The Underworld Podcast - Listen Now: Varnamtown Episode 1

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Two years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, called investigative journalist Joshua Davis with a strange story. Kyle had heard a rumor that Pablo Escobar did a deal in the early 1980s with a remote, coastal Southern town of 300 people. In exchange for vast wealth and limitless cocaine, Escobar would be allowed to land planes and ships in the area. Over the last 24 months, Josh and Kyle investigated the rumor, journeying to Varnamtown to knock on doors and find out what really happens when a firehose of money and cocaine is turned on a small, tight knit community. Listen to Varnamtown wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, so I got a good one for you guys right now. Sometimes I feel like I've just heard about every single true crime story that there is in the history of true crime stories. And then there's a new podcast that will come out and I'm just kind of shocked at this true crime tale that I'd never heard of. Take, for example, this new podcast by Twin Peak star Kyle McLaughlin and journalist co-host Joshua Davis, who we actually recently had on this podcast. Their new series is called Varnham Town, and it's a boots on the ground inside look into this rural small fishing town in North Carolina called Barnum Town. The town has only 300 residents, and they quickly become corrupted by cocaine shipped in by none other than Pablo Escobar. Once, you know, all that cocaine and money and everything arrives in town, everyone's life is changed for better or worse. mostly worse. It's a wild tale of drugs, drug trafficking, corruption, murder, and, you know,

fun things like that. And the two hosts, they do a really great job of talking to the residents of the town, hearing their sides of the story, and just trying to put the pieces together in, you know, this true crime extravaganza. Listen to a clip we've got right here. Okay, Kyle, tell me what you know about the connection between Ario Spreeze. Speedwagon, the superband from the 70s and 80s, and Pablo Escobar, the drug kingpin. It's a story that revolves around a little town in North Carolina on the coast. Fishing Village, really. Town of about 300 people, very small. This is my friend Kyle McLaughlin, the star of Twin Peaks.

And he's telling me about how he discovered a real-life Twin Peaks in rural North Carolina, not far from where he filmed Blue Velvet. Really a little town that time has forgotten. Nobody goes there. Turns out a substantial portion of the people share the same last name, which is Varnum. And the name of the town is Varnum Town. My name is Joshua Davis, and I'm an investigative reporter.

Kyle and I talk all the time about the strange things we come across. I've worked as a war reporter covering conflicts in Iraq and Libya, Colombia, and I've written about people in challenging circumstances. And Kyle is drawn to odd things, too. What does Ario Speedwagon and Pablo Escobar have to do with this town? Well, sometime in the early 80s, ARIO Speedwagon's airplane made an unannounced middle of the night landing just outside of Varnumtown.

And it wasn't a small plane. This was a Lockheed Lodestar, World War II, Prop plane, cargo plane. Huge. And it had the ARIO Speedwagon logo emblazoned on the side of the plane. But here's the weird part. The pilot didn't seem to know how to fly the plane. In fact, he overshot the runway, so he pulled back up again. So the plane seemed out of control, because it turns out there were actually two pilots in the cockpit,

and they were having a fist fight over the control of the plane. Wait, the pilots were punching each other. Yes. Yes. What were they fighting about? Well, the story goes, one of the pilots didn't believe that the other pilot could actually land a plane. Okay. And was struggling to rest controls from the pilot who was trying to land.

They had like a fistfighting cockpit. They had a fist fight in the cockpit. The pilot who actually knew how to land it, he manages to land the plane, he jumps out of the plane, runs into the forest. The other pilot sees the engines are running, leaves him running, and takes off himself. Leaving the plane? Leaving the plane. Okay. Completely abandoned. Was Ario Speedwagon on the plane? No. No, they had sold the plane, but they forgot to take their logo off. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. What was on the plane? What was on the plane was copious amounts of drugs.