gastritis while traveling, one that doctors claimed was brought on by nervous exhaustion. What exactly brought about this nervous exhaustion was never revealed or discussed, but it didn't take long for his old study habits to return with a vengeance, as Eteré began working on a groundbreaking but staunchly secretive new project. It's hard to overstate the depth of Eteré's obsession with his mysterious new project, but just to illustrate, here's an example. When Marie Curie discovered a neutral

particle that could enter matter and expel a proton, she assumed that particles must be a photon since at the time this was the only known variety of neutral particle. However, Etheray immediately recognized that in order to move something as heavy as the proton, the original particle would have to be a proton as well. When Enrico Fermi learned of Ettore's conclusion, he begged him to immediately submit it for publishing, but Ettore declined. He was far too busy working on a secretive new project

and was unconcerned by the prospect of someone else taking the credit. Over the years that followed, Ettore remained extremely tight-lipped regarding the project he was working on. The only things we do know regarding his academic career from that period is that he started to branch out into a multitude of other fields. As well as his continual study of theoretical physics, Ettore began to casually read up on economics, politics, and philosophy, particularly the work of a man named Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer was interested in

certain elements of parapsychology, a term which refers to things like extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. In his work On the Will in Nature, he explained his belief that human beings were influenced by an intangible and mysterious force, one that was tantamount to magic. Schopenhauer also claimed that, theoretically speaking, human beings have the power to physically transform themselves and simply lack the mental capacity or will, as he put it, to do so. Following the release of On the Will in Nature, many ridiculed Schopenhauer and accused him of believing himself a wizard. But the man himself dismissed the accusation and eschewed the word magic in favor of the term practical metaphysics. Many of Schopenhauer's peers saw the work as marking

the end of his credibility. But more than a hundred years after the book was first published, Ettore Majorana, quite possibly the most intelligent man on the face of the earth, took its claims very, very seriously. In January of 1938, Etheret began lectures on quantum theory at the University of Napoli. Over the course of the next two months, the university's payroll deposited Etheret's weekly wages into an account at the city's central bank, yet over time, they noticed that he hadn't withdrawn a penny of it. Etheré was informed that he had a sizable lump sum awaiting him in the account, but claimed that he was well aware, and that his abstinence was entirely deliberate. Then on March 23rd of 1938, Eteré walked into the bank, cleared out his account, then

purchased an overnight ticket onto a ferry bound for his native Sicily. Naturally, Ettore's disappearance caused a great deal of concern among his friends and colleagues. But just a few days later, the director of the Naples Physics Institute, Antonio Corelli, received what appeared to be a hastily written letter in the mail. Dearest Corelli, it read, I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn't a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust and the sincere friendship and sympathy you gave me over the past few months.

I ask you to remind me of all those I learned to know and appreciate in your institute, especially Sciuiti. I will keep a fond memory of them, all at least until 11pm tonight, possibly later too. Signed, Etere Majorana Signore Corelli was deeply perplexed by the note, and its wording caused him deep concern. Yet the very next day, he received yet another letter from Etere. Dearest Corelli, the second note read, I hope you got my telegram and my letter at the same time. The sea rejected me, and I'll be back tomorrow at the Hotel Bologna traveling perhaps

with this letter. However, I have the intention of giving up teaching. Don't think I'm like an Ibsen heroine, because the case is different. I'm at your disposal for further details. Signed, Etere Majorana. Although this second letter appeared to be an attempt to reassure him, Antonio Corelli remained deeply worried for his dear colleague and immediately contacted the Majorana family to share his concerns. Itere's brother Luciano immediately drove to Naples to personally investigate the disappearance. With the help of the local Carabinieri, Itere's brother discovered that he'd lied in a second letter to Antonio Corelli. Itere had indeed boarded a ferry to Sicily on the night of March 25th, and had done so in the company of a professor from the University of Palermo.

Luciano then enlisted the help of some relatives in his native Sicily, who in turn instructed the police to question the professor regarding Etere's whereabouts. The professor claimed that he and Etere had spent most of the ten-hour journey together before Etere retired to his cabin for a short rest. When the ship docked at the port of Parlamo just before dawn, the professor claimed he exchanged greetings with Ettore as they disembarked. Despite a little morning grogginess, Ettore seemed in good spirits and left the professor with no reason to believe that he was in any kind of distress or danger. Sicilian authorities conducted thorough searches of all the places Ettore might frequent or visit,

but not a trace of the man was ever found and not a single person ever claimed to have seen him. The search for Etre dragged on for months, with increasingly large amounts of money offered in exchange for legitimate information, but frustratingly, the investigation failed to make any progress whatsoever. To some, it was as if Etre had stepped off the ferry and then simply vanished into thin air. On December 6th of 1938, while his family was still hopeful of his safe return, the head of the investigation into Etre's disappearance announced that

the Italian authorities had found nothing suspicious concerning his sudden vanishing and that they had simply abandoned his office without any justified reason. the Italian authorities had found nothing suspicious concerning his sudden vanishing, and that they had simply abandoned his office without any justified reason. To Eteré's family, this constituted a not-so-subtle attempt to paint him in a negative light. Eteré had disappeared, justification had nothing to do with it, and he had a teaching job. He wasn't a military officer, so invoking the concepts of abandonment and cowardice not only made no sense, it was downright insulting. The Majorana family, as well as scores of Eteri's former colleagues, approached Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on a dozen different occasions to petition his help. Each time, Mussolini pledged to dedicate time and resources to the search for Etre,

but each time, his promises proved hollow. Less than ten months later, Europe was engulfed in the flames of its second major conflict in twenty years, and while the mystery of Etre's disappearance was overshadowed by the destruction of the German war machine, the man himself was never forgotten. In the years that followed, attempts to unravel the mystery behind Etre's disappearance saw the emergence of several credible theories. The first, and perhaps one of the more plausible, is that following a lengthy period of depression,

Etre took his own life. Many allude to the opening line of his first letter to Antonio Corelli, in which Etre stated, I have made a decision that has become unavoidable, and I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. While the letter may not suggest that he'd taken his life overtly, a handwritten note later found in Palermo Hotel room had commonly been attributed to Etre.

I have only one wish, it read. Do not wear black. If you must conform to custom, just wear some emblem of mourning, but not for more than three days. After that, remember me in your hearts, if you can, and forgive me. The reference to wearing black quite obviously alludes to the practice of wearing black clothing following the death of a loved one. But was Ethere telling his family not to wear black because he didn't deserve their grief, or was it because he wasn't actually dead? What's more, Ethere was a devout Catholic, meaning he would have considered taking his own life to be a mortal sin. Yet while he certainly wouldn't be the first or last religious person to take their own lives, it seems odd for a man like that to save up a vast sum of money before suddenly absconding with it. While it's not entirely uncommon for people such as this to become extraordinarily generous in the days before their final deed, there appears to be no record of any

such gift-giving among Etre's friends or colleagues. Yet perhaps the ultimate argument against the possibility of him taking his own life comes from a statement given by the Bishop of Trapani, which was serving in the Sicilian port of Catania at the time of Eteri's disappearance. Monsignor Riccieri claimed that shortly before he learned of his missing person's status, he spoke to Eteri, who complained that he was suffering, and I quote, a mystical crisis. Riccieri claimed that Eteri had sworn never to take his own life, but when authorities asked the Monsignor for more information, he cited the sanctity of the confessional and refused to

say any further. Another theory, which also hinges on Ettore experiencing a deep period of depression, involves him retiring to an isolated Sicilian monastery to train as a Benedictine monk. As we've already mentioned, Ettore remained a staunch Catholic throughout his life and married his faith with his awe of the law of physics. Deciphering the mysteries of the world around him was Ettore's God-given purpose, and in doing so, he became increasingly awestruck by the wonder of creation. The theory is given credence by the fact that in the days following Etre's disappearance, a representative of the Naples-based Giselnuovo church reported that

someone matching Etre's description showed up on their doorstep on the same night he supposedly vanished. The man appeared upset and asked the church to take him in before teaching him the ways of the priesthood. This representative was forced to inform the man that there was no long-term accommodation available, but that he could seek help elsewhere. The man then thanked him for his time and disappeared into the night. The representative of the Jisun Nuowo said that the man visited their church on the night of March 25th, the exact same day that Etre wrote his first worrying letter to Antonio Corelli. It's reasonable to believe that he was in a state of distress at this time, and his deeply held

faith meant a church may well have been one of Etre's first ports of call in a crisis. But is it possible that following this nocturnal visit to Gisu Nuowo, he remained sheltered and sequestered in some Sicilian monastery for the rest of his natural life without ever being tempted to reach out to friends and family? It seems like an incredibly unlikely outcome, and perhaps the most vocal critics of this theory are those that say Etre was either murdered or kidnapped by some of the most powerful and most dangerous countries on earth. To begin our exploration of this theory,

let's consider the opinion of Italian writer Leonardo Sciascia. Sciascia believed that sometime in the mid to late 1930s, Ettore Majorana had a kind of premonition. He foresaw an age of apocalyptic nuclear warfare, and how men just like himself would be its key facilitators. And so, rather than be forced to work on a new and terrifying form of weaponry by fascists, either German or Italian, Eteré opted to voluntarily disappear. This theory ties somewhat in with the monastery theory as quite obviously one of the places Eteré could sequester himself would be some isolated island retreat. But there was also reported sightings of him at a hotel in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. Local detectives were dispatched to the hotel but found the registration page missing

from the hotel's registry book, as if someone had carefully and deliberately removed it. Some have suggested that this was the work of some powerful but shadowy intelligence agency, but Etere's wife, Laura, believed her husband was responsible for covering his own tracks. If he decided to disappear, then he will disappear, she reportedly said. No one will be able to find him. He will be found when he wants to be found. But what if Ethere didn't escape those who might seek to enslave him and exploit his incredible intellect. This is where the murder-kidnap theory comes into play. Around 18 months after his disappearance, none other than Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the President of the United States warning that the Germans might be developing nuclear

weapons. Einstein urged Franklin D. Roosevelt to stockpile uranium and begin work on their own atomic weapons. Einstein urged Franklin D. Roosevelt to stockpile uranium and begin work on their own atomic weapons. But where had this sudden inspiration come from? Had the Germans kidnapped Ettore after following him to Sicily, having learned of his talent for theoretical physics? Or, alternatively, did a nation's intelligence services have Eteri murdered, rather than risk his talents falling into enemy hands? Again, this theory seems somewhat unlikely as any number of nations could have chosen to target any number of nuclear physicists, not to mention that each country had a healthy stockpile of its own capable scientists. But as Enrico Fermi himself said, Eteri's intelligence surpassed any he'd ever encountered.

Fermi believed Eteri was up there with Isaac Newton in Galileo, that no one else in the world possessed his level of scientific understanding and creativity. So, if Eteri was leagues ahead of Fermi, and Fermi himself was crucial in the production of the first atomic bomb, just what kind of military technology was Etre Majorana capable of producing? As we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Etre spent his childhood in eastern Sicily and often visited the Nabrodi National Park, as well as the neighboring Etna National Park. If Etre knew

the land well enough, he could have easily hidden himself away among the heavily forested hillsides, just not forever. And this is where the final, most terrifying theory of all joins the game. Etre was a remarkable physicist, but he was also a talented engineer. This means that not only was he capable of profound theoretical breakthroughs, but he was more than capable of designing and building devices which demonstrated these breakthroughs. What if, somehow, Etheray designed and constructed a device that would allow him to hide from those who wished to use his knowledge for evil? What if this device was the very thing his pursuers sought? Etre had become obsessed with Schopenhauer's theory of practical metaphysics,

which was little more than a fancy word for magic. But consider how many scientific breakthroughs would have once been considered the stuff of fiction. I'm not saying that Etre built a Rick and Morty style portal gun and then zapped himself off to some alternate universe. But seven years before the creation of the world's most powerful method of murder, who's to say Etre didn't invent the world's most powerful method of transportation? Maybe that's why his brother, Luciano, had his people walking around the parklands surrounding the city of Catania,

long after his brother was declared dead. Etere knew that he had something so powerful in his hands that it would be irresponsible to test it somewhere as densely populated as a town or city. And so, maybe Etere went out into the wilderness, with a device comparable in strength to the first atomic bomb and simply made himself disappear. During his letter to Benito Mussolini beseeching him to help find the errant Ethere, Enrico Fermi said the following of his missing colleague, I have no hesitation in saying that this is not a hyperbolic statement, but Ethere Majorana is the most deeply gifted and intellectually brilliant human being I have no hesitation in saying that this is not a hyperbolic statement, but Etere Majorana is the most deeply gifted and intellectually brilliant human being I have ever

had the pleasure of meeting. Enrico Fermi invented the world's first nuclear reactor, and it's spoken of Etere like a god in the presence of J. Robert Oppenheimer. If that was the case, what did Éthéré invent or discover? And more importantly, where did it take him? On January 4th of 1990, an accounts clerk from the English county of Herefordshire went into labor following her first pregnancy. After being rushed to the county hospital, the birth was a difficult one, and if it wasn't for the tireless efforts of the doctors and nurses, the woman's newborn daughter might not have survived. As years passed, the mother often told her child of the difficult birth how they both owed a great debt to the National Health Service and how the nurses that tended to her were akin to angels. Such stories instilled the young woman with a huge respect for medical professionals,

and from a very early age, she aspired to become one. Everything she did was geared towards that ultimate goal of becoming a nurse, a close friend later said. But somewhere along the way, our aspiring nurse's benevolence became corrupted. This is the story of Lucy Lettby. Following her graduation from Hereford Sixth Form College, Lucy pursued a nursing degree at the University of Chester. She was the first member of her family to attend college, and this was a great source of pride to both her and her parents.

After officially becoming a registered nurse, she began working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the year of 2012. Lucy was responsible for caring for a wide range of infant patients who required various levels of support. Many of her colleagues said that Lucy enjoyed seeing her patients recover and took an active role in supporting their families. In April of 2015, Lucy gained the qualifications necessary to work with infants who required intensive care. Infant intensive care is probably one of the most stressful tasks a neonatal nurse is ever likely to face. Battling to keep tiny, often premature babies alive is an incredibly stressful experience,

and even the most veteran of nurses can find it extremely psychologically taxing. In light of that, a strict shift pattern is enforced so that no single nurse is on the front line for too long, and those who lose a patient are offered time off of work in order to mentally recuperate. On the night of June 8th, 2015, and around 30 minutes into Lucy's shift, the condition of a healthy baby boy, one that we'll refer to as Child A, began to rapidly deteriorate. Around 30 minutes later, he had passed. The next day, when one of the hospital's pediatricians learned of Child A's death, they were stunned. It was completely out of the blue

and very upsetting, the doctor said. The baby showed no signs of any problems throughout the day, and I had no concerns at all for him or his twin sister. During the incident in question, a fellow nurse observed Lucy standing over child A's incubator as his condition became critical, but assumed Lucy was taking care of it and chose not to intervene. However, a few minutes later, the nurse observed that child A's condition had not improved and that Lucy appeared to be merely standing over him, watching as the baby went limp.

The nurse then summoned a doctor who observed unusual blue and white blotches on Child A's skin. This particular doctor had never seen such markings before and simply went about trying to save the baby's life. And half an hour later, Child A was dead. Child A was born prematurely as a fraternal twin, and his sister, who we'll refer to as Child B, was present in the same intensive care unit when he died. Naturally, his parents were devastated when they received the news of his passing. Yet little did they know, their torment was not yet over. Just over 24 hours after Child A's passing, his twin sister, Child B, also suffered a severe medical emergency. Thankfully, hospital staff were able to stabilize the baby's condition and she survived.

But present on her skin was the same strange blue and white modeling present on the corpse of her twin brother. In the days that followed, Lucy was offered paid leave and psychiatric support. Since the death of child A marked the loss of her first patient, it was believed that she'd be deeply affected by it. Yet to her boss's surprise, Lucy rejected the offer and asked to return to work. Lucy was then offered day shifts working with much more stable infants, but her response was that she found non-intensive care work quote-unquote boring. Some saw her resolve as admirable.

Others believed that she was running before she could walk. But certain other people had more than just minor reservations regarding both Lucy's attitude and her behavior. In the days following the death of Child A and the emergency involving his twin sister, Child B, test results showed that Child B had a gas-filled bowel. This can be extremely dangerous for a premature or newborn baby as the increasing swelling in their abdomen can make it harder and harder to breathe. But without anything concrete to explain the air pocket in the baby's bowel,

doctors were faced with a deeply chilling possibility, that someone had deliberately injected child B with air in an attempt to end its life, and that in all probability, the exact same thing had happened with child A. Yet much like in any situation like that, the hospital's administration couldn't exactly go throwing around accusations, especially not when the allegations were so gravely serious. So instead, Lucy was permitted to return to work and it took just days for another suspicious incident to occur.

Shortly after Lucy returned to work, a baby that we'll call Child C suffered a sudden and inexplicable medical emergency. The baby's mother reportedly witnessed Lucy standing over his incubator when the alarm began to sound. She was not the child's designated nurse at that time. Less than an hour later, Child C had passed away, and his parents were taken to the hospital's family room to be comforted by the designated care team. Lucy shouldn't have been anywhere near the family room during this period, yet she insisted on being in the room during one of the most painful moments of two people's lives. At one point, one of Lucy's colleagues had to physically remove her from the room, and she was reprimanded by her superiors for such a flagrant

breach of procedure. Lucy claimed that she simply wanted to console two grieving parents, but to a certain number of the people she worked with, her behavior seemed very suspicious indeed. A few weeks later, on June 22nd of 2015, a new baby, Child D, suffered complications while in intensive care and passed away in the early hours of the morning. Once again, those who tried to save her life discovered that same unusual blue and white discoloration on the baby's skin. An x-ray showed a very prominent pocket of air in the front of Child D's spine, one that seemed consistent with someone injecting air into their bloodstream. One of the doctors present opined that no such injury could have been the result of natural causes, and that he'd noticed Lucy hovering around the child's grieving family

following the sudden death of their infant daughter. Just over a week later, the same doctor raised his concerns with the hospital's higher-ups, yet they took no action against Lucy and she continued to operate as normal. At around 9 p.m. on August 3rd of 2015, the mother of a baby, referred to as Child E, heard a scream coming from the room that her child was in. When she rushed in to investigate, she found Lucy Letby standing over her baby's

incubator, frozen as if in some kind of trance. Then, when the mother looked to her child, she saw trace amounts of blood around his mouth. Quite naturally, the mother of Child E was extremely agitated, which resulted in her berating Lucy for her inaction. Lucy responded by assuring the child's mother that the bleeding was down to the friction of a feeding tube, but less than six hours later, Child E was dead, after losing more than 25% of all the blood in their body. The following evening, Child E's twin brother, who in court documents is referred to only as Child F,

was being cared for in the next room over. At exactly 1.54 a.m., Child F suffered an unexpected drop in their blood sugar and suffered a surge in their heart rate. Doctors and nurses won the battle to save him, but discovered extremely high amounts of pharmaceutical insulin in his bloodstream during a post-collapse analysis. A substance which most certainly should not have been present in his body. The only people in the ward who would have been able to inject the child with insulin were the nurses,

and even then, only a limited number had access to the locked insulin fridge in the nurse's station. Lucy Letby was one of those who had access. On September 7th of 2015, a baby referred to as Child G suffered a medical emergency just 15 minutes after being fed. The nurse who fed her was none other than Lucy Letby. Child G began projectile vomiting with such force that it reached the chair next to the cotton canopy, just over a meter away. Her heart rate and breathing then dropped to unusual low levels

before nurses were able to stabilize her. Doctors concluded that the only reasonable explanation for a premature baby expelling so much vomit was that it had been dangerously overfed by one of the nursing staff. This same member of the staff had also edited Child G's observation chart not only to make it appear as if she was already unwell before the incident, but to also make it appear as if someone was already unwell before the incident, but to also make it appear as if someone else had been responsible for feeding her. Six weeks later, a baby referred to as Child I passed away.

Prior to the medical emergency which led to her death, a fellow nurse had observed Lucy standing near her incubator just staring at the tiny premature baby. During her autopsy, child I was found to have a large amount of excess air in her stomach. Once it emerged that her death bore all the same hallmarks as the other mysterious passings, a handful of doctors on Lucy's unit made a serious complaint to the hospital's management. The administration ordered what's known as a staff review, which would investigate some of the doctor's concerns. But these same doctors were also ordered not to make a fuss until the review had been conducted. Many of the hospital's higher-ups seemed convinced that the deaths were mere coincidence, but the review found a constant. Only one nurse had been on shift for every single one of the suspicious deaths.

Not only was it the same nurse who insisted on working exclusively in intensive care but it was the same nurse who seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with the parents of the dead children. Lucy Lettby. In April of 2016, hospital administrators finally agreed to act on the mysterious deaths and took Lucy off night shifts to see if the pattern would follow her. The number of nocturnal medical emergencies dropped significantly while daytime incidents ballooned. On April 9th of 2016, two twin brothers suffered sudden emergencies within just hours of one another.

One of the twins, who unfortunately passed away, had a horrifying amount of insulin in his system, while the other appeared to have air injected into his bloodstream, but went on to survive. One doctor noticed that the cases were identical to those of child E and child F, both were twins, and one had been injected with insulin while the other had been injected with air. A few weeks later, hospital administrators met with concerned doctors who told them that Lucy Lethby needed to be suspended prior to a full and far-reaching investigation. Once again, they were told to stop making a fuss,

and once again, the cycle repeated itself. Lucy was back on the night shift when two infant siblings suffered medical emergencies within hours of one another. It was her first shift back following a short vacation, during which period the number of emergencies involving infants had shrunk dramatically. One of the babies, child O, had been so healthy that doctors had considered discharging him prior to the incident. When he first showed signs of illness, one of the nursing staff suggested they relocate him to nursery number one,

where only the sickest of children were kept. Lucy disagreed and kept the baby in her nursery. A few hours later, child O was dead. Once again, autopsy x-rays showed that he had an abnormal amount of gas in his body, along with damage to his liver that one pathologist described as coming from a severe impact. Just 13 minutes after the death of child O, Lucy Letby was feeding his brother, referred to as child P, when he developed a catastrophic injury to his diaphragm and died shortly afterwards. Just like his brother, child P had a devastatingly large pocket of air inside his torso. Some have referred to these two deaths as the tipping point in the ongoing ordeal, the moment with both administrators and consultants alike realized that drastic action had to be taken.

Lucy was now seen as a mortal danger to the babies in her care. She was removed from nursing duties and then placed in a purely clerical role until a thorough investigation could be carried out. But before investigators could even put pen to paper, Lucy filed a serious grievance with the hospital's board. Shockingly, in early 2017, Lucy's complaint was upheld by the board, who determined her removal from the neonatal ward was, and I quote, orchestrated, with no hard evidence.

One executive called the entire thing a witch hunt and suggested they protect Lucy from these allegations prior to her immediate return to work. The hospital then turned on the doctor who had been Lucy's most vocal critic, Dr. Ravi Jharam, and forced him to write her a letter of apology. He was warned that if he brought the issue up again, he would face serious repercussions. Dr. Jaram had been silenced, but his colleagues had not, and they persisted in

their complaints until finally, in March of 2017, the top neonatal nurse in the entire region stepped in to give her recommendations. She was under no doubt whatsoever that something rotten was occurring in the neonatal wards of the Countess of Chester Hospital, and that the police should have been formally notified long, long ago. Six days before Lucy was due to return to work, hospital administrators met with officers at the Cheshire Constabulary, stating that they did so in order to seek assurances that enable us to rule out unnatural causes of death. The subsequent investigation, nicknamed Operation Hummingbird

sought to determine if the infant deaths were indeed caused by deliberate harm or if they'd simply been part of an unfortunate but entirely natural chain of events. The investigation took just over a year but but on July 3rd of 2018, Lucy was arrested on suspicion of eight counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. The following year, she was re-arrested with the number of attempted murders being raised to nine. The final arrest came in November of 2020, by which time police had accumulated around 20,000 individual pieces of evidence. Lucy was placed on an interim suspension by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, then simply waited to be informed of her trial date. On October 10th of 2022, Lucy pleaded not

guilty to all seven counts of murder, and all 15 counts of attempted murder, blaming the deaths on poor hospital hygiene and low staffing levels. The Crown Prosecution Service painted Lett B as a constant malevolent presence on the hospital's neonatal wards, and that she'd abused not only her authority, but also the trust of her patients. The court heard that a child's mother once interrupted Lucy, who was in the process of murdering her child. The court heard that a child's mother once interrupted Lucy, who was in the process of murdering her child. When she raised a fuss, Lucy told the mother, trust me, I'm a nurse. Afterwards, Lett B bathed the deceased baby in front of her parents, smiling as she did so. A clear pattern was established. Lucy would isolate a victim,

wait until her colleagues's backs were turned, then use either insulin or an embolism, which is a medical term for the air bubbles she injected, to end their infant lives. These kind of deaths only ever occurred when Lucy was on shift, and the jury was shown extensive evidence of this before the prosecution handed her over to the defense. Lucy's defense attorneys countered that she was a dedicated nurse in a system which has failed,

and that the prosecution's case was driven by assumption and coincidence. In their opinion, the massive failures of a busy hospital were too great to blame on one person, but the evidence brought to bear by their opponents was far too strong. One doctor recalled that in February of 2016, he had witnessed Lucy standing over a baby's incubator as the child suddenly ceased to breathe. Any other nurse would have responded by rushing into action, but Lucy just stood there, staring, as if lost in some kind of trance. Lucy herself accepted that the results showed victims had been deliberately injected with insulin and did not contest that someone must have administered it to them, but she categorically denied it was her. On the fourth day of the trial,

the prosecution presented a handwritten note, supposedly written by Lucy, which stated the following, I am evil. I did this, it read. I killed them on purpose. I couldn't take care of them. I'll never marry or have children, and I'll never know what it's like to have a family. Another note said, I haven't done anything wrong, and they have no evidence, so why have I had to hide away? The defense argued that the notes constituted the anguished outpouring of a young woman in fear and despair when she realizes the enormity of what's being said about her. Yet once again, the prosecution proved otherwise. Lucy's yearly planner journal was found to be marked with the initials of the babies she killed on the exact days they died, and within the same journal was a note that said things like, I am evil, I did this, I don't want to do this anymore, and help. In May of 2023, Lucy herself took the stand

and broke down in tears as she told the court she meant no harm. When asked why she wrote I am evil I did this in her journal, Lucy replied, I felt at the time that if I'd done something wrong, I must be such an evil, awful person. I'd somehow been incompetent and had done something wrong which had affected those babies. I don't think you can be accused of something worse than that. I just changed as a person. My mental health deteriorated. I felt isolated from my friends on the unit. From a self-confidence point of view, it made me question everything about myself. The prosecution noted that Lucy only ever teared up when she was talking about herself and the hardships she was facing as a result of the accusations.

Yet when referring to the children she'd allegedly murdered, she was chillingly calm in the face of intense questioning. Following a lengthy period of deliberation, the jury's verdict was returned on August 18th of 2023. They found Lucy guilty on all seven counts of murder, making her the most prolific serial killer of children in modern British history. Three days later, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order, the most severe sentence possible under English law. It made Lucy only the fourth woman in UK legal history to receive such a sentence.

During the trial, the prosecution suggested several possible motives that might drive Lucy to kill infants. The first, and possibly the most chilling, suggested was that Lucy was simply bored and got an adrenaline rush from the unfolding crisis conditions. The second was that Lucy was playing God and received a thrill selecting who would live and who would die. Yet the third, and perhaps the most disturbing of the motives suggested, was that the killings were to gain attention of a married doctor with whom Lucy had shared a brief but intense affair. This doctor's name was on the list of practitioners who would be summoned

whenever there was a crisis on the neonatal ward, meaning Lucy could have been instigating the emergencies in order to spend more time with the object of her affections. She denied that this was the case, but when this very same doctor took the stand to give evidence against her, Lucy attempted to leave the courtroom without permission. This seems like a very visceral reaction for someone who was never anything but professional with their colleagues, meaning this particular theory seems to hold considerably more water than the first two. Despite such a wealth of evidence, there are many who are vocal in their belief that Lucy is innocent, and in September of 2023, they celebrated the news that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering a retrial on one of Lucy's counts of attempted murder. A provisional date of June 10th, 2024 has been set,

but no trial will go ahead until judges decide to allow appeals on all of Lucy's current convictions. Until then, we're only left to wonder. Could it be that a young woman who's dreamed of helping others since she was a little girl has been caught up in a nightmarishly unfortunate sequence of events that implicate her purely by circumstance? Or is there another Lucy Lettby, one we've only seen a glimpse of, who inflicted pain on the most innocent and defenseless amongst us, and enjoyed it. My name is Massimo, and I grew up in a place called Locri, which is a town in the very far south of Italy in a place called Calabria.

Locri is a very beautiful place, and in many ways I was lucky to grow up there. But in the other ways, being born there comes with a bit of a curse. Locri and Calabria in general has beautiful scenery, incredible food, and mostly the people are very friendly too. But Locri also has a dark side, and its name is Andrangheta. I apologize in advance for the crazy spelling, it's very distinct to Calabria.

You say the word like Andrangheta, and it comes from a Greek word meaning heroic or valorous. But like many words that come from much older ones, the meaning and intention has been greatly obscured. Because the Andrangheta are not heroes. They are not the valiant defiant. They are scum. They are cowards. And they are a plague to anyone and everyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. Not long after I turned 14 years old, my mother told me that she could not afford to give me

money anymore. I had a small allowance for things, much like American children do, but there soon came a time when I wanted more than my meager allowance would permit. And so, instead of raising my allowance, she asked a friend to find me a job. Nothing big, just something small so I had a few thousand lira to spend each week. And soon, I had a job. I was told that I would be working in a small nightclub just a few hours on a Friday and Saturday night. I suspect my mother believed that I would be working in a small nightclub just a few hours on a Friday and Saturday night. I suspect my mother believed that I would be disappointed that I no longer had those times of the weekend to myself, but it was actually the opposite.

I was worried that she would find me something boring, like working in a supermarket or something disgusting like working in a slaughterhouse. So to learn that I would spend my time watching beautiful women dancing and drinking, that was some very welcome news to a 14-year-old boy like myself. There were only around two or three nightclubs in Locri where I lived there, spreading along the Corso Vittorio e Muele, which is the road nearest the beach. They were all spread out for a reason, as each club was the responsibility of a different un giangongete captain, or capo, as they say.

All these capos were part of the same Unjongete clan, but they were not immune from internal disputes and rivalries. The story goes that after one of the capos mysteriously went missing, his deputy stepped up to take his place. But one of the other capos protested, saying the man was his brother-in-law, and until he was found, he had the right to take over responsibility for the missing capo's nightclub, as well as his own. He told the missing capo's Andrina, which is like his personal gang members, to move out so his own crew could take over, but the original Andrina refused. They accused the other capo of orchestrating their boss's disappearance, an accusation which was returned by the man's brother-in-law.

The two groups squabbled for a while, but the crimine, which is something like the higher council, told them to stop while they tried to track down the missing capo. I worked in the bar of the missing capo, although at the time I knew nothing of it. I knew some very suspicious looking guys used to hang out around the night club, looking mean and not drinking very much, but I didn't understand their wider connection to the invisible feud. I use that word deliberately too, because that's where the undrangete are. In America, I feel if gangsters like to represent themselves, they wear colors, they make signs, they make graffiti marking their territory,

but in Lokri, there was nothing like that. The Undrangete are invisible. They are your neighbor, your co-worker, your brother, your cousin, and all but a few dozen are known only to each other. They act only in the darkness, and they emerge from the shadows and they disappear again. I remember cycling down to the Corso Vittorio a Monwele to begin my shift on a Friday evening. Locri is quite lively at that time of the evening, especially on a weekend, and the nightclub I worked at was no different. I walked in, and the place was full. Lots of people upstairs and lots of people downstairs, also. The way the club was set up was when you walk in, there is a bar and a few tables for people to sit at, then downstairs is the dance floor. But the upstairs has a kind of balcony

which overlooks the dance floor, but not by much. The club was very busy and I was going upstairs and downstairs collecting empty bottles and glasses as I went. I had just collected two armfuls of empty wine glasses, which probably wasn't a lot for a kid like me. I placed them up onto the bar top for the bartender to wash. I then turned around in time to see a guy walking up to the small balcony. I'd never seen him before, and we had a lot of the same people coming in week after week, so I noticed him almost right away. His behavior was also a little strange to me because I'd say 99% of all people who walked in went straight to the bar to get a drink before heading down to the dance floor. So, to have this man ignore the bar completely and walk straight to the balcony,

it was almost like he was looking or watching for someone. The bartender and I watched the guy for a minute wondering why he was just standing there, still like a statue, and then someone else came to the bar so we got back to work. But then, just as I was walking away from the bar, I saw the strange man take something out of the pocket of his jacket and then toss it over the side of the balcony. He then turned and walked away, so calmly that it made the action seem almost sort of innocent. I watched him walk towards the front entrance and then turned back to walk towards the balcony. I was worried that he might have tossed a bottle or empty glass down onto the dance floor, then was wondering how that might be if he hadn't visited

the bar. And then, there was a bang. At first, the noise and concussion of the blast scared me so much that I almost fell backwards. There was no fire. It wasn't like an explosion you see in a movie. There was a bang and then a puff of smoke, and then the music stopped and all I heard were people screaming. I ran to the balcony and could see lots of people lying on the dance floor. Most were moving around in pain, holding parts of themselves that had been hurt, but two or three were just laying completely still. Many of those that weren't affected by this explosion began running up the stairs away from the wounded people and out of the club, but many others stayed

and tried to help. The bartender told me to stand at the bottom of the stairs and to help wounded people climb them. He did the same and soon only the worst affected were still lying on the floor with their friends trying to stop the bleeding from their wounds. The ambulances were outside very quickly, and after the paramedics came inside and I asked the bartender if I could help any further. He seemed angry that I'd asked him, which, I suppose looking back, was him realizing that I shouldn't have been there in the first place. I was just a kid, and he asked me to help with the wounded. I guess he felt guilty about that, so he snapped at me and told me to just go home. I had wanted to run out of that place since the moment I heard the bang and saw the wounded people but for some reason I stayed and

I think it was more out of pure curiosity in a sort of morbid way. Once I finally realized what had happened or at least that something truly terrible had happened, I was only too glad to jump on my bike and go home. From where we lived, my mom could hear all the sirens and see all the flashing lights, so when I walked through the door with blood on my clothes and terror in my eyes, she knew instantly that I had somehow been involved. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried a lot in her arms. I wasn't scared anymore, but it was all the tension being let loose like some sort of river.

I was just so glad to be home alive and in her embrace. The next day, the police came to talk to me about the attack. They visited in the daytime. Leon Drangheta, on the other hand, they visited us at night. They were far more thorough than the police officers. They asked me more questions, demanded more details, and obviously wanted to find the man who'd thrown the explosive onto the dance floor, much more than the police did, too. I don't know if they ever did, but a lot of people died in the process. Like I said, Leon Drangheta violence is mostly done quietly and in the shadows, but for a while, Lokri and the surrounding region erupted into violence as the two rival Andrina fought one another.

It got so bad that my mother sent me to live with my cousins up in Kozenza, which is a town quite far to the north of Locri, until things had died down. I eventually returned home with my parents, but my mother was never fully happy there again. A few years later, we moved to Reggio Calabria, and that's where we've been living ever since. I think we were all much happier here because, as much as we still miss Locri, there are one too many bad memories for us to be at peace there. For me, it's being reminded of the blood and the screaming, how I'd stared in disbelief until it hit me later while hugging my mom. But for her, it was having that silent and invisible monster that stalks Calabria,

suddenly becoming very loud and very visible when it almost took her only son. The scariest thing I ever experienced happened on one of the most boring nights of my entire life. I used to work in bars and nightclubs all over London. Nine different places in seven years, too, just hopping from venue to venue wherever it suited me. Sometimes I'd leave a place for better money elsewhere and other times because my boss or supervisors were just absolute tossers. But then one place I handed in my notice after going through something so frightening that it gave me nightmares that persisted for years. As anyone who's worked in bars or nightclubs will tell you, January tends to be the quietest month of the year.

Everyone has a massive blowout over the Christmas break and New Year's and then tries to watch their pennies and their waistlines come the New Year. I imagine it's been like that since forever, and it's just something just us bar staff have to live with. You squirrel away your Christmas tips so you can last through everyone's dry January, and then just hope that you get enough shifts to see you comfortably through the month. At first, I thought I was lucky that my name kept popping up on the hugely scaled down rota. I went for about 50 hours a week in December to less than 30 in January,

which was definitely a massive hit, but others had it far worse than I did. I'd start at around 6pm and then we'd close up at around midnight, and all that time, the bar only needed to be manned by one person. Sometimes that'd be me, sometimes it'd be a colleague, but on this night in particular, it was so quiet that just our manager was manning the front of the house, while me and a colleague busied ourselves with a bit of early spring cleaning. The Christmas period had been manic, so there was plenty of sprucing up to do. We tidied up the staff room upstairs, bagged up a load of lost property, then went down into the beer cellar to tidy that up too. There were all kinds of empty

boxes to crush, to take out the bins, so we occupied ourselves doing that for a while. We'd walked into the cellar, crush a few boxes, and then walk out again with them stacked in our arms. And once the box-crushing part of the job was boxed off, pun very much intended, we decided to take a little breather in the cellar. We were there for no more than a few minutes, sat atop some boxes of beer, swapping some small talk, when I felt a headache coming on. It wasn't all that strong at first, so I made a mental note to grab a paracetamol from the stash that we kept upstairs, then just carried on talking to my colleague. But then, a minute or so later,

I started feeling even worse. I stood up, felt a bit wobbly, and told my colleague something like, I'm feeling a bit strange, man. I'm just gonna get a bit of fresh air. He stood up too. Then, as I turned to walk towards the door of the cellar, he said, and I'll never forget this as long as I live, best get the bowl of car keys first though, Jay. I turned back for a second, quite certain that I was going completely mental, and asked my colleague to repeat himself, only to watch his knees buckle before he crashed into the stacks of beer boxes next to him. We stacked them in a particular way so that impacts like that don't take down a whole stack and endanger anyone with broken glass or something,

but my colleague hit them so hard that I'd swear a few bottles must have broken from the force of that fall. And I was just stunned at first, but then it hit me. Dizziness, nausea, confusion, loss of consciousness. It was a gas leak. A carbon dioxide leak to be exact. Oh, and just to explain, the cellar of most bars has all their CO2 tanks which we hook up to the bars upstairs via pipes so we can carbonate your drinks and make them all nice and fizzy. The leak was a massive one too, and because of the ambient hum of the old coolers down in our cellar, we couldn't hear the rush of gas from one of the barrels that was leaking it. I ran out of the cellar, took a deep breath, and then ran back in to grab my colleague by one of his legs and then just pulled harder

than I'd ever pulled before, managed to drag his unconscious carcass out of the cellar and into the little hallway outside before I slammed the door closed. Then, in a total panic, I started trying to wake my colleague up, slapping him in the face shouting his name. I don't think I could ever properly describe the relief that I felt when he opened his eyes. He seemed really groggy and confused and he rolled over and suddenly threw up, which made me get up to try and keep him on his side. I felt my knees wobble as I got up and I barely kept myself from toppling over as I went to make sure that he was firmly on his side. I didn't want him rolling back over, throwing up again and then choking on his own vomit, so I did that and then told him that I was going to get help.

Trying to make it up the stairs was incredibly scary too. I kept thinking that I was going to black out and that it'd probably be ages before our manager came looking for us. That and I was scared of falling backwards, toppling down the stairs and breaking my neck. I remember holding on really tight to the railing that went up to the side of the staircase. Then as I spilled through the staff-only door and out into the bar itself, I shouted to my manager to call an ambulance. We only had one couple sat at the bar and they were amazing. One of them had their phone out and was dialing 999 before my manager had even stopped whatever she was doing.

It wasn't like she'd panicked or didn't care or whatever. and was dialing 999 before my manager had even stopped whatever she was doing. It wasn't like she'd panicked or didn't care or whatever, she just sort of froze in fright when I shouted at her, while the cool-headed punter, who probably had a few drinks in him already, was just on it like a comet. And the worst was over, as I'd already dragged my colleague out of the cellar where the gas leak was, so by the time me and my manager got back downstairs, he was sat in the stairs leaning up against the wall, almost fully conscious again. He looked red in the face, like he'd been running around in our absence, and since I still wasn't feeling great myself, I was scared to try and support him coming up the stairs.

Thankfully, my manager and one of the couples at the bar teamed up to basically drag my sick colleague back up the stairs. Thankfully, my manager and one of the couples at the bar teamed up to basically drag my sick colleague back up the stairs again. An ambulance showed up a few minutes later, took us both off to hospital, and the doctors agreed that both sets of symptoms were consistent with acute carbon dioxide poisoning. We were told just how incredibly lucky we'd been, too. Most incidents of CO2 poisoning are slow burn affairs, and the victims often notice the milder symptoms long before it has the chance to kill them. Whereas in our case, a ton of carbon monoxide was being pumped into the cellar really quickly, so we were being exposed to a much larger amount in a much shorter amount of time.

The doctors had absolutely no doubt that if both me and my colleague had passed out in that cellar at the same time, or I'd failed to pull them out in time, then someone would have lost their life that night. And while we were receiving treatment at a local accident and emergency department, our manager was closing down the bar after placing an emergency call to her own bosses further up the chain of command. I got to go home that night, and my colleague didn't. He'd suffered a severe reaction to it, whereas I'd only suffered a minor one. I asked the doctors why that might be, and they told me a number of factors that might be to blame,

just nothing that they'd be able to pinpoint without any study and observation. He stayed overnight, and the bar was closed for a couple of days afterwards. But in that time, we kept in touch via phone and discussed what came next. And long story short, we both received a very large and very generous settlement from the financial group that owned the bar. I know that might be weird to say that when we nearly died, but their logic was this. They were going to sue the butt off the company that made the leaky gas canister. In the words of the woman I spoke to, they were going to pick them up, turn them upside down, and shake them until every last penny fell out. They knew what they were going to win too, and they'd make a hell of a lot of money doing so.

But they didn't want to fight two court cases at the same time. It meant double the legal fees with the same end result, so paying us such a large amount was, and I'm quoting here, expedient. I won't say how much they offered us, but it was enough to make each of us drop any ideas of hiring solicitors. Enough to live comfortably while looking for another job, and enough to put quite a bit away for a rainy day, which was something I'd always been lacking. I don't work in bars or nightclubs anymore and I can't say I really miss it either, but I do miss the people. It's a hard job. It's a weird job and much like any job like that you sometimes develop quite a deep camaraderie

with the people you work with. I can't imagine not running back into that room to pull my colleague out after he'd collapsed. And I know that if the roles were reversed, and that was me, he'd have done exactly the same thing. Maybe it's just basic human decency and I sound like an idiot trying to compare pulling pints to a band of brothers, but I stand by it. I don't miss work, but for better or worse, I do miss the people. Harold Frederick Shipman was born on January 14th of 1946 on a council estate in the English city of Nottingham. His parents were both devout Methodist Christians, while his father earned a living driving trucks for various shipping companies. In school, Harold proved himself a promising athlete, but when he was just 17 years old, he received some terrible,

life-changing news. His mother had cancer, and it was terminal. Over the next several months, as his mother entered the final stages of her battle with the disease, a young Harold would watch as her doctors gave her morphine to ease her pain. It was the only thing that gave her any relief, and she remained in an almost serene and blissful state until her eventual death on June 21st of 1963. It's very possible this experience influenced Harold's choice of undergraduate subject, as he went on to study medicine at the University of Leeds before graduating in 1970. But it's possible that the experience also influenced him to make another choice, much later in life that made his name a synonym for a terrifying variety of medical

malpractice. In 1974, Dr. Shipman found employment as a general practitioner in Todmorden, a small town around 17 miles northeast of Manchester. But the following year, he was caught up in his first and much lesser known scandal. It was discovered that Shipman had been forging medical prescriptions for the drug pethidine and that all evidence suggested that it was for personal use. Pethidine is an opioid pain relief medicine that was once widely used but has since been superseded by newer and safer options. Yet like any opioid-based painkiller, overconsumption can lead to tantalizing highs as well as astonishing lows. It makes for grim consideration that one

of Shipman's motives for taking the drug was to experience the same sensation his mother had, one of being comfortably numb and at complete peace. Yet when his drug abuse was discovered, it almost ended his career. After pleading his case to the medical tribunal tasked with deciding his punishment, Shipman was shown an unusual amount of mercy. Instead of being prosecuted or, at the very minimum, barred from practicing medicine, Dr. Shipman was given mandatory counseling, fined £600 and then allowed to continue on his way. In 1977, he moved to Hyde, a much larger town on the outskirts of Manchester, and resumed practicing medicine at the town's Donnybrook Medical Centre. By 1993, Dr. Shipman had saved up enough money to open his very own doctor's surgery,

and did so at No. 21 Market Street on Hyde's main thoroughfare. As you can imagine, being one of Hyde's only local doctors made Shipman a revered member of the community, and the vast majority of his patients spoke only of his gentle demeanor and calming disposition. But as the years went by, certain members of the community began to notice a disturbing pattern regarding the health of Dr. Shipman's patients. In March of 1998, Southern Manchester's top coroner received a call from a Dr. Linda Reynolds, who was employed at a medical practice just across the street from the one Dr. Shipman owned. She told the coroner that she'd noticed an unusually high death rate among Dr. Shipman's patients, specifically among elderly women. Just over a month later, Greater Manchester Police questioned Dr. Shipman in connection with the deaths, but found nothing suspicious regarding his behavior.

To those who knew him, Dr. Shipman was nothing short of an angel, a man who took the time to visit his patients at home to ensure the highest quality of both care and comfort. He soothed the pain of dozens of kind-hearted elderly women, and he had a plethora of character witnesses on hand to testify to that. After a lengthy investigation, the charges against Shipman were dropped and he was free to continue practicing medicine. But Linda Reynolds wasn't the only person to notice unusual circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Shipman's patients.

On June 24th of 1998, the former mayor of Hyde, Kathleen Grundy, was found dead in her home. She appeared to have passed away peacefully in her sleep, and at first, there was nothing remotely suspicious about her death. Yet when her daughter, Angela, read over her mother's last will and testament, she was stunned. Her mother, with whom she'd shared a very close relationship with over the years, had failed to leave her a single penny, whereas Dr. Shipman had been bequeathed the lump sum of 386,000 pounds. Despite his brush with scandal, Dr. Shipman was still a much-loved member of the community by that point, but Kathleen Grundy didn't love her doctor more than she loved her own daughter,

so Angela was deeply and immediately suspicious. So, on the advice of a friend, Angela approached Greater Manchester Police and asked them to investigate. Having already questioned Dr. Shipman on suspicion of medical malpractice, the police moved quickly to authorize the exhumation of Kathleen Grundy's body. Then, following a lengthy analysis, medical examiners made a shocking discovery. Kathleen's corpse contained trace amounts of diamorphine, more commonly known as heroin. When Shipman was asked about this, he claimed Kathleen had been a secret addict for most of her life, and showed them a digital copy of her medical records which showed that that was the case.

However, upon closer analysis, one of the officers noticed something glaringly inconsistent regarding the records. Most of the entries had first been composed long before Kathleen passed away, but many of them appear to have been edited in the days following her death. Armed with clear evidence of Shipman's foul play, he was arrested under suspicion of murder on September 7th of 1998. When the police searched his address, they recovered a typewriter, and after careful analysis, determined that it had been used to forge Kathleen Grundy's will. Once that was clear, they had just about all the evidence they needed to prove Shipman was guilty in a court of law. The only question was, how many other women had he killed?

In the months leading up to his trial, police trawled through Shipman's patient records, isolating any who appeared to have suddenly passed away. At the very minimum, there were 15 cases in which Shipman was the last person to see his patient alive, and in each of those cases, traces of diamorphine were present in the deceased's remains. But as the investigation continued, investigators made a horrifying discovery. By the time police officers had finished analyzing Shipman's patient records, they had their 15 so-called sample cases. But the real number of victims was anywhere between 20 and 150.

When Dr. Harold Shipman's trial began on October 5th of 1999, police had chosen to focus exclusively on their 15 definite victims, whose cause of death were lethal injections of diamorphine between the years of 1995 and 1998. The court heard how police discovered a very distinct pattern of perfectly healthy patients dying suddenly while under Dr. Shipman's care, and how he'd cover his tracks by falsifying their medical records following their demise. It was an airtight case, and on January 31st of the year 2000, Shipman was found guilty on all 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery. He was given a whole life tariff, meaning that

he'll spend the remainder of his natural life behind bars. Shipman protested his innocence throughout the trial and disputed the legitimacy of the scientific evidence brought forth by the prosecution. Shipman's wife, Prim Rose, also professed her belief that her husband was innocent, even following the unanimous convictions. But as time went by, her opinion of her husband began to change. During the summer of 2002, a senior West Yorkshire police detective announced the results of an 18-month inquiry into the murders of Dr. Harold Shipman. Investigators had originally suspected him of murdering one elderly woman for monetary gain. Then it was five elderly women, then ten, then twenty. Prior to his trial, that number had ballooned to approximately 150. But Detective Chris Gregg declared that,

following an intensive investigation, the number of victims was, at the very least, 218. The inquiry also concluded that Shipman stole around 10,000 pounds worth of jewelry, and they learned of that when they found every single piece stashed away in his garage. Shipman had presented many of them as gifts to his wife, then kept the rest as grim trophies of his sickening endeavors. Around this time, Shipman's wife wrote him a letter, in which she explicitly asked him to tell her everything he knew. Many have interpreted this as the first signs of Primrose beginning to doubt her husband's innocence, but regardless, the judiciary had the ultimate decision,

and they'd decided that Dr. Harold Shipman was far too dangerous a person to be allowed any prospect of a return to society. Shipman's guilty verdict made him the only doctor in British history to be found guilty of murdering his patients, and the shame associated with that title may well have contributed to a decision that he made in the wee small hours of January 13th, 2004. That morning, one of the guards of Shipman's Wing at Wakefield Prison discovered him hanging by a bed sheet from the bars of his window. Medical staff rushed to save his life, but the 57-year-old Shipman was pronounced dead

at the scene. The families of his victims stated they felt cheated by his actions, and rightly so. Shipman had never given a full confession, and had never even hinted at the motives for his crimes. Yet, in the opinion of many, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to draw a few parallels between Shipman's murders and one of the definitive experiences of his childhood. During his mother's final days of life, Shipman watched time and time again as a doctor eased her suffering. It's difficult to imagine the kind of relief a young Harold felt in these moments, watching the needle sink into her arm before an expression of bliss came over his mother's face. Maybe it wasn't really Dr. Shipman who killed those women. It was Little Harold, who wanted nothing more than to grant those poor old women peace. The same peace that had been

granted to his own mother in the days before she died. A memorial garden to Shipman's victims, called the Garden of Tranquility, opened in Hyde Park, Hyde on July 30th, 2005. At its opening, Tameside counselor Joe Kitchen stated, A garden like this gives us the chance to say goodbye to our loved ones, which we sadly didn't have the opportunity to do at the time because they were taken away from us by someone who should have known better. To be continued... the time and attended a school located in the Appalachian Mountains. The school was in a small town and I soon came to realize that the townies, that is people who grew up there, didn't much care for us students. I was a junior at the time and it happened during a cold winter. I had heard a story regarding a certain townie that liked to frequent a popular bar called The Club. It was a place frequented by both students and townies. The way the story went, this guy would come out on Saturday evenings to pick fights with students. The past weekend,

he had sat down at a table, uninvited, where a group of students were drinking beer. He just sat there silent and very unwelcome. Eventually, he grabbed the thigh of a male student. He then assaulted them when the student gripped him by the arm and told him to let go. Supposedly, the students all had to go to the hospital due to injuries sustained during the beating. The owner didn't do a thing about it either, also being a townie, I guess. The next Saturday night rolled around and I told my buddies, let's teach this jerk a lesson. I was raised by my dad not to be a victim and to look out for my friends. I played pool and poker to help put myself through school so I knew how

to handle myself. Having heard the townie liked to punch his victims in the solar plexus, I got some magazines and taped them around my torso with a roll of electrical tape. I also got an empty glass coke bottle and put it in a jacket pocket, and we waited until around 10pm and then headed over to the bar and got a table, leaving one chair empty beside me. We were enjoying a cold picture of Pabst when one of my friends told me that he was there now. We made sure not to look at him and kept on drinking. Eventually he came over and sat down in the empty chair beside me. Casually, I turned to look at him and smiled.

And sure enough, he immediately grabbed me by my leg. Hey there, fella. I said, still smiling as I took another sip of beer. He had a hard grip on my thigh as he stared back at me, not saying a word. Well, you certainly aren't a shy one, I said, and my friends all laughed. It had grown silent. Everyone in the bar was watching now. I had a nice pinch of Copenhagen snuff between my cheek and gums.

I spit into one of his eyes, which caused him to involuntarily close both. Immediately, I punched him in the throat as hard as I could, knocking the creep backwards. He fell out of his seat, landing on his butt. Take this outside, yelled the owner from behind the bar. We stepped out into the back alley, followed by the townie. His eyes blazed with anger as he quickly came towards me. He took a swing, which I blocked as I pulled out that glass coke bottle, gripping it by the neck. I swung back hard, landing a very savage blow against his thick skull. I felt it connect with a very satisfying thud. His head snapped back and he stumbled. I kicked his legs out from under

him and then we circled around him and started kicking him with our steel-toed Doc Martens. He tried to get up, but we just kept kicking him as hard as we could, working up a good sweat. He must have tried not to yell or scream, but soon enough he was crying like a baby. And this went on for quite a while until we eventually heard whining sirens approaching us. Let's go, I shouted as we legged it out of there as fast as we could. Later, we were told an ambulance had to come to the bar to cart off the unconscious Townie on a stretcher. And needless to say, we didn't return to the club any time soon again. One time the next year, I went back and saw Townie sitting in a wheelchair beside the bar. He looked like him, but he wasn't so big anymore and trembled a lot.

He looked my way eventually and immediately broke eye contact. He never said another word. Oh well, I thought. He had brought it on himself. There are consequences to your actions. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video.

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