MISSING: Ben McDaniel & Kenneth Plaisted

Transcript

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Speaker 2 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 22 And I'm Britt.

Speaker 2 And really quick, before we jump into the episode, I actually have an announcement. Some of you, a lot of you have been waiting for.
I've been waiting for it.

Speaker 2 My second novel, which is called The Missing Half, is now available for pre-order.

Speaker 2 It comes out May 6, 2025, but you can either go to my website, AshleyFlowers.com, or you can pre-order it wherever books are sold. You won't want to miss it.

Speaker 22 I cannot wait.

Speaker 2 Oh, girl, you're getting an advanced coffee.

Speaker 22 And I support a sister. I'm going to pre-order.
I'm going to pre-order the audiobook. I do all of it.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you.
But so I'll put a link in the show notes as well. But if you guys are looking forward to a new mystery novel from me, I am so proud of this one.

Speaker 2 If you loved all good people here, you are going to love this one just as much, if not more.

Speaker 2 So, with that said, I would like to tell you a real story, not a fiction story.

Speaker 2 And actually, I have two real stories to tell you today, and they have their differences separated by decades and circumstances, but both have left me with a list of questions that I just can't answer.

Speaker 2 And I keep thinking that maybe someone out there can.

Speaker 2 These are the stories of Ben McDaniel and Kenneth Playstead.

Speaker 2 It's a hot Friday morning at around 9 a.m. on August 20th, 2010, when a guy named Eduardo, who is an employee of this place called Vortex Spring.
It's like a camping RV adventure park kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And it's in the Panhandle of Florida. But this guy Eduardo, he notices something odd.

Speaker 2 There is this pickup truck that he is familiar with that has been sitting in the exact same spot since Wednesday, two days before.

Speaker 2 Now, the owner of the pickup truck is 30-year-old Ben McDaniel, and this guy is a regular. He comes and and scuba dives in the large natural spring on the property all the time.

Speaker 2 And there is also this underwater cave system within like the spring. Like it literally just looks like a little basin that you go in, but when you go down deep, it goes

Speaker 2 down and then like over. Over.
Yeah. And it is straight up terrifying.
I mean, there is a literal sign at the entrance of when it turns into a cave. There is a picture of the Grim Reaper.

Speaker 2 The words read, go no farther. There is nothing in this cave worth dying for.
Which, like, first of all, I wouldn't even be in the water, but

Speaker 2 enough said. Now, the cave, I already told you it's like big, but it goes 150 feet down and 1500 feet long.
We're talking over a quarter of a mile.

Speaker 2 And some areas, this is where I get like being in this booth makes me like claustrophobic because some areas of this place are so narrow that divers have to wear their air tanks like sideways just to like squeeze through.

Speaker 22 I'm sorry, people do this for fun.

Speaker 2 Some people. I mean, this is like, this is these adrenaline junkies.
But here's what's concerning because that, it's that area, this cave where Eduardo last saw Ben on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 So Eduardo and this buddy were finishing a dive and Ben was actually going down. So they're all in the water toward the beginning of the cave where you first go in.

Speaker 2 And again, Ben being there, totally normal. Eduardo saw him all the time.
And he saw him so much because he was literally taking a sabbatical at the time, focusing focusing specifically on diving.

Speaker 2 Like he wanted to become an instructor.

Speaker 22 That's all he was doing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So like even him seeing the truck the second day, Eduardo was like, oh, yeah, no big deal.

Speaker 2 But it being in the exact same spot, not moved for two days, like that's when he gets concerned, especially because of where he left Ben in the cave.

Speaker 2 And especially because of how he got into the cave. Because you see, the cave is actually blocked off by this gate because it's so dangerous.
Like not anyone can just go in there.

Speaker 2 You're supposed to have a special certification and you have to actually show that certification to the Vortex Spring dive shop and they have to give you a physical key to unlock the gate so you can access it.

Speaker 2 Which like I approve of all of this. Yeah.
Otherwise it's like a liability. But here's the thing.
Ben didn't have that certification and he didn't have much experience cave diving.

Speaker 2 I mean he had been scuba diving since he was 14, but he was taking a lot of lessons kind of really fast to get himself up to speed and was doing this like like a little bit self-taught so he didn't have what he needed how did he get in the cave then so here's the thing eduardo knew that ben used to like either jimmy the lock or he would like scoot under it or whatever like he could tell that it had been messed with before and like he knew ben was doing stuff he wasn't technically certified for so that wednesday when he went down there and he saw ben he like originally swam past him and then he's like you know what i bet that's what he's doing i bet he's gonna go past there and it's like seven o'clock at night he's like like, everyone's about to leave.

Speaker 2 If something were to happen, it's not that he's going to pass someone else. No one's going to be here.
So Eduardo actually turned around and unlocked it and let him in the cave.

Speaker 2 So he was thinking that maybe this was like lowering the risk. Like, oh, I don't want him getting stuck.
I don't like, if I can just let him in, you know, that'll help the chances or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And like you said, he's been messing with the lock. He's been getting through.
He's been practicing secretly on the sly. Like, yeah.
I could see where it seems very harmful.

Speaker 2 And he knows that Ben has like gone past it before. Right.

Speaker 2 But again, knowing now he let him in this area that he wasn't certified for, that that's where he's last seen, Eduardo is super concerned. And so he notifies the manager who calls the police.

Speaker 2 And everyone's kind of thinking that Ben is in this cave. I mean, just based on the circumstances.
But if he is, police need to know with 100% certainty.

Speaker 2 So Eduardo and several other divers from the area volunteered to go into the cave and start looking for him.

Speaker 22 So was this like a rescue mission or more of a recovery mission? Like, could Ben still be alive in this cave?

Speaker 2 I, I don't know. I'm not like an expert enough, but my guess is I don't think he's going to have enough oxygen two days later, especially when you do a dive like that.

Speaker 2 From everything I've read specific to this case, like you bring extra tanks for yourself, like on the way up, mostly for like decompressing and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But I don't think anyone thinks that if he's down there, and I also don't think there's any like nooks and crannies where he could like find an air pocket.

Speaker 22 Right.

Speaker 2 This is so different than a lot of other open water diving.

Speaker 22 Or even like lost in the woods cases we've covered. Right.
You can't just find a cave and hole up and eat berries. Like this is completely different.

Speaker 2 Completely. And in an episode of Disappeared, I mean, they described this cave as like one way in, one way out.
So it's not like he's even like coming out the other end.

Speaker 2 So we're talking recovery, most likely. And by the way, this wouldn't have even been the first time.

Speaker 2 There is a total of six people who at this point in time had died in Vortex Springs, like obviously not all the same time, but like over the years.

Speaker 2 And the interesting part about that is all of those bodies had been found. So wherever Ben is down there, they should be able to find him.

Speaker 2 Now, as the divers descend into the water, the sheriff's deputies search Ben's truck. And inside, they find his cell phone, they find his wallet.

Speaker 2 It's got his driver's license, cash, somewhere between like, I've seen $680, I've seen $1,100.

Speaker 2 So by all appearances, it looks to the sheriff's deputies that Ben had every intention to return, which just supports the idea that something happened to Ben in that cave.

Speaker 2 Well, now they have to go relay this information to Ben's parents who live in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 2 And this is extraordinarily devastating news for them, not just because like their son is missing in a cave, but they've actually already lost one son just two years prior.

Speaker 2 It was Ben's younger brother, Paul, who passed away. And now they're being told by authorities that Ben most likely drowned in Vortex Springs.

Speaker 2 Now, at the the time, Ben was staying with his dog Spooner at their Santa Rosa Beach, Florida condo. And I told you, he was kind of on this like sabbatical.

Speaker 2 He went there as a little bit of like a life reset. His marriage had failed.
This construction company that he owned went out of business. So he's hoping that he's going to start over.

Speaker 2 He was going to become a dive instructor. But now that dream looks like it has ended in tragedy.

Speaker 2 Because back at Vortex, some of the divers are coming up with evidence that Ben did go down, but never came back up.

Speaker 2 According to that disappeared episode, three decompression tanks are brought to the surface and they have Ben's name on them.

Speaker 2 And I kind of talked about this a little bit, but the divers use these decompression tanks after a deep dive to get rid of toxic levels of nitrogen that actually build up in the body.

Speaker 2 So basically you don't use them as you come up. You get really sick.
It's called DCS or the Benz is what it's kind of known as.

Speaker 2 And I can't tell you how much time I spent on like this part of the story because I am so far from being a professional diver. So please be kind if I'm not spot on.

Speaker 2 I tried to piece together as much as I could. But the point is, if these tanks are still at the bottom, it means that Ben never decompressed.

Speaker 22 Like they were never used.

Speaker 2 Right. Essentially.
And there's this documentary called Ben's Vortex and it claims, because this is the other weird part.

Speaker 2 It's like where exactly they're found doesn't totally add up and what's in them doesn't totally add up.

Speaker 2 One of the tanks is found 200 feet inside the cave, but then the other two are found kind of together, like in 25 feet of water.

Speaker 2 And this is problematic because normally divers leave those tanks like as breadcrumbs alone. You need a little bit and then you need more.

Speaker 22 Like a little trail.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you don't necessarily cluster them together. One journalist, Cindy Wolfe, she did an article for the Commercial Appeal and she put it as like life-saving breadcrumbs, basically.

Speaker 22 So what you're saying is like where they are doesn't even make sense for what he was doing.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 22 And mostly what doesn't make sense are the two that are like close to the top like by the time you're there you don't that was kind of gonna be my next question like they're probably also not just like distance across if that makes sense but distance up yes you're decompressing at different points of depth yeah and even when they find them

Speaker 2 there are weird things like there's things that should be on them that are missing like valves handles and regulators also the one found in the cave was full, but the ones close up were like not totally full.

Speaker 2 And there is this one person who was on Reddit who did this like six part series. And this person, it seemed like they were a diver themselves and was like giving a ton of details.

Speaker 2 So like caveat, this is Reddit, but this is where I felt like I finally got my head wrapped around the weirdness of this whole thing. But he was saying that, and he had some pictures to prove it too.

Speaker 2 So I don't know where he got those from, but like the one that was in the cave 200 feet away, they all had Ben's name on it, but they were like written completely differently.

Speaker 2 The two that were together in the strangest place were written one way and they looked older. I believe he said older.

Speaker 2 And then the other one, Ben's name, was written in a completely different place in like different letters. So it was just like a lot of strange.

Speaker 22 They weren't even done at the same time.

Speaker 2 Which, again, you can buy tanks at different times. You got an old one, you got a new one, like whatever.
But you're missing pieces. Like none of it fits, right?

Speaker 2 Every part you pick apart, there's something weird with these tanks.

Speaker 22 Okay, but you said he wasn't the most experienced cave diver.

Speaker 2 That is true.

Speaker 22 All this be chalked up to like not quite knowing all the tricks of the trade or anything like that?

Speaker 2 I think it's a little bit possible. Again, the old tanks, new tanks, bows.
I don't know. I think it's a little strange.

Speaker 2 I feel like if you've done even a basic amount of diving, you understand to have them spread out. And again, he had been open water diving since he was 14.

Speaker 2 I don't know what it means, but I think it could mean a number of things. And we can kind of discuss what exactly later, but it's just all strange.

Speaker 2 So they're thinking he's down there, but all law enforcement can do now is wait for answers as these rescue divers go one deeper than the last, exploring every nook and cranny and corner as they go through.

Speaker 2 And it's worth noting that Ben is a big dude. He's over six feet tall, 200 pounds, not someone that would be easily missed or could just like squirrel away.

Speaker 2 But day after day, they don't see any sign of him. But again, there's no reason to think that Ben can't be found like the others.
It's just going to take some time or the right person.

Speaker 2 Because Monday, there is some hope in the form of a guy named Ed Sorensen, who's like the area's Michael Jordan for underwater cave rescue and recovery.

Speaker 2 His wife had actually text him while he was out of town on another diving trip. And she's like letting him know what's happening, kind of like where they are in their backyard.

Speaker 2 And once he gets back home, Ed agrees to go help search for Ben.

Speaker 22 And like this guy is like, if he can't find him, Ben isn't out there.

Speaker 2 Like he's not there.

Speaker 2 And some of Ed's friends are telling him not to do this even because even they think it's too dangerous.

Speaker 2 They're like, hey, if if he wasn't initially found like immediately, that means he's probably somewhere.

Speaker 22 So far in.

Speaker 2 So far in and obviously he's succumbed to it. You shouldn't do this.
But it sounds like Ed ignores those worries and he goes in anyway. And I have no idea how long this guy is down there.

Speaker 2 But when he comes back up, Ed delivers some startling news.

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Speaker 1 The pack fits perfectly in your car, cup holder, or bag, so it's within reach when you need it most. Grab Icebreakers Gum online or at a store near you.

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Speaker 2 Ed says that he doesn't think Ben is in the cave. Now, of course, everyone on the shore is puzzled by this news, but Ed is able to back up his story.

Speaker 2 He says he searched every crevice and he went about 1,700 feet in. This is 200 feet further than was even mapped on the cage.
Right.

Speaker 2 And he said, the whole way, there's no sign of Ben and not just his body, but he's like, listen, Ben is a bigger guy than I am. So if he made it as far as I did, there should be signs of it.

Speaker 2 There should be marks from his helmet. Disruption.
Marks from the tanks, like, cause it's all like limestone around there. He's like, you would see that.
You'd see it in the clay.

Speaker 2 And even if you can't see the marks, there's something else. He says, you know, good old mother nature, like if, again, Ben is not alive down there.
If Ben is down there, he is dead.

Speaker 2 His body is decaying. You should be seeing all of these fish

Speaker 2 and eels. Exactly.
And there's none of that.

Speaker 2 Just to be safe, though, because he is getting a lot of resistance from people who are like, we get what you're saying, but he has to be.

Speaker 2 So he even goes back a couple of days later and does another search just to be a zillion percent sure. But after his final dive, he tells authorities that they have to look elsewhere for Ben.

Speaker 2 Dude has been recovering bodies from caves for over a decade by this point, and Ben is the first person that he can't locate. And to Ed, that means he is not there exactly.

Speaker 2 But Ben's family still is convinced he is in there. So the search presses on, but over 36 days, 16 different divers search that cave for Ben and they find nothing.

Speaker 2 And all of these are experienced divers. It's not a bunch of amateurs down there just like throwing their hat in the ring.

Speaker 2 Now, according to a Tampa Bay Times article, there was one person who thought that it could be possible that Ben's body was maybe naturally flushed out or washed out of the cave and then just ended up somewhere else.

Speaker 2 Because, I mean, again, we say like there's no other way out, but like you truly don't know where an underground cave goes.

Speaker 22 Right. There's no way out listed on the current map that they have.

Speaker 2 Well, and they didn't even map the whole thing, right? They mapped 1500 feet and Ed went 1700 feet. Right.
So they don't know. Again, maybe there's something they didn't see.

Speaker 2 So the sheriff's department even sends a helicopter. They're like searching nearby swamps, air, land, and sea.
I mean, nothing is found anywhere.

Speaker 22 Did anyone ever look at Eduardo?

Speaker 2 Like, could he be lying?

Speaker 22 All we have are his words and these tanks with Ben's name on it, but they aren't where they're supposed to be.

Speaker 2 So we have his word, but the thing is, it's actually not just his word because he was with someone else that day. Him and a friend were diving.

Speaker 2 He was the only one that went back to unlock the gate from what I understand.

Speaker 22 But this other person would have seen...

Speaker 2 Yeah, this other guy. His name's Chuck.
So technically two people saw Ben. And it's unclear when, but I do know that police at least check this out.
They have the guys take polygraphs.

Speaker 2 Both of them passed. And the one thing I keep coming back to is Eduardo admitted to opening that gate, which he wasn't supposed to do.
So I feel like he's being overly honest.

Speaker 2 Like if he did something.

Speaker 22 He could have kept that to himself.

Speaker 2 He didn't need to say that. And everyone would have been like, oh, Ben didn't have the certification.
He couldn't have even gotten there. So it seems like he's being really forthcoming.

Speaker 2 So this is what Ben's family and the authorities are dealing with. A puzzle that seems to be missing a piece, some kind of evidence that Ben is in the cave or not in the cave.

Speaker 2 And like, everyone just keeps going back and forth, back and forth. And it doesn't get any better because they end up bringing cadaver dogs out.

Speaker 2 And I know that they get some kind of decomp hit indicating that there could be a body in the water specifically. But here's the thing: the county health department is actually testing the water.

Speaker 2 They do this a couple of times and they say they can tell by the bacteria in the water if there's any sort of decomposition going on.

Speaker 2 And when they're doing their testing now, they are not seeing any signs of it. So, again, you got decomp, but you got no bacteria.

Speaker 22 Well, and like, also, it's an ocean. I feel like the dogs hang on decomp at an ocean.

Speaker 2 That's true. I don't know.

Speaker 22 It's pretty likely to me. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, authorities do get more help when, in October, the family hires this guy named Steve Keene.

Speaker 2 Now, Steve is a special get because he is actually the one who originally mapped out the cave back in 2003. According to that Tampa Bay Times piece, Steve spent over 100 hours doing this.

Speaker 2 So to say that he knows this cave is almost a gross understatement. So Steve makes.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven dives looking for Ben.

Speaker 2 And just like the others, he finds, no surprise here, nothing. If Ben is in this cave, he doesn't know where he could be.

Speaker 22 I mean, I'm kind of siding with Ed at this point. Like, it's because Ben's not in the cave.

Speaker 2 And according to that disappeared episode, like, by this time, it's sort of the consensus among the diving community.

Speaker 2 And actually, a few people start thinking that this whole thing is some kind of hoax, something that was set up by Ben and that maybe he's off on a beach somewhere.

Speaker 2 Like he just ran away from his life.

Speaker 22 What makes them come to that that conclusion?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I think they point to like the tanks earlier. Like, again, they didn't make sense.
So you wonder, like, were they staged? Mm-hmm. They also point to a map of Ben's that is found.

Speaker 2 Cause I guess like he made this map of like his own travels within that cave, but the drawings or like the notations on them don't actually match what's there.

Speaker 2 And so People were wondering, had he been faking it? And so that people thought that's where he would be and that there was some kind of history of him going.

Speaker 22 So like where he said he was wasn't part of the cave or wasn't like mapped the way it should have been.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, like, I don't have any context for like, is this dude just bad at maps? I couldn't draw a map. Fair.
Or is there something fishy with this?

Speaker 2 Just like there's something fishy with the tanks. And the thing that they often point back to as well is that Ben could have had some reasons for wanting to disappear.

Speaker 2 He did get in trouble with the law in the past, things like drug possession, theft, and assault. It doesn't sound like he went to jail for any of those, though.

Speaker 2 But the bigger, more current red flag is Ben's finances at the time. So Ben owed almost $50,000 to the IRS, almost $1,200 in unpaid state taxes.

Speaker 2 And after his construction company went out of business, Ben got into a real estate venture. It sounds like after he owed a bunch of money.

Speaker 2 So he has to sell his house to pay off half a million dollars of debt. Oh my God.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it sounds like over the last few years, he was living off a $200,000 mortgage that he took out against a house that his grandfather had sold him for $10.

Speaker 2 So his financial burden was real. But to Ben's family, they're like, we felt like he was climbing out of that hole a little bit.

Speaker 2 And more than anything, the thing that they point to, as everyone's pointing to these things, they're like, listen, we already lost one son.

Speaker 2 And it's not their disbelief, but they're like, Ben wouldn't do that. Right.
Ben saw how hard that was on them.

Speaker 2 There's no way they believe that he would put them through that again, not intentionally.

Speaker 2 And for all of our proppet-loving people out there,

Speaker 2 Spooner, like he loved his dog and Spooner was left at home. Often he would take him like sometimes and, you know, if it's not too hot, leave him in the car, whatever.

Speaker 2 He knew that this was going to be a long dive. He left Spooner at home.
So for days, Spooner didn't get to go out. He didn't have food.
He didn't have water.

Speaker 2 And they're like, he's not just going to abandon his dog. Who knows when someone would have found him?

Speaker 2 Now, just to be safe, police check Ben's bank and phone records for any indication that something is off, but they don't find anything.

Speaker 2 The only thing they find when they're really like getting into his history is they find out in that Ben's vortex documentary. There was this one point where he was lying.

Speaker 2 So he was married at one point, that that marriage had dissolved. But while he was married, he had this fake Facebook account.

Speaker 2 He was flirting with other women, making up lies that he was a model and things like that. So not just cheating, but there's like this like history of lying.

Speaker 2 And they say, again, we have nothing in the phone records, whatever, but they say this could be proof that Ben could be deceptive and even assume another identity. Okay.

Speaker 22 I personally am going to need a little bit more than Ben was catfishing some people, maybe, to prove that this whole thing is an elaborate hoax he set up and he's off, I don't know, like sipping Mai Tai's and parasailing in the Caribbean or something.

Speaker 22 Like, yeah. The legal financial issues, maybe.

Speaker 2 I agree. I feel like there's so much context specifically with this case that like I'm missing.
And Ben, Ben did have a girlfriend at this time too, who had really been there for him.

Speaker 2 So that's something else that his family points to of like, okay, he did this to everyone.

Speaker 2 Like they just, despite this lies in the past, despite whatever, they just didn't feel like it was in his character.

Speaker 2 But here's the other thing that I'll say is that all the reasons police point to of why he might have abandoned his life and started one over, they also say, listen, maybe he didn't do all that.

Speaker 2 Maybe he was suffering in a different way. And maybe he did this taking his own life.

Speaker 22 I mean, yeah, when you don't have a body, you don't have really any evidence, anything is an option, right? Like

Speaker 22 anything gets picked apart. Anything can point to almost anything because you just don't have enough there.

Speaker 2 Which is why then this is where people spiral and they talk about all the things that don't make sense. They talk about the tanks.
Were they staged? Were they staged by Ben? Were they staged?

Speaker 22 Were they Ben's?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Now, even though police are thinking whatever it is that they're thinking, like it doesn't mean Ben's parents just give up looking for answers on on their own.

Speaker 2 Months go by with no new information.

Speaker 2 And then according to an article in Dothan Eagle by Morgan Carlson, in February of 2011, the family offers a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the recovery of Ben's body.

Speaker 2 And this sounds good. We see this a lot with families, but in this case, it might not actually be the best thing to do.

Speaker 2 And this actually really upsets people like Ed Sorensen, because the thought is that this reward could lead someone to to put themselves in danger. Like Ben didn't have the right certification.

Speaker 2 Is someone could be so motivated by money that they put themselves in a situation they normally wouldn't or shouldn't?

Speaker 22 It's one thing to ask people who are in this community familiar with the situation, but to ask the general public to do this is dangerous.

Speaker 2 I get that. And especially when you're asking them to go to a place where someone probably died.

Speaker 2 Like it's very scary.

Speaker 22 We know six people have died in the past.

Speaker 2 Right. But they're hoping, they don't necessarily back down right away, his family.
They're hoping it gets someone's attention. They're desperate.
Like families in this situation are desperate.

Speaker 2 And it actually does get someone's attention. A woman named Jill Heinerth sees this reward.
She's actually the one who makes the documentary eventually called Ben's Vortex.

Speaker 2 Jill is one of the top female cave divers in the world. And when she hears about this, she reaches out to Ben's family.

Speaker 2 And like many in the diving community, she and her husband, who she makes documentaries with, had been following the story online.

Speaker 2 And her goal here is just to inform the family, explain the risks that these rescued divers face by offering this reward.

Speaker 2 And eventually she agrees to document the cave and go look for Ben herself, hoping that this is going to bring them some kind of closure.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that she points out to the family, she explains to them that there are areas in which a diver or cases, I guess, in which a diver can panic.

Speaker 2 And like when that happens, there's like this whole phenomenon where they actually like burrow themselves into an area, which makes it almost like impossible to reach or even find them.

Speaker 2 According to that disappeared episode, this actually happened to a friend of Jill's and it took eight months to find her friend. So it's not like you just like find a corner and like sit down.

Speaker 2 I mean, somehow they like get into these tiny areas. So Jill goes to the cave.
She dives. She films the whole thing.
They have footage of her in this cave.

Speaker 2 I like, I had to stop a couple of times. I don't consider myself a super claustrophobic person, but seeing that footage,

Speaker 2 like I,

Speaker 2 there are some places, I saw this like map that was drawn. There were some places where it was like eight inches, and I'm like pretty sure.

Speaker 22 I can't fit through eight inches.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 like you'd have to put my whole body in a sausage casing, which I guess is like a wetsuit. But I mean, it like, I cannot believe people do this.
Like you said earlier, for fun. It's fun.

Speaker 2 Like it is wild to me.

Speaker 2 And in this documentary, she's like squeezing into spaces teeny tiny she does it though she comes back up and she agrees with all of the other divers ben is not in that cave i mean that's what i've been saying the one thing though she does find something interesting at the very end of the cave she finds a folding shovel which

Speaker 2 according to the disappeared episode, Ben often took something similar on his dives.

Speaker 2 So the thinking originally was like, oh, he could have used this to dig as he's like checking out different sections of the cave or whatever.

Speaker 22 But why didn't any of the other divers find it?

Speaker 2 That is the question, right? And I actually think that there's a good answer, though it comes from the comment section in something.

Speaker 2 Like I haven't actually seen this in a big document or whatever, but one time Ben's dad actually posted a comment on a scuba blog. And he said that the shovel that was found belonged to Steve King.

Speaker 2 So it sounds sounds like it was not Ben's. And it would explain why no one else found it.
Because if Steve's the one that leaves it there, it's not there until Jill goes away.

Speaker 22 And he's like one of the last people to go down and dive and look for him.

Speaker 2 And that would make a lot of sense. Like Steve went after Ed, after the others.
It wouldn't have been there. I don't know.

Speaker 22 Okay, but we know that he did dive with a tool like this.

Speaker 22 This shovel doesn't belong to Ben, but he could have been digging. He could have gone further.
He could have gotten himself

Speaker 2 stuck. I agree.
And again, knowing that he is is specifically digging, I'm like, oh, then he like definitely could have gotten himself in a bad situation.

Speaker 2 But then I go back to what even Ed said early on where he's like, but we'd see evidence of that. Like, where is the evidence in the clay, in the limestone?

Speaker 2 Where are the fish that are attracted to decay? Why aren't we seeing any of those signs? Like, we've got 200 feet into the cave is the last tank that's found.

Speaker 2 And we only know that because it's got Ben's name on it, not like, you know, we've got his DNA on it or something like that. After that, there's no sign of Ben anywhere.

Speaker 2 So, yes, he could have dug, but I don't know that it means that he did.

Speaker 22 So, was this the last time that anyone at like Jill, Steve, Ed's level of experience dived? Yeah.

Speaker 2 For him? Yeah, I think at least from what I found, I think this was the last like official dive.

Speaker 2 But that's not to say other people weren't looking because in March of 2012, Ed's worst fears come true when the family offered that reward because there is this 43-year-old diver named Larry Higginbotham who is found dead in the vortex cave.

Speaker 2 Now, his family claims that he wasn't looking for Ben. He was just diving.
But his diving friends seem to indicate that maybe he was, or maybe it was a little bit of both.

Speaker 2 And the friends actually point to a couple of reasons why they think that. Apparently, Larry was following Ben's story online, which We know a lot of the diving community was.

Speaker 2 And the difference is, though, he was actually talking about finding Ben. He talked about the reward money, which by the way, not only did they like keep the reward out, they actually upped it.

Speaker 2 And so by that point, it was like $30,000.

Speaker 2 And they say that would have been really tempting for Larry. Now, Ed Sorensen is actually the one who had to go in and retrieve Larry's body.

Speaker 2 And he says he was found next to a shovel, indicating that he might have been digging or trying to access a tight area of the cave. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 At the end of the day, I don't know if Larry is looking for Ben. I don't know if Larry is just diving, but guess what? Larry's found.
Right.

Speaker 22 Right. Yeah.
Just like everyone else Ed has looked for in his searches, everyone else in the cave that we know about.

Speaker 2 And the one thing that comes from Larry's death is it is at that point that the family finally pulls the reward money. They pull it the following month, which I doubt is a coincidence.

Speaker 2 Now, also in March of 2012, there is what sounds like the family's last coordinated search for Ben.

Speaker 2 But this time it's not in the water. They actually bring dogs out to search the areas around the spring.

Speaker 22 Is there any specific reason they're looking at the property versus the water now?

Speaker 2 So at this time, yeah, it sounds like it. At the time that Ben disappeared, the owner of Vortex Spring was in trouble for accusing an employee of stealing like $30,000.

Speaker 2 You don't get in trouble for just accusing someone. He beat the guy with a baseball bat.
So

Speaker 2 that's something you don't see every day. And when they find out about it, they're like, oh, huh, maybe

Speaker 2 this guy who owns this place where our son went missing, maybe we should talk to him, look at him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But the problem is at this time that they finally become suspicious of him, this guy's already dead.

Speaker 2 So they go search the place with cadaver dogs in 2012, but he died in December of 2011 in some kind of accident where he had fallen and hit his head.

Speaker 2 So if he knew something, like there's no way to know now. Right.

Speaker 2 The family even tried hiring a private detective at one point to look further into that guy, even into other vortex employees, but it doesn't sound like that went anywhere either.

Speaker 2 Much like the search of the property, because even when the dogs finish, they don't find anything.

Speaker 2 And Ben's parents are obviously disappointed, but according to another Tampa Bay Times article, before they leave, they give Eduardo this engraved piece of granite, and he agrees to dive down the following day to place it in the cave.

Speaker 2 And Ben's parents really can't do more than they've already done.

Speaker 2 So I feel like foul play has to be involved in some way.

Speaker 22 The tanks are there, sure, but like, could they have been planted? Could someone have put them there? Like, is that why they're written differently? Was one of it not in his handwriting?

Speaker 2 It just seems so elaborate. And there's, it doesn't seem like there's any reason because they never found anything.
that pointed to somebody who had it out for Ben, who wanted to harm Ben.

Speaker 22 There's no evidence of foul play, but there's no evidence of not foul play.

Speaker 2 The one thing I'll say, we never get cameras. According to a Tampa Bay Times article, the Vortex area had a camera, but there's basically nothing shady seen.

Speaker 2 I feel like, obviously, if we had a video of him going in and never coming out, this would be a lot easier. So I have a feeling it's not exactly trained where we need to be.

Speaker 22 Would it? We've had cases that we've followed closely where people go into a bar and never come out on video camera.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Freaking.
Stop. I can't wait that case.
That's a, that's an old throwback. But here's the thing.
If someone did something to Ben, they didn't hide his body in the cave. Where is he?

Speaker 2 Where is his scuba equipment? Like, even if there is no why, because sometimes there is no good why.

Speaker 22 Right. Like, honestly, this case feels like this is where we'll stay unless something is uncovered, something compelling and new, anything.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And here's the thing. Even after all of this, there is some belief by some people that Ben is still in that cave.

Speaker 2 I mean, there is a tight section at the end of the cave known as a restriction that maybe Ben got through.

Speaker 2 I mean, some divers think it's possible, but there are other divers who don't even think that that's possible because of the proper training that Ben lacked.

Speaker 2 Like they're like, he couldn't have gotten that far.

Speaker 22 Like almost like he wouldn't have even known what to do if he had gotten that far.

Speaker 2 It seems like that's what they're saying. But if Ben somehow did get through, he could be exactly where this all started.
In that cave, but too far to reach.

Speaker 2 And that's what's so heartbreaking for Ben's family, especially his parents. It makes it almost impossible for them to get closure.

Speaker 2 They have this suitcase that's filled with mementos and notes for Ben that's buried near his brother Paul.

Speaker 2 And it appears that Ben's parents had been leading a grief class at their church when we kind of looked into them because now they've lost two children and it gave them an understanding of grief that most people can't even fathom.

Speaker 2 If anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Ben McDaniel, please contact the Holmes County Sheriff's Office at 850-547-3681.

Speaker 7 Go to sanjose.org/slash play SJ26.

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Speaker 2 Before we get into the next story, I want to give you a heads up that there are like a hundred different versions of how this story starts, particularly when everything goes down.

Speaker 2 Because I mean, I'm not kidding, just about every single article I could find says something completely completely different, which is like, you know, old reporting. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But that being said, I'm going to stick to the timeline that appears in a Sheboygan Press article from 1978 because that's the one that contains court testimony.

Speaker 2 So let's rewind to November 16th, 1971 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Priscilla Playsed is getting a little worried about her 48-year-old husband, Kenneth.

Speaker 2 They're supposed to meet up at like 12.30, but it's 2.15 now and Kenneth is just fully MIA. Making her extra uneasy is the fact that they're not home.

Speaker 2 Home is over an hour away in New Holstein, Wisconsin. They're just here in Milwaukee to visit their daughter and for Kenneth to like do some business stuff.

Speaker 2 They had gotten to town that day at around 11 and the plan was for Kenneth to drop Priscilla off at the department store. He's going to go off, do whatever he had to do, and then they meet back up.

Speaker 2 But here she is like waiting and waiting, stranded, because by the way, he's also her ride.

Speaker 2 so after almost two hours of this priscilla finds a phone and calls her 22 year old daughter donna like hey have you heard from your dad and donna says yeah actually he called me about like 11 15 nothing wild just basically confirmed that he was gonna pick her up at some point and then after they were gonna go buy her a car now i'm not sure if he said when he was gonna pick her up But at 1 p.m., she said that she'd actually noticed a car out near her apartment building that actually looked like her dad's, like it registered for a second, but no one had come to her door so she kind of just wrote it off assumed it was not his just looked like his didn't even give it a second look but now that mom's calling she's like okay i'm gonna go take another peek i'm gonna see if that car is still out there again not even probably not even thinking that it would be but she actually goes out it is there she takes a look up close at this car and she realizes it is a hundred percent her dad's car.

Speaker 22 Not just one that looks like it. Right.
Same model, close, whatever. It is the car.

Speaker 2 But he's not in it. And I can imagine her worry only grows when she sees the state that it's in.
Like the windows are rolled down and the contents of the glove box are like all over the front seat.

Speaker 2 Like someone had hastily gone through it. And what's right outside the car is even more concerning because laying between the car and the curb is her dad's hat.

Speaker 22 Is there any sign of like a physical struggle?

Speaker 2 Like no people? It looks like the stuff was taken out, but there's no like blood. I mean, I don't know what else we would expect to see.

Speaker 2 Or like a bent or broken mirror or like nothing like that has at least been reported. But even seeing the car like it is and him being gone for so long,

Speaker 2 it's enough to make Donna and Priscilla call the police. And thankfully, it seems like they take Kenneth's disappearance seriously from the get-go.

Speaker 2 So Priscilla and Donna fill them in on that morning's events, including, I'm assuming, what business he was there on, which you're gonna, I'm telling you, you get sick of me saying this, but like, I don't know what that was.

Speaker 2 I don't know what he was there to do or who he was there to meet.

Speaker 2 do we even know what he did for work at least i know he was an attorney and based on what little context i have i think this is probably what brought him to milwaukee but i also know that he was the executive secretary of the national board of fur farm organizations and he was a trustee for a family trust so Again, I'm guessing he's there for work work with as an attorney, but like dude's got a lot going on.

Speaker 22 He could just be taking other meetings in Milwaukee. Right.

Speaker 2 Anyway, investigators take a look at the car there on the curb. and despite the glove box clearly having been rifled through, it doesn't appear anything's been stolen.

Speaker 2 According to an article from the Milwaukee Journal, there were even some gifts that Kenneth and Priscilla had purchased that are like still sitting undisturbed in the back seat.

Speaker 22 What about like keys, car keys? I'm assuming he had a wallet.

Speaker 2 I assume that too, but there's no reporting on it. Like there's nothing that mentions the keys or the wallet.
I did find several articles that mentioned some money that Kenneth had withdrawn.

Speaker 2 He was planning on using it for Donna's car. It was like 300 bucks or something like that, which I like, I wave my hand, but I mean, in today's money, that's like $2,700.

Speaker 22 But we're in the early 70s, you said there's no security cameras.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 22 There's nothing capturing if he was driving the car, if he walked away from the car. No person.
There was no person there. Cool, cool.

Speaker 2 We got nothing to work with. Or if they had anything, they've never talked about it.
But I think just based on the timeline, your assumptions are probably right.

Speaker 2 But in any case, I do know police are able to put together a loose sort of timeline for the time between when Kenneth talked to Donna at 11.15 and when she noticed his car at 1.

Speaker 2 Because I think the assumption is like Priscilla notices at 2.15.

Speaker 2 Something happened before 1. Like the car has probably just been sitting there for the last hour, 15 minutes.

Speaker 2 So anyways, what we know between 11.15 and 1 is that at some point in that hour, 45 minutes, he had gone to a grocery store. He'd gotten change for a $5 bill.

Speaker 2 And according to that same Milwaukee Journal article that I mentioned, he also got coffee at a nearby diner with an attorney friend of his.

Speaker 2 And this coffee is important because even though I can't find anything about the exact time that this happened, he left that coffee meeting saying that he was going to go get Donna.

Speaker 22 And I think it's safe to assume that he made it to Donna's place because like, what are the odds of someone taking him in his car and like dumping the car at his daughter's place?

Speaker 2 I had that same thought. Like, I don't think that anyone even would like force him to drive there.

Speaker 2 Like, if you're going to do something to this guy, you don't want to do it in front of his daughter's apartment who's like waiting for him.

Speaker 22 And how would you know where his daughter lives? It's not even where he, like, they don't even live in the same city. Right.

Speaker 2 It seems like somebody who either intercepted him there or followed him there, especially knowing that his, we've got his hat like right outside. It feels like he got out of the car.

Speaker 22 And that's when something happened.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 22 So this area of Milwaukee. Is it a pretty busy area? Like, could someone have seen what had happened? Like, a neighbor?

Speaker 2 So I obviously don't know 71. I looked on Google Maps for it today.
It's a pretty residential area. There's like houses, apartment buildings.

Speaker 2 Again, I have to assume a lot's changed in, I wanted to say 30 years because I'm always stuck in 2000, 50 years.

Speaker 2 But I get the sense from the reporting that at the time it was pretty similar back then. So you would think that someone would have seen something.
This isn't happening in the middle of a cornfield.

Speaker 22 If there was a struggle, if there was something weird that was going on.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I know detectives search the neighborhood, which I assume includes talking to neighbors, but if they got any good intel, they haven't shared that with the media in all of these years.

Speaker 2 But no matter how his car got there or who put it there, the search for Kenneth is on. And over the following few days, detectives check bus stations, train stations, airports.

Speaker 2 They're looking for any sign of him, but they repeatedly come up empty.

Speaker 22 Are they thinking that he left on his own?

Speaker 2 I don't see them saying that outright in the reporting.

Speaker 22 But airports, bus stations, train stations.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I understand. I know where you're asking the question.
I think they're covering all of their basis, or it is possible they think that's the most likely scenario.

Speaker 2 And they're just kind of like, I don't know, they don't want to put all their eggs on the back. But you have to, you have to check those things off, right?

Speaker 2 Like is it a to-do thing to make sure it was done? Is it something they're actually following? I don't know.

Speaker 2 But if that is their theory that he was like hightailing it out of there, they're not getting proven right. They can't find any sign of him just up and leaving.

Speaker 2 So pretty much every option option for what happened is still on the table. It's not like they can rule out that that didn't happen, but they can't say it did.

Speaker 2 But the idea that he just left doesn't work for his family. He and Priscilla have six kids and Priscilla insists that they have a good relationship.

Speaker 2 It truly seems like the whole thing for them is just this huge shock when he goes missing, like they never saw it coming.

Speaker 2 Now, by four days later, on November 20th, police are pretty confident in their theory. This is the first time they start to say it out loud.
But they don't say like, he left.

Speaker 2 They just say, we don't think foul play was involved. Okay,

Speaker 22 what do they know that we don't know?

Speaker 2 I don't know if they're just going with what they don't have, which is like they don't have evidence of a crime. They just have a car that was abandoned.

Speaker 2 They don't tell us what they have or don't have at that point. But I mean, again, we know no signs of a struggle.
They're saying that no blood, nothing.

Speaker 2 So I think him leaving on his own is the only thing that makes sense to police at that time.

Speaker 2 So over the next month, the search for him sort of continues, although it appears to be a little lackluster.

Speaker 2 And according to the Sheboygan Press, there's one sighting that's thought to be Kenneth at a grocery store, but it turns out not to be him.

Speaker 2 So the truth is, he just vanished one random day for seemingly no reason.

Speaker 2 But as we know, people don't just up and disappear. There's always a reason.

Speaker 7 Go to sanjose.org slash play sj26.

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Speaker 2 All right, so some context first. Remember how I said Kenneth was a trustee for a family trust?

Speaker 2 Well, it's not his family's. This trust was established by a man named Erwin Hughes before he died, and it's now managed by Kenneth and Erwin's wife, Estelle.

Speaker 2 And the estate within the trust is valued at over half a million dollars. Quick calculation to 2024 money, which is like $4 million.

Speaker 2 Anyway, since Kenneth is missing, a new trustee gets appointed. But as part of this process, they do an audit of the trust.
And that's not like they're not like thinking something happened.

Speaker 2 This is just like standard procedure. Right.
And they're not even really looking for anything, but they find a whole lot of something.

Speaker 2 The audit shows that Kenneth had written numerous checks to himself from January 1969 right up through October of 1971, the very month that he went missing.

Speaker 2 Now, the checks varied in amount, but in total, there was $65,162 missing. Again, perspective here that is over half a million dollars in today's money.
That's a lot.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And there is no legit reason under the sun for him to be writing these checks to himself. But the stranger thing is, he shouldn't have actually even been able to do it.

Speaker 2 Before any money is taken out, there's actually two different people who were supposed to sign something, but as they're doing this audit, they find out that that just didn't happen for some reason.

Speaker 2 Now, when they look closer, some of the checks were made out directly to Kenneth himself, but some were made to accounts associated with an account that he shared with a former law partner.

Speaker 2 And then at least one check is made to his office account. And this new trustee finds that they fit this pattern.

Speaker 2 So first, Kenneth would take the money out of the trust savings account, put it into the trust checking account, and then he'd write himself a check. So he's like moving this money all over the place.

Speaker 22 And no one noticed that the money was missing until now.

Speaker 2 Estelle said, she's the only other person who was like on it at the time.

Speaker 2 And she explained in an article by Betty Schilling for the Sheboygan Press that her late husband had been the one who was familiar with all of their finances.

Speaker 2 So when he died, she didn't really know what to do. She didn't really know how much was in there.

Speaker 22 She was on the accounts because she was the wife and that was really easy.

Speaker 2 Right. But she never dealt with the money, which by the way, ladies, like, I'm no like mathematician, but you got to like know your family finances.
You cannot leave that into anyone's hands.

Speaker 2 And men, the same thing. Like both people in a relationship.
should have a sense of the finances. I've seen

Speaker 2 effort. I have seen this.
Like I have a family member where this went super south. Like you don't want to be caught in that.
So that's my PSA for today.

Speaker 2 But anyways, Estelle didn't know what was going on, which is why she actually brought in Kenneth to like help her.

Speaker 2 But looking back now, again, hindsight's 2020, Estelle says that there were definitely red flags.

Speaker 2 For instance, whenever she did try to talk to Kenneth about the account, he was very dodgy and he would talk around questions that she had and just generally wasn't super forthcoming with information, which is not what you want from somebody handling your finances.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 22 Did anyone else know that these checks were being written?

Speaker 2 Well, yes. One of Kenneth's former legal secretaries was actually one of the ones who wrote the checks under Kenneth's instruction.

Speaker 2 And when asked about it, she says that his explanation was that the funds were an advancement on trustees' fees.

Speaker 2 And then another former legal secretary had a similar story, that checks she wrote were supposed to be for Kenneth's services as a trustee.

Speaker 22 So is all this money that he took from the trust still sitting in his accounts by chance?

Speaker 2 I know. I'm like smiling because that's the million dollar question.
Like the nail on the head.

Speaker 22 Half a million dollar in today's money question. And I don't know.

Speaker 2 Because to me, like whether it is or isn't, is the money there or is it not there? Is like, if it's not there and Kenneth's not there.

Speaker 22 What are the odds that they're together?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or I mean, he could have been into something.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 If the money's all sitting there, though, I think it's like a completely different, then what, but then also, why would you take money to just let it sit there? Right. Something is up.

Speaker 2 And I assume the people in charge of this case know the answers to that. I assume they know where the money was going.

Speaker 22 They checked bank accounts.

Speaker 2 Or at least they know it's not there anymore. But there's no reporting on specifics of what they do track down, if they find the money, or if it's as much of a ghost as Kenneth seems to be.

Speaker 2 Literally, the only mention of this even comes from Ken's son all the way in 1992, and he doesn't say anything about where it went.

Speaker 2 Or at least that part didn't get published, which like, but again, like, if I'm writing the article, that's like, right, that's what I'm putting in.

Speaker 2 So Ken is in some pretty hot water when all of this gets found out.

Speaker 2 And it gets even more tumultuous on January 4th, 1972, when Ken is charged with abandonment after his wife Priscilla files a complaint against him.

Speaker 2 According to another Sheboygan Press article in that complaint, she says that Kenneth has, quote, willfully failed to support his family.

Speaker 22 Wait, so they're on board with this theory now?

Speaker 2 I actually don't know. I'm not even entirely sure why Priscilla filed the complaint in the first place.

Speaker 2 One of the things that I wonder, again, there's so much like context we never get, so much backstory that you don't get in like these little newspaper clippings.

Speaker 22 Well, and also I'm also thinking like the cultural differences between

Speaker 22 now

Speaker 22 and 1971. I was going to say 1972.

Speaker 2 Like, girl, we couldn't even have like a

Speaker 2 credit card, like bank accounts. Like everything had to be in our husband's name back then.
So I had the same thought. I'm like, I wonder if she's got six kids.

Speaker 22 If this was a financial

Speaker 22 complaint and this would help her find a way to support her family now that they didn't have a breadwinner.

Speaker 2 Right. Cause I don't know that she could get him declared dead.
It hasn't been long enough.

Speaker 2 But if she can be like, he abandoned our family and we need some support, that could be a very viable reason she did that that maybe doesn't align with the theory she has of what really happened.

Speaker 2 I don't know. The next thing in this case that I can put together is that 10 days after that, so this would have been January 14th, more charges get piled on.
on.

Speaker 2 So Kenneth gets charged with a whopping 26 counts of theft for the missing trust money.

Speaker 2 So dude, by this point, is a very wanted man, and the search for him is on, but in a very different way at this point, right? And by April 6th of 1973, so

Speaker 2 fast forward, it's a little under a year and a half since he disappeared. That is when a federal fugitive warrant is issued for Kenneth.

Speaker 2 I don't know if at first they're waiting like, oh, he can't stay hidden for long. Let's like see if he resurfaces.

Speaker 2 Or if something else happens, but by this point, they're like, we're coming for you.

Speaker 2 In that warrant, they claim that Ken's still alive and that he's been evading law enforcement this whole time.

Speaker 2 But here's something new. It turns out this isn't just a theory anymore.
They say,

Speaker 2 all of a sudden, they've been able to track some of his movements. Movements like he's alive, moving about.
What?

Speaker 2 So at some point, they say he went to Milford, Connecticut, which is halfway across the country.

Speaker 2 And then sometime after that, he may have gone to Tampa, Florida, and was looking for someone to live with. But they say when they went looking for him there, he was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 22 How are they even finding this guy? I want to say there were no paper trails, but that's literally all they had was paper. It's not digital.
I know.

Speaker 2 The way they put this out makes them seem really confident in this. And when I first read it, I'm like, oh, they're like, they're hot on his trail.
They know where he is.

Speaker 2 But the more I dug in, it kind of seems like it all comes back to a single ad that was placed in a Tampa newspaper, one that ran February 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of 1973.

Speaker 2 And this also might have been why they ended putting out the like warrant. They get word of this newspaper.
They're like, oh, shit, this man's alive. We're coming for you.

Speaker 2 Now, I have an image of the ad in if you're listening in the app or on the blog post for this episode.

Speaker 2 But the ad is someone in like the classified who is seeking a roommate and it has Kenneth's name on it. Here, I'll give it to you.

Speaker 22 Oh, you mean like his full name? I was thinking it just says Ken or Kenneth. It says

Speaker 2 Ken at least.

Speaker 2 Hang on, I'll get there. But yeah, it's, yes.

Speaker 22 How did they even find this?

Speaker 2 I have the same question because I'm like, again, we do not have the internet.

Speaker 22 You can't Google his name and an ad pop up.

Speaker 2 But luckily there was someone, it was like a former client of Ken's who somehow saw they they must have been in Tampa, saw his name, know he's a missing person, and they brought it forward to police.

Speaker 22 And then this is what led them to Connecticut?

Speaker 2 That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 But there's just so much weird about it because it says this person's looking for a roommate, but they asked that anyone who wants to like have correspondence or is interested,

Speaker 2 yet, that it all be sent back to a Connecticut address.

Speaker 22 But it's in a Tampa paper.

Speaker 2 Newspaper. Yeah.
So I'm like, why are you sending that there? Are you not there yet? Are you planning to go there? We don't know if he ever made it to Tampa.

Speaker 22 Did anybody answer this ad? Did anybody make contact with him?

Speaker 2 If it is him, I mean, I kind of understand why you would use your full name.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, also not really, because you could just call yourself Kenneth, but you're not worried about people like Googling your name or things being online.

Speaker 22 Tied back to you.

Speaker 2 Like, what are the odds someone's going to see it? I wonder too, can you have a P.O. box? Because that's what it was in Connecticut, a P.O.
box. Can you have that forwarded somewhere else?

Speaker 2 Like, is he being complex with the trail? But then, if you are, why use that name? Unless you use that name because it is your name and you're not the guy who went missing.

Speaker 2 Like, some people can have the same name. Yeah.
And then, did you see that weird part? So, there's a part in the article where it says, it's like a percent sign, Danielson.

Speaker 22 I wondered if that was like a care of. Like, have you ever seen like a package that says, like, no?

Speaker 22 Uh, if I'm sending something to your daughter, but I'm sending it to your address, I would send it like to Josie, care of, Ashley Flowers. So it's being sent to you, but it's actually for Josie.

Speaker 22 And like the symbol is a C.

Speaker 22 Like, I don't think there's like a typed symbol for it, but I would write like a little C and then a slash and then an O under it.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 22 It would almost look like a percentage sign because the C and the O are like both circular.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 22 So care of Danielson is like kind of how I would read it.

Speaker 2 So who is that?

Speaker 22 You're the one telling the story.

Speaker 2 Like now my question is, does there anyone in his life that had that name? If it's him. If it's him.
I have so many more questions now. I'm so sorry.
I wish you were here when I was researching.

Speaker 2 I would have like, there's like more rabbit holes I would have gone down.

Speaker 22 I wish I could like write it out for you.

Speaker 2 No, I can picture exactly what you're saying. Like care of.
Danielson. Danielson.
Who is Danielson?

Speaker 22 Which means that the P.O. box could be in like Danielson's name.

Speaker 2 Then that means someone is helping him be gone. Right.
Danielson. Danielson, obviously.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, if anyone else picked up on that, I don't know, but they did or they didn't. Either way, it was a dead end for police because they definitely didn't find Kenneth.

Speaker 2 TBD if they knew to look for Danielson or found Danielson. I know that police tried to track down whoever placed the ad through the paper, but that didn't lead them anywhere.

Speaker 2 That never leads anywhere. How is that possible? I feel like we've done this like a lot recently recently, where I'm like, you had to pay for it.
You have to like...

Speaker 22 No one took like a receipt.

Speaker 2 It's just no Craigslist. Maybe that's why Craigslist is so shady now.
They're like, this this is how we've always done things. When you like trade services with random people, like no questions asked.

Speaker 2 Well, either way, time continues to pass. And over the next two years, some rumors pop up about where Kenneth could be.
One says he's in Europe, another Latin America.

Speaker 2 By now, the FBI is involved, which like, they got to think he's alive, right? Like they're, they're doing more than just guessing. Yeah, but he could literally be anywhere.

Speaker 2 I know, and they don't, they do say they don't think he's left the country. They don't think, but they also admit that, like, this is the 70s.
It would have been pretty easy for him to get a passport.

Speaker 2 Early 70s.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he could be anywhere. And back home, the charges just keep coming.

Speaker 2 According to an article in The Reporter, in April of 1974, he ends up getting charged with one count of income tax evasion in 1969. So this is tax that he was evading years before he went missing.

Speaker 2 He gets two counts of failure to file tax returns in 70 and 71.

Speaker 2 And what's more interesting to me is that in 69, he reported an income of $1,030, which is like almost $9,000 today.

Speaker 2 And even for like 69, that's like pretty low.

Speaker 22 Especially if he has a pretty big family.

Speaker 2 They're a family of eight. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he should have reported an income of $31,507,

Speaker 2 which is like $272,000-ish today.

Speaker 2 And here's where it keeps getting complicated. So in 70 and 71, the years that he didn't file any tax returns, he had a gross income of about $140,000,

Speaker 2 which is

Speaker 2 $1.1 million.

Speaker 22 And did he make that each year or was it combined?

Speaker 2 I don't know, but that's like either way.

Speaker 22 So much more than the first amount that you told me. It was like $1,000 converted to $8,000 our money.

Speaker 2 Nothing points to like where that jump is coming from. Right.

Speaker 22 I was was going to say, like, did he get a new job? Did he take on more clients?

Speaker 2 And now we know he's taking money he's not supposed to be taking. Right.
But not, even that doesn't make up the difference.

Speaker 2 The one thing I think is strange is I don't know how they knew he was making that money. Like you would think if the government knew about it, it was from some kind of legitimate means, right?

Speaker 22 Right. It's not from him skimming off the top of something.

Speaker 2 Or they only know because it's like sitting in his account. And they're like, well, where did it come from? You have to do something with it.

Speaker 2 How do they even know that this money is there unless it was not shady? Am I like, am I making sense or am I like, am I oversimplifying it?

Speaker 22 I feel like you're making sense, but also I don't know how the access works, how the records work. Like what you're saying makes sense for 2024 when we're recording this.

Speaker 22 I don't know what that looks like in 1970 through 75, which is what we're talking about right now.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 So there's just shady money stuff going on. Yeah.
And the other thing though, it's like doesn't seem like he needed to steal money. That's the one thing I can't get past.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Unless they knew he was making that money, but it also wasn't there and it was gone, in which case he maybe was in an ultra bad financial spot. That we don't know.
We don't know a lot of things.

Speaker 2 And even though there's more charges, there's no Kenneth. And eventually, like the really hard pushes to find him just stop.
Like. There are other cases the FBI has to focus on.

Speaker 2 Seven years after his disappearance, his wife files a petition to declare him legally deceased.

Speaker 2 And despite law enforcement seemingly believing that he's still out there somewhere, a judge does grant that order, which allows his family to collect on five life insurance policies. Five?

Speaker 2 One, two, three, four, five. Five.
Seems like a lot.

Speaker 22 Like four too many?

Speaker 2 I could even buy like two. Fine, no biggie.
You have six kids, right? Like maybe two policies.

Speaker 22 Cover your bases, but. And a third, maybe when you had that fourth, fifth kid, you're like, oh, well, not like like he's an attorney, maybe one's from the business.

Speaker 2 To be fair, I know nothing about these policies. I don't know how much they were for, but it does.
It feels strange to me.

Speaker 2 And in the end, I'm not sure how many of those policies actually got paid out. I know one of the life insurance companies tried to object, but there's very little reporting on it.

Speaker 2 So who knows if they ended up paying or not.

Speaker 2 What I do know is that at some point, whether the family changed their mind or always believed it, who knows?

Speaker 2 But at some point, many, if not all, of the family do say that they believe he was a victim of foul play.

Speaker 2 In an article published in the Milwaukee Journal in 1992, one of his sons, Michael, explains how he conducted his own investigation.

Speaker 2 And from this, we get a little more information about the money taken from the trust. And actually, I think it makes a stronger case for foul play.

Speaker 2 Even though early on we're like, oh, maybe this is the reason he left.

Speaker 2 So Michael says that every time money was taken from the trust, Kenneth had left an an IOU on file at the bank where the money was being held.

Speaker 2 And so he says, in his opinion, that indicates Kenneth wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he was taking it.

Speaker 22 There was like an honesty to his theft.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And he's like, he's like, why would he do that if he was, if he was planning on like piecing out and like absconding with the money? Yeah.

Speaker 22 So he just got in over his head on everything?

Speaker 2 Maybe. I mean, maybe he didn't file the taxes because he's losing money.
He's paying someone back.

Speaker 2 If he's into something, it seems like whatever he was into, he just kept getting into deeper and deeper, right? Like you leave the IOU, but then you can't, then you have to take more. And like

Speaker 22 seven IOUs and then like at some point, like you can't get out of it.

Speaker 2 And here's the thing. I don't know what police say about the money, but there is something from Michael who says that the money that Kenneth took was spent before he disappeared.

Speaker 2 So he does say in 1992 that he didn't run away with it.

Speaker 22 So when we were asking about where the money was, he's saying it wasn't there when he left.

Speaker 2 Question. Yeah, because, but then my question is like, well, tell me what he spent it on.
Right. Because also, if you just tell me that the money's not in the account, I'm like, okay.

Speaker 22 Like, then where is that?

Speaker 2 Can you prove that he bought something or like, where did it go?

Speaker 22 Where are the literal receipts?

Speaker 2 And he doesn't say.

Speaker 2 He also says that Kenneth had this really nasty dispute with one of his former business associates and that the man that he had the dispute with was seen in Milwaukee on the day that Kenneth disappeared.

Speaker 22 But he doesn't give us a name of this mystery man.

Speaker 2 No. And literally, that is the last update that I could find about Kenneth's case.
He is still missing today and still has a family who wants to know what happened to him.

Speaker 2 Now, he would be 101 years old at the time of this episode's release, but at the time he vanished, he was 6'1 and wore glasses.

Speaker 2 He's a white guy with gray hair and blue eyes, and his car was found on West State Street in Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 So if you know anything about what what happened to Kenneth, you can call the New Holstein Police Department at 920-898-4241.

Speaker 2 You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 22 And you can follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkie Podcast.

Speaker 2 We're going to be back next week with a brand new episode, but don't go anywhere. We've got some good to share with you.

Speaker 2 I know we're not quite to the end of the month yet, but we wanted to bring you a little early bit of the good because we may have something kind of special for you next week.

Speaker 22 And I mean, and who can be upset about celebrating the good a little bit early?

Speaker 2 I know, I love it. I love it.
So, what do you got?

Speaker 22 Okay, this week we have a web submission from Laura. Hi, Ashley and Britt.
My name is Laura. I'm an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.

Speaker 22 I came to visit the United States two weeks before the pandemic and I was unable to go back to my country. I met a guy soon after that and we got married.
I was really in love.

Speaker 22 I got pregnant and life was good. Two years into our marriage, I found your show, and I can say that has been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Speaker 22 I started listening every day and more and more, I became aware of the red flags. One day, he poured alcohol over my face, and I didn't pay much attention to it.
Another day, he broke a door.

Speaker 22 Then he got loud and tried to kick me out of our house. He started threatening me with taking his own life and things got really scary.
At the end, he went to my job and attacked me.

Speaker 22 And that was it for me. Our son at the time was only two years of age.
He would run and hide. But thanks to you guys, it didn't take me seven times to try and escape.

Speaker 22 I didn't want to be on your show that way. I chose to be, I'm gonna cry, I chose to be on the good section.

Speaker 22 Last October, I woke up early, took my son, went to the domestic violence family division and got a restraining order against him because I saved all the proof of domestic violence.

Speaker 22 I learned from you guys to keep my missing persons file. After that, we went to court.
I got a final restraining order and he can't hurt me anymore. I finally feel safe and happy again.

Speaker 22 I got a new job, I moved, and I have so many good things going on. Life is way better now.
I sometimes wonder, what would have happened if I never found your show? I have no family here.

Speaker 22 No one would be able to start looking for me if something bad happened to me.

Speaker 22 I guess maybe all the crime junkies would be looking for answers, but I'm glad I found your show and I have a good story to tell.

Speaker 2 I feel like my full-body chills are reserved exclusively for this segment now.

Speaker 2 That is... Oh, man.

Speaker 22 I didn't want to be on your show that way. I want to be on the beach.
I wouldn't be on the good segment.

Speaker 2 The amount of, like, I know I've said this before, but I think this is one of the things I've been surprised by is the amount of people.

Speaker 2 who have left domestic violence relationships because who have been so brave.

Speaker 2 And And it was so cool the way she pointed to that statistic because it is a statistic that we've talked about before that it often takes seven times for someone to leave for good.

Speaker 22 And so many people in that situation don't get a fifth, sixth, seventh try.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's wild to think that like, man, can the show reaches millions of people. Is that a statistic that can be changed by talking about this, by talking about the warning signs?

Speaker 2 And for women and men, for people to realize that they're not alone and what they're experiencing. Like if you can see the pattern and you see it so many times in other people,

Speaker 2 then do you realize you go back the second time, the third time, and you're like, oh, this is what they're talking about. It doesn't change.
Can you break free?

Speaker 2 And if what you need is that community is to hear other people's stories, like how,

Speaker 2 oh my God, I'm so happy that you and your child are safe. Yes.
And you may not have a lot of family here, but you have Crime Junkie. You got the Crime Junkie family.

Speaker 2 Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Speaker 7 Go to sanjose.org slash play sj26.

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