Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For
$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details.
The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast.
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I am your host Peyton Moreland. I'm so happy you are here. This is a podcast where we go into everything dark, spooky, murder. Honestly,
anything that gets us into the dark. Before we jump in, we always start with my 10 seconds, which is just a way to start it off on a lighter foot. So for my 10 seconds this week, I wanted to wish everyone a happy Father's Day. It just passed. I hope everyone had such a great day. I actually got to see my dad on Father's Day, which was really, really awesome. Yeah, I think that's all for my 10 seconds and let's jump into the episode.
Just a trigger warning, this episode includes discussions of suicide, so please listen with care. Now, before I get in today's story, I want to start with a hypothetical, something for us all to mull over. Imagine the President of the United States took a trip to the beach and then vanished without a trace.
Let's say the Secret Service, different branches of the military, the police, and everyone else searched for days, but they never found a single shred of evidence about what happened to him. I mean, this sounds impossible, right? Like an important leader like that would never be out of sight of their bodyguards, reporters, their friends, their family members, and everyone else who's always with them.
But in this case, that is exactly what happened. A major world leader disappeared in front of multiple bystanders and he was never seen again. You might think that sounds unbelievable. And in fact, a lot of people don't believe that official story. It's a disappearance that has sparked countless tinfoil tales and we are getting into it today.
Now, the story centers around a man named Harold Holt, and he was born in Sydney, Australia, and then attended school in Melbourne. He was both a bookworm and a jock, and Harold got very good grades growing up while also being a star athlete. In fact, he played sports all through college, and not just one sport. He was on multiple teams for cricket, tennis, and football. Now,
Now, after he graduated, Harold became a lawyer, but he only stuck with that career path for just a brief period of time. It was about four years. And then Harold began to reevaluate things because the world was changing a lot back in 1934. Adolf Hitler had just been elected chancellor of Germany and Europe was already on the path to war.
And that might have seemed very distant from Australia, but Harold still felt inspired to get more politically involved. So that year he actually ran for a seat in parliament and he lost. And then the next year he ran again. And this time he won a position as part of the United Australia Party.
Now, from that point on, he was a dedicated politician. This was the career path he wanted for his life. And Harold was very patriotic, as you might expect. Beginning in 1940, he enlisted with the armed forces and actually served with the army while he was still a member of parliament. He did both jobs at once. Now, after the war ended, he held his parliamentary position for over three decades. So until 1966, 30 years later.
And during that time, Harold led the country through economic crisis, social change, and of course, World War II and the Cold War. In 1966, Harold Holt took a major step forward in his political career when he was elected to become the prime minister of Australia. Yeah, you heard that right. During Harold's short term in office, he changed a lot of longstanding policies.
One of his biggest achievements involved getting rid of a law that made it much harder for people of color to immigrate to Australia compared to white people. He also fought to increase rights for the indigenous population, but he didn't have much time to really reform much more than that because he only served as prime minister for about two years.
Then everything changed on December 17th, 1967. See, on that Sunday, Harold planned to have a fun day at the beach with his friends. It was a pretty spur of the moment trip. A few days earlier, he'd actually bumped into someone he knew, Marjorie Gillespie, at a store and they'd talked about going swimming on the coast together. And Harold told Marjorie that she could bring other people with her too.
So that day, Harold actually ended up heading to Cheviot Beach in Portsea, Victoria with Marjorie, her daughter, and two of Marjorie's good friends. There were also some military personnel stationed on the beach to make sure everything was safe for the ex-prime minister and his guests. Now, if you're picturing white sands and palm trees when you hear the words Cheviot Beach, think again. The terrain around this shoreline was rough.
There were steep hills and bluffs covered in brush, and while there was a sandy beach area, it was pretty narrow. So as soon as Harold and the others arrived, they looked at the ragged, choppy terrain and noticed some odd things about the ocean.
The tide was in and everyone was surprised at just how high the water was getting. Even the people who'd been to that beach at high tide before had never seen the waves come up the shore quite that far.
Now, one member of the party, a man named Martin Simpson, waded into the ocean up to his knees. And even though he wasn't in that deep at all, he could feel just how powerful the tides were that day. He didn't go any further because he was afraid of being swept out to sea. But Harold wasn't too worried. While the rest of the group was standing around talking about those choppy waves, he said, I know this beach like the back of my hand. And then he wandered away from the group without another word.
It was like he was sick of the debate. He just wanted to get in the water like everyone was standing around talking about and he was like, whatever, I'm going in. So a little while later, one of Harold's companions, a man named Alan Stewart, decided to go for a swim too. And as rough as the waves looked from the beach, he didn't have any trouble keeping his head above water. He never thought he was in any real danger. But he noticed that Harold was swimming much further out than he was and in water that looked a lot choppier.
Alan didn't feel confident enough to go out that far, but Harold didn't seem to be in any trouble, so he didn't really worry about him. In the meanwhile, a few of their other companions decided to walk up and down the beach rather than take a dip. Marjorie checked in with her daughter and some other guests, then tried to figure out what she wanted to do next. She wasn't sure if she really was in the mood to swim or not. So while she was trying to make up her mind, Marjorie glanced at Harold, who was still swimming at this point.
and she noticed the same thing that Alan had. He seemed much further out than he'd normally go. And honestly, he'd been out in the water for a really long time. Marjorie knew Harold, and Harold was the sort of guy who usually liked to just swim out and then turn around and come right back. So she wasn't used to him going on these long distance swims like what he was doing that day.
So just as Marjorie had that thought, something about the ocean suddenly changed very dramatically. One second, Harold was swimming through water that was a little choppy but still manageable. And the next, the waves began frothing and bubbling around him, almost like they had instantly begun to boil. Now in the midst of all this disturbance, Harold's head goes underwater and it doesn't come back up.
So for a little while, Marjorie just stood there trying to make sense of what she had just seen. She kept skimming the water surface, waiting for Harold to pop back up for air. And when he didn't, she ran to find the other people on the beach with her. She asked them all if they'd seen where Harold went. Now, while Marjorie was running around talking to people, Alan also noticed that Harold had vanished from his sight.
He hadn't been watching at the exact moment that the water had started bubbling around Harold and he went under. So he didn't actually see him go under, but he was now feeling very nervous too. So he ran up to the beach and found that Marjorie had already told everyone else that Harold seemed to be missing in the water and they needed to find him.
Now, the nearest military bodyguard was standing at the top of a cliff and he hadn't realized anything was wrong yet. Harold had literally vanished in the blink of an eye. It was very easy to miss, as evidenced by the fact that almost nobody had noticed. But now Marjorie and the others climbed up to the top of the cliff and they explained everything that had happened. The military man looked through his binoculars and confirmed for himself that Harold was not visible in the water. He was just nowhere to be seen.
Well, right away, the military called in some professional divers to get into the ocean and see if they could find Harold. And then step two was to call the police.
And from there, the search was massive. There were rescue teams from the local and state police departments, the army, the coast guard, the Navy, the Marine board, the fire brigade, numerous ambulance services, and the list just goes on and on. There were teams scouring the shore, rescue boats and helicopters surveying everything from above,
At one point, there were no fewer than 300 people working simultaneously to locate and rescue the prime minister. Now, none of them found a trace of Harold. And each minute that went by with no sign of him, the less optimistic everyone felt. Each second counts when someone could be drowning. And Harold's search lasted for hours and then for days and
By that Tuesday, December 19th, it was clear that Harold was probably not alive. He was legally declared dead on that day, but that didn't mean the search was over. Remember, Harold was a major public figure, the Prime Minister of Australia. The authorities wanted to make sure he got a proper burial, not only for the sake of his family, but for the country that he'd served.
And the officials were confident that Harold's remains would be found before too much longer. They talked to some fishermen who worked near that particular stretch of shoreline. The investigators asked a lot of questions about what tends to happen to objects that get caught in the currents around Portsea. They all agreed that within three weeks max, Harold's remains would probably wash up.
Well, those predictions were wrong. On January 4th, all of the rescue teams called off their searches. They had failed to recover Harold's remains and even to find any evidence suggesting what had happened to him. The official statement, which the government released to the press, said this, It is the opinion of all concerned that it is quite hopeless to pursue search further.
Now, there are quite a few details about Harold's disappearance that strike people as odd. First, it's the fact that the body never turned up. Even to this day, it has never been recovered. And like I just mentioned, the fishermen who worked around the area thought it was almost guaranteed to be found pretty quickly after the disappearance. But instead, it was like Harold had just vanished into thin air.
Then there was the fact that Harold was a very strong swimmer. He went out to Cheviot Beach all the time, and all his friends agreed that he had a real gift for endurance. Remember, he played multiple sports in college. He was a very fit, healthy person. Not the sort of guy who'd just get tired and slip beneath the waves.
In fact, just a few weeks before his disappearance, Harold actually went diving on the same beach with another friend. They dropped crawfish traps on the ocean floor, waited for them to fill up, and then hauled them to shore. The traps held a total of 23 pounds of seafood. And Harold was swimming around carrying them with no problem.
Then, only two days before he went missing, on December 15th, Harold had a regular checkup with his doctor, and he walked away with a totally clean bill of health. The physician said there wasn't anything wrong with him that might lead to the drowning. And I'll also note that some of Harold's friends were surprised by those reports of him swimming out really far from shore and passing through turbulent waters. Again, that wasn't Harold's personality at all. He was a good swimmer, yes, but part of that was that he knew his limits.
It's sadly pretty common for people to overestimate their abilities. They swim too far from shore, get caught in strong currents, and then can't make their way back. But Harold was too experienced and too cautious to make that sort of mistake. At least this is what his friends say. If he was swimming a great distance from shore, it was either because the water was still and safe enough for him to know it was okay, or there was something else going on.
Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things and one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach.
Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.
I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course, we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now, I'm on chapter two. I've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.
Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me. If you're wondering whether custom hair care is worth the hype, let me tell you it is. And that's why I'm obsessed with Proz.
Since 2017, Proz has transformed traditional hair and skincare with a made-to-order model that reduces waste, celebrates unique beauty over one-size-fit-all beauty standards, and works better than off-the-shelf alternatives. Developed in Paris and bottled fresh in Brooklyn, Proz combines the know-how of its world-class team of in-house cosmetic chemists with an advanced AI algorithm that personalizes your formulas
based on 80 plus unique factors. You literally go on, take the quiz, it asks you all types of questions and then they personalize your hair care. Since I switched to pros, I've noticed that my hair is so much shinier, stronger, and my color actually lasts longer. And because you're always changing, so is your pros. Your formulas evolve alongside you and pros will address any new concerns, adjust your formulas with the seasons and learn from your feedback with an always custom fit.
You guys, Proz is so confident that they'll bring out your best hair that they're offering an exclusive trial offer of 50% off your first hair care subscription. Order at proz.com slash dark.
Pros.com/dark. Go on, take the quiz. See what they come up with. Take your free consultation, get your one of a kind formula and see the difference custom hair care can make with 50% off at pros, P-R-O-S-E.com/dark. Let's get back into the episode. And I also think it's worth noting, this wasn't the first time Harold had some kind of freak accident while swimming in the ocean. It wasn't even the first time that year.
In May of 1967, Harold was snorkeling when he realized his equipment was defective. Right away, he surfaced. He knew better than to risk his health and safety with malfunctioning snorkeling gear. But he was so freaked out, he hyperventilated until he almost was on the verge of collapsing. Luckily, Harold had some friends with him on the beach that day, and they saw that he was having a tough time, and they helped bring him back to dry land.
And if that had been an isolated incident, it would be easy to say that he maybe just had a freak accident. But for this experienced, accomplished swimmer to have two life-threatening aquatic accidents in just six months, one of which apparently ended with his death, let's just say it was hard to write them off as a coincidence.
Now, with so many discrepancies that didn't add up, it was only a matter of time until people would start trying to explain Harold's disappearance with various tinfoil tales. In fact, just one day after Harold went missing, before he'd even been declared dead, Australian citizens began writing letters to various elected officials and other government employees. By and large, these letters said that Harold's disappearance couldn't be an ordinary drowning.
One American lawyer even wrote, there's a better than 50% chance that Mr. Holt's death was not accidental, but resulted from expert sabotage, probably foreign.
In fact, one popular theory was that Harold might have been poisoned to death. The idea was that someone could have tampered with something he ate or drank before he got in the water. Now, technically, they wouldn't even have had to give him a deadly poison. It could just be a drug that made him a little sleepy or impacted his coordination. Now, that might be all it would take for him to lose control while he was swimming and disappear under the waves. Exactly like what the witnesses saw.
Now, under normal circumstances, if someone wanted to assassinate Harold this way, they would obviously get caught pretty quick, or at least it wouldn't be hard to figure out his real cause of death once the autopsy was performed. Except, of course, Harold never received an autopsy. He couldn't get one since his body was never recovered. Meaning if someone did want to murder the prime minister and make it look like an accident, drugging his food would actually be the perfect crime.
There was another problem with this idea though. See, all of Harold's companions that day, Marjorie, her daughter, all of their friends, testified that they didn't see him eat or drink anything once they all arrived at the beach.
Maybe he was exposed to something very slow acting the night before or earlier that morning, but it would be hard to time things perfectly so the drug would take effect while he was swimming in the water and not just a few minutes before or after his swim. All to say, there were a few reasons that the death by poison explanation just didn't exactly take off.
But some people focused in on the lack of a body and wondered if it meant that Harold might not really have died. Maybe he faked his own drowning because he wanted to escape from his life. Which might sound strange, right? He was a powerful prime minister, one of the most important people in all of Australia, holding a position he'd worked his entire career to achieve. Why would he want to get away from all that?
Well, to all appearances, Harold was in a very good mood the day before his disappearance and even that morning. But some people have suggested that he was just faking his positive feelings. He had a very high profile, stressful job, and it very well might have been getting to him. On top of that, there were a lot of rumors going around that Harold was having some kind of affair with Marjorie, the woman who came to Cheviot Beach with him.
See, Harold was married, but his wife was not on the beach that day. Marjorie was. And to some people, their close friendship seemed just a little too close, even potentially romantic. Now, these were rumors that Marjorie never confirmed, but she also didn't deny them either when government officials investigated the disappearance.
And ultimately, it didn't matter. Either situation would have been bad for Harold. If he was having an affair, he might have worried he was about to get caught. If he was totally innocent, he was probably bothered that people were destroying his reputation with false allegations. All to say, there was a lot of stress out there that may have been getting to him. It might have been tempting to look for some kind of escape.
But I mean, faking his own death would have been very difficult for Harold. He would have needed some way to get away from Cheviot Beach without being spotted by Marjorie and her friends, the military service people who were stationed there, or anyone else. He'd have to avoid all the search parties, and he'd have to spend the rest of his life somewhere he wouldn't be recognized even though he was a major world leader. Again, it just seems hard to see how he could have pulled this off.
And unfortunately, when people are so unhappy with their life circumstances that they'd go to any length to escape them, they don't usually decide to fake their own deaths. In fact, some people think Harold might have just simply taken his own life. He could have gone very far out to sea that day, tiring himself out, knowing that eventually he'd be too exhausted to get back. But none of these tinfoil tales really took off quite like the one I want to share with you next.
This explanation for Harold's disappearance is very famous. It's not widely believed necessarily, but it has been repeated and reported enough that almost everyone in Australia has probably heard about it at some point. In fact, an investigative reporter named Anthony Gray wrote a book laying out the evidence called The Prime Minister Was a Spy, and his theory goes like this.
As you can probably guess from the title, Anthony believed that Harold was actually a spy. Specifically, he was working for the Chinese government and he'd infiltrated Australia's parliament and later the office of the prime minister specifically to gather information. Now this was really important because Australia was supporting the United States and the South Vietnamese army in the Vietnam War.
And China had also taken sides, but on the other side of that conflict. So the US and Australia were allied with the South while China was working with the North.
Now, if Harold really was a spy, he could learn all about American military strategy, then pass that intel along to China, and then China in turn could use it to help the Northern Vietnamese Army. Now, according to Anthony, the author, he had proof that Harold had been working as a spy for almost 40 years, and that was since the summer of 1929.
Meaning if these claims are true, Harold was actually working for a foreign government before his political career even began. He was still a law student, according to the author, when he was recruited. But his handlers lucked out when Harold went on to become a member of parliament and then to hold the highest elected position in Australia.
However, by 1967, according to Anthony, other Australian government leaders were starting to get suspicious. Harold was coming to realize that he couldn't safely keep serving as the prime minister, so rather than risk treason charges, he made his escape. And on that December day in 1967, his mission came to a close.
And as the theory goes, the reason Harold swam so far out from the beach and the reason he stayed in the water for so long was because he knew there was a submarine stationed just off the shore and his handlers had sent it to pick him up and then take him home to China. So Harold swam as far as he could. And then when he couldn't make it another foot farther, Chinese scuba divers grabbed him from below and guided him the rest of the way to the submarine's hatch. So in other words,
Harold didn't drown in this theory. He got on board the vessel and rode it all the way from Australia. Then he spent the rest of his days in China. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out. That's
That's how it was for me. So I cleared out my cabinet and reset my health with CBD from CB Distillery. And it has been a real change. Now, CB Distillery's targeted formulations are made from the highest quality clean ingredients.
No fluff, no fillers, just pure, effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health. In two non-clinical surveys, 81% of customers experienced more calm, 80% said CBD helped with pain after physical activity, and an impressive 8%.
90% said they slept better with CBD. And you guys, I have taken CBD to help me sleep and I always zonk out so fast and have such a restful night's sleep. Those nights that I'm tossing and turning, I always reach for my CBD. So if you struggle with a health concern and haven't found relief, make the change like I did to CB distillery. And with over
2 million customers and a solid 100% money back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. I have a 20% discount to get you started.
Visit cbdistillery.com and use code dark for 20% off you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to cbdistillery.com, code dark. cbdistillery.com, use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode.
And yes, a lot of people do think this theory is pretty ridiculous. While Anthony said in his book that he had proof for all these claims, he never actually publicly presented anything concrete. There was no concrete evidence that Harold really was a spy. Plus, Harold's family noted that he didn't even like Chinese food. He certainly wasn't some double agent escaping to live in that country for the rest of his life, at least not willingly.
But I have heard another variation on this secret submarine idea. Some people think Harold wasn't a spy and he didn't get in the sub willingly. Instead, a hostile foreign government might have kidnapped him specifically to torture him for information.
Now if you've ever been to Cheviot Beach, you may see one major problem with this tinfoil tail and it's that the water along the shore is very shallow. It's still deep enough to swim in and even drown in, sure, but there's no way a submarine could have pulled up and then sailed away without surfacing or being spotted. So needless to say, almost everyone associated with the Australian government says there's just no way Harold actually rode away from that beach in any kind of underwater vessel.
In fact, this tinfoil tale is considered so ridiculous that some world governments have made sort of a joke about it. The United States Navy has a submarine named the USS Harold E. Holt. And as for Australia, where the disappearance may have hit closer to home, well, they honored Harold and his death by naming a swimming pool after him.
Now, jokes aside, the Australian government has denied every one of these tinfoil tales. To this day, they still say Harold died in an accidental drowning. And on January 22nd, 1968, they even released a 96-page police report on the disappearance. It included all of the witness statements, documents, and other information that was compiled right after Harold disappeared.
It wasn't a full investigation into the tinfoil tails by any means, but it was an exhaustive list of all the reasons they still thought Harold had drowned. Now, this report did point out some of the discrepancies in the official story, and a lot of witness statements included observations that Harold shouldn't have drowned that day due to a variety of factors. It's all things that I touched on earlier, that Harold was too strong of a swimmer, he wasn't a risk taker, and if he had drowned, his body should have washed up.
But even with those odd details and witness statements, the authorities still stuck to the official story. In fairness, this is something we see a lot in these kinds of cases. It seems that the majority of official investigations almost always end with the announcement that the original explanation is the real one.
And interestingly, this police report was put together right after Harold's disappearance. It was published just a little over one month after he was declared dead. Now, while the report presented the facts of the case, there was no real investigation into any alternative theories. It didn't even mention topics like submarines, suicide, or assassination. The
The Australian government has never done an official inquiry into Harold's death or investigated the possibility that it might be something other than an accident. Part of that has to do with the way Australian law was written at the time of Harold's disappearance. Legally, they couldn't do an inquest without a body. So to paraphrase Taylor Swift, their stance was no body, no crime.
Now to support their conclusions, the Australian officials pointed at several factors that could have contributed to Harold's death.
First, at some point before his disappearance, he hurt his arm or his shoulder somehow, and it's not entirely clear what he did. As from the sound of it, Harold didn't schedule an appointment with his doctor. He did, however, convince a friend who worked as a physician to write him a prescription for aspirin mixed with morphine. It was the only way to manage the intense pain. That friend believed the issue had to do with a disc in his neck which may have been pressing against a nerve.
And Harold was still feeling the pain just one day before the disappearance. He was playing tennis with the same doctor friend that day, and he complained about how his arm felt. It may have been hurting enough to make it maybe hard to swim the next day. In fact, after a few rounds of tennis, that doctor friend specifically told Harold to stay out of the water until he felt better. This was advice that Harold clearly ignored, and it seemed like that might have cost him his life.
Now, on top of that, like I said, the tides and currents were unusually rough that day. I mentioned before that Marjorie and the other people on the beach were shocked at how high the water looked. It wasn't all in their minds. There was an unusual amount of turbulence at sea. And it lasted all throughout those searches that the officials conducted over the next few days looking for Harold's body. In fact, one of the search boats capsized while they were trying to find Harold.
All three of the men on board were thrown into the churning, lashing waves. One was able to swim back to the boat, but the other two needed to be rescued. Luckily, all three did eventually get back to land, and they survived without major injuries. But that should just show how dangerous the water was around this time. And, I mean, he could have got attacked by a shark.
Now, I think it's interesting that Harold was only the third Australian prime minister to ever die in office. And no sitting prime minister in the country has died since then. He was the last. That may be one reason that so many people have had such a hard time accepting the official story. It's just not normal for a major world leader to disappear right in front of people's eyes. These things are just not supposed to happen.
Now, sometimes real life can be filled with strange, unlikely events, but the question really comes down to one idea, which is more unlikely, that Harold Holt really drowned in a sudden freak accident or that something more nefarious was at play? And those are the questions I will leave you with. I'll see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye.
