The Truth Beneath

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Today's podcast will feature three stories where things are not what they seem.

The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Deer Crossing, and it's about a man's drive home from a night out quickly turns into a nightmare.

The second story you'll hear is called Ancient Beast, and it's about a plane crash survivor who describes the insane final moments before impact.

And the third and final story you'll hear is called Stay Forgetful, and it's about a man who wakes up on the side of the road with no idea who he is or how he got there.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the Wright podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So if that's of interest to you, please tell the follow button you're taking them on vacation to Universal Studios, but then just take them to the dentist for a root canal.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Deer Crossing.

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At around 8 p.m.

on December 16th, 2023, a 31-year-old man named Nestor Flores was driving down a highway just outside of Dallas, Texas, with both his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel.

Nestor was very stressed out on this ride.

All he wanted to do was get home because he was worried that on this ride, he might get pulled over by police.

I mean, this was a route he had driven a bunch, and he knew there were loads of state troopers that patrolled the area.

And from his perspective, it seemed like they kind of pulled people over all the time.

And Nestor had spent the night out with a couple of friends and he had had a couple of drinks.

You know, he didn't feel he had had too much to where he couldn't drive, but he knew if he did get pulled over, you know, he could be in trouble.

And then on top of that, you know, in the back of Nestor's mind was the fact that he had had a couple of minor run-ins with the law over the past couple of years.

And so he kind of had this fear of police already.

And also, Nestor was not born in America.

And so he was worried that on top of all that, if he got pulled over, you know, he could risk being deported.

And so on whole, Nestor just does not want to see any police officer.

He just wants to get home and go to bed.

And so as Nestor is doing his best to not draw any suspicion to himself and is trying to follow all the rules of the road, he decides to have a sip of his Diet Coke.

And his Diet Coke was right in the middle console.

And so as he's driving eyes straight ahead, he reaches down and he grabs the Coke, he pulls it up, he uncaps it, takes a sip.

But then as he puts the drink back down, again, he's keeping his eyes on the road, he hits something with the drink and he feels the drink slosh out of his cup and it hits his hand.

And instinctively, you know, he took his eyes off the road and looked down at the Coke and he managed to put the drink back in its cup holder.

And then when he brought his eyes back to the road, there was a deer in the middle of the road.

He was too close to swerve out of the way.

And so at full speed, he smashes into this deer.

The deer hits his front windshield and basically caves in the passenger side windshield and flips up and over the back of his car.

And Nestor, amazingly, was composed enough to not swerve wildly post-impact, because he knew if he did that, he could run into oncoming traffic or something.

And so he just kept on going straight and gradually slowed down and pulled off the side of the road.

And as he did, he looked over his shoulder, seeing if this deer was basically lying in the road or even worse, maybe it hit some other car.

But when he looked over his shoulder, the road was clear.

There was no deer.

Now, even though Nestor was obviously very shaken up at this point, I mean, he just had this horrible car accident with this deer, and he's he's already on edge about getting pulled over by police.

But for the moment, it was just peaceful on the highway.

You know, no cops were coming up to him and he's pulled over to the side, you know, physically he was okay.

You know, it seemed like the deer was okay.

It clearly ran off the road or something.

And there was damage to his car.

I mean, the deer really smashed in the front of his car and the windshield, especially on the passenger side, was basically caved in.

But Nestor was able to see through his side of the windshield.

And when he put the car back in drive and hit the gas, the car seemed to drive just fine.

And so even though Nestor felt kind of bad that he had smashed this deer, he thought, you know, what am I going to do?

Go find the deer and make sure it's okay?

Like, he can't really do anything.

It's nighttime.

So he made the decision that, you know, nobody saw this and it seems like everything's okay.

So I'm just going to drive home and I'll take care of my car tomorrow.

But after driving 38 more miles from the impact site, Nestor's car began making this horrible rattling sound from the engine, and also smoke began to billow up out of the front of his car.

And so Nestor knew, you know, this is so conspicuous.

he's gonna get pulled over if he doesn't stop.

And so feeling really annoyed, because he was actually pretty close to home at this point, Nestor pulled off the highway and came to a stop in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant.

And so at first, all Nestor did was just turn off his car and wait for a couple of minutes in hopes that, you know, that would be enough to cure his car.

But after a couple of minutes, you know, the smoke continued to billow out of his car, and then when he tried to turn it back on again, the car simply wouldn't start.

And so at this point, Nestor knew he had to call a tow truck.

But when he reached for his phone, his phone was dead.

And he didn't have a phone charger in his car.

And so he's like, great, I can't even call a tow truck.

But then he looked up and saw the fast food restaurant was open.

And he decided he would just go in there and he would ask one of them if they had a charger.

So Nestor gets out of his smoking car, he walks into the restaurant, he goes up to the counter, and he asks the person behind the counter, like, hey, you know, my phone's dead.

Do you have a charger?

Do you mind charging my phone?

But the employee, they didn't say anything back to Nestor.

They just stood there with their mouths open and their eyes wide, staring at Nestor, like they couldn't believe what they were looking at.

And so Nestor's thinking, like, what's wrong with this person?

You know, hey, do you have a charger or not?

And the employee, who by this point is pale as a ghost, just shook their head at Nestor, like, no, they don't have a charger.

And then they just stood there, still staring at Nestor.

And so now Nestor is genuinely just furious.

I mean, the whole night has completely derailed here.

All he wanted to do was get home, and it's like one horrible thing happens after another.

And so Nestor was just like, okay, fine.

And he turned around and he left the restaurant and went back to his car, thinking maybe if I search the whole vehicle, you know, there's bound to be a charger in there somewhere.

And so Nestor gets back into his car, he climbs into the driver's seat, he shuts the door, and as he begins looking around his car for this charger, he begins to feel really sleepy.

And actually, he eventually just kind of leans forward and falls asleep in his car.

More than two hours later, Nestor woke up to the sound of somebody tapping on his window.

So Nestor groggily turned and looked, and it was like the worst case scenario.

It was a police officer who was shining his flashlight into the vehicle, clearly gesturing for Nestor to roll his window down.

And so Nestor was totally compliant.

He rolled the window down, and he looked at the officer, and before Nestor could even say anything, the officer said, get out of the car.

He's thinking to himself, you know, why is he acting so aggressively towards me?

Like, what have I done here?

And so Nestor, you know, he gets out of the car.

And again, before Nestor can ask any questions, the officer just says to Nestor, what happened tonight?

Like, what's going on here?

And so Nestor, you know, he knows his car is jacked up and here he is sleeping in the parking lot.

And so he turns to the officer and begins explaining the deer story.

You know, he was driving down the road.

He hits this deer, you know, it went over the top.

He didn't see it.

He didn't report it.

And as he's telling the officer this, he's thinking, oh my gosh, like, is there a law?

Like, if you hit a deer, are you supposed to report it?

Is that what's going on?

Maybe the deer did die and it was in the middle of the road and somebody saw his license plate and now the cop was here.

And so Nestor began to panic, you know, trying to explain the logic behind leaving the deer and how sorry he was.

He should have stopped.

He should have called the police.

But the officer finally just put up his hand, telling Nestor to stop talking.

And then the officer took his flashlight and he shined it past Nestor at his car.

And when the officer did that, the officer immediately grabbed his radio and began barking orders into it, saying he needed backup.

And so Nestor's like, what is going on here?

Like this whole night has been such a disaster.

Like, what did I do?

And so Nestor, he turned to see what the cop was looking at on his car that would elicit such a big response from him.

And when he looked at the passenger seat of his car, where the cop's light was now shining, Nestor froze for a second and then just started to scream.

It would turn out that even though Nestor believed he had only had, you know, a few drinks and he was okay to drive, the reality was he was completely annihilated drunk and should never have been behind the wheel.

And when he was driving on the highway, you know, anxiously trying to get home, well, he didn't hit a deer.

He hit a 45-year-old pedestrian named Terry Ivory, and he hit this guy with so much force that Terry went through the windshield on the passenger side and then landed in the passenger seat, minus one leg, which had been severed on impact.

And then Terry's dead body sat there in the passenger seat with Nestor having no idea.

He thinks there's a deer back there, but there was never a deer.

There's just a dead guy next to him.

And Nestor just drove 40 more miles with Terry's dead body next to him.

And then when Nestor's car began to smoke and make noises, he pulled off the highway to that fast food restaurant parking lot.

And then when he went inside the restaurant to try to get a phone charger, the reason that employee was so shocked to see Nestor and could basically not even speak when Nestor was trying to talk to them was because Nestor was covered practically head to toe in blood, Terry's blood.

Now, it's not entirely clear why that employee did not immediately call police, but, you know, after Nestor left the restaurant, went back to his car and fell asleep, During the time Nestor was sleeping, someone inside the restaurant did call the police, and that's why they showed up and knocked on Nestor's glass.

Nestor was charged with collision involving death in December of 2023.

However, his case has not yet been adjudicated.

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Our next story is called Ancient Beast.

On August 25th, 2010, a small twin-engine propeller plane sat on the tarmac at Kinshasa International Airport in the Congo.

As the plane was being refueled, the co-pilots, 62-year-old Danny Philimont from Belgium and 39-year-old Chris Wilson from England, walked up the stairs and into the cockpit.

As the pilots got settled in and began their internal systems checks, the flight attendant walked up the stairs, she said hello to the pilots, and then she began preparing the cabin for the passengers.

The main cabin began boarding at 11 a.m., and by 11.30 a.m., all 18 passengers that were expected to board had taken their seats.

So the flight attendant closed the doors, went into the cockpit, and told the pilots they were ready for takeoff.

This was going to be a one-hour long, routine domestic flight to Bandundu, which is a province that was just outside the border of Kinshasa to the east.

This particular crew had made this flight dozens of times in the past without any issues.

As the little plane made its way over to the runway, the flight attendant demonstrated what to do in case of various in-flight emergencies, and then by noon, the plane was airborne.

One hour later, residents of a town located just southwest of Bandundu remembered looking up into the sky and seeing the small prop plane falling through the clouds in a near-vertical nosedive.

Seconds later, the plane crashed into the ground right in the middle of the neighborhood.

Luckily, the crash did not kill anybody on the ground, but unfortunately the pilots, the flight attendant, and 17 of the 18 passengers died on impact.

And the one passenger that survived was very badly hurt and was left in a coma.

An investigation was launched into what happened, and very quickly it was theorized that they must have run out of gas because when they hit the ground, there was no explosion, there was no fire, but upon closer inspection, it would turn out the plane had plenty of fuel.

The black box, which is a device that records the audio inside the cockpit, was recovered, but unfortunately it was inoperable, so it didn't give them any other clues as to what happened.

Investigators were stumped.

Did they strike a bird in the air?

Did the engines suddenly fail?

Was it operator error?

They didn't know.

A few days after the crash, the one surviving passenger miraculously came out of their coma and remembered in vivid detail what happened up in the skies right before they crashed.

They said as the plane was making their final descent into Bandundu, the flight attendant was walking down the aisle reminding everyone to put away their big devices and put their seat in the upright position.

And as she got about halfway down the aisle, she looked towards the back of the plane, and she suddenly gasped and covered her mouth, turned around, and walked very quickly back towards the front of the plane into the cockpit where she disappeared.

The passengers that had seen her do this were immediately concerned that something was wrong with the plane, and so they stood up and looked towards the rear of the plane where she had been looking, and right away they knew what it was she was concerned about.

There was a hissing crocodile making its way up the aisle.

Someone must have smuggled it on.

And as passengers realized what was happening, they all panicked and stampeded towards the front of the plane.

This sudden shift in weight threw off the plane's center of gravity, causing a nosedive that the pilots could not recover from before they crashed.

After hearing this story, the investigators remembered that a living crocodile had been found around the wreckage, but no one had thought much of it because in the Congo, lots of exotic animals are smuggled onto flights.

Specifically, crocodiles are smuggled onto these planes with such regularity that passengers often can recognize the very specific crocodile smells somewhere in the cabin.

And they'll tell the pilots, they'll come back, they'll find the crocodile and the owner of said crocodile, they'll kick them off before takeoff.

But obviously, this time, nobody smelled the crocodile.

The third and final story of today's episode is called Stay Forgetful.

On the afternoon of July 13th, 1994, a man woke up feeling very confused and disoriented, and he felt some pain in the back of his head.

And as he opened his eyes, he kind of slowly realized that he was on his back in a ditch on the side of the road, looking up at a big blue sky.

The man tried to sit up, but as soon as he did, he felt this throbbing pain in the back of of his head and he reached back to touch it, but the second he did, you know, it hurt even worse, and he definitely felt there was a pretty big lump on the back of his head.

And then when he brought his hands in front of his face, he saw he had all these bruises around his wrists that he had no idea what they were from.

And so as this man in the ditch is trying to figure out what's going on, suddenly this older man who he didn't know just appeared by the side of the road and looked down and said, hey, are you okay?

And so the guy in the ditch is looking at this guy.

He's got no idea who he is.

And he wants to say, like, what's going on?

Where am I?

Who am am I?

What's happening?

But he couldn't find the words.

It's like he just kept looking at this older guy, looking at his wrists and feeling his head and having no idea what's going on.

But then for some reason, three names popped into this guy's head, the guy in the ditch.

He thought of three names.

He had no idea whose names these were, but for some reason, he felt like those names were really important.

And so after a few minutes of awkward silence, as the guy in the ditch is trying to talk, he finally just blurts out these three names.

He says, Pat, Joel, Chris.

And so the older man who had had asked the guy in the ditch what was going on, he didn't really know how to react to this guy blurting out these names.

And so he kind of ignored it and just said, okay, hi, my name's Steve.

And then Steve, the older man, helped the guy from the ditch out of the ditch.

And then once the man in the ditch was on his feet, kind of looking around, he looked at Steve and suddenly he could say other words.

And he said to Steve, where are we?

And Steve looked at him and said, we're in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Now, the guy in the ditch didn't know why, but he immediately felt like Wyoming had to be wrong.

Like, there's no way he could be in Wyoming.

But the guy in the ditch didn't know where he was supposed to be.

He didn't know who Steve was.

He didn't know who Pat, Joel, or Chris was.

And so it's all totally confusing.

And so he just stood there kind of saying nothing.

And as he did, Steve said, hold on a minute.

I'm going to get my stuff.

And so Steve kind of shuffled down the road like 10, 20 feet away where there was a shopping cart full of cans and there was a backpack and some other things dangling off the side.

And as Steve grabbed the shopping cart, turned it around and slowly began pushing it back towards the guy in the ditch, the guy in the ditch stared at Steve and kind of put together that, you know, Steve must be homeless.

And this realization made the guy in the ditch think that, you know, maybe he was homeless too.

And so suddenly, instinctively, the guy from the ditch began reaching into his pockets, thinking maybe he had an idea or something that would show him who he was, that would show he was not homeless, that he had a place that he needed to go to.

And he reached in his pockets, but there was nothing.

All he found was 23 cents and a comb.

And so by the time Steve came over with his cart and asked the guy from the ditch, hey, do you want to come to the shelter with me?

The guy from the ditch was like, okay, yeah, I'll go with you.

And then once the guy from the ditch and Steve arrived at the shelter, when they went inside, you know, the guy from the ditch had to introduce himself to the people who ran the shelter.

And so he made up a name combining one of those names that was running through his head, Pat, with the color of the desk of the person who was asking him for his name inside of the shelter.

And so he just called himself Pat Brown.

And after Pat Brown got a room inside of the shelter, he went to bed that night, still having no idea what was going on, but he felt confident, you know, if I just sleep tonight, I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll know what's going on.

I'll figure out, you know, what happened to me.

But the next day, when Pat woke up, he was still completely confused, did not know who he was, had no idea what was going on, but he had the wherewithal to know that, you know, something bad must have happened to him.

And maybe he should go talk to the police because maybe they would know if other people were looking for him or something.

And so Pat walked from the shelter to the police station.

It was not far away.

And he went inside and very politely he walked up to the desk, he introduced himself to the cop who was on duty, and Pat just began explaining to the cop as much as he could remember.

He said, you know, yesterday I woke up in a ditch.

I don't know who I am.

I don't know why I'm here.

I think I have amnesia.

I just keep thinking of three names in my head, Pat, Joel, and Chris, but I have no idea what they mean.

Can you help me?

Now, the cop who's hearing this did not think, oh my goodness, this is totally legitimate.

Let's launch an investigation to figure out who you are.

Instead, the cop is like, is this guy on drugs?

Is he mentally ill?

You know, what's going on with this guy?

But the cop would say, you know, Pat was incredibly polite and did not appear to be intoxicated.

And so the cop humored him and said, okay, you know what?

Let's look through the most recent missing person reports in the area to see if somebody matching your description, you know, is a missing person.

And so the cop began going through the database, but he couldn't find anybody that matched Pat's description.

And so at some point he said, look, like, I can't really help you very much here because you're a grown man.

You do not seem to be in distress here.

And even though it's very unfortunate that you can't remember who you are or where you need to go or, you know, where your family is, that's not really a police matter.

But as he was saying this to Pat, Pat, who's kind of crestfallen, you know, he's putting his hands near his face and just kind of reacting to this news that the police are not going to help him.

And the police officer says, hold on a minute, look at your hand.

And so Pat looked at his hand and he saw, you know, there was no ring on his left ring finger, but there was a pretty obvious callus where a ring should have been.

It looked like, you know, Pat must have been wearing a ring up until recently, and for some reason it was now off.

And so the cop said, hey, it looks like you may be married or were married for a long time because you got that callus, but you know, beyond that, I'm sorry, there's not much else I can offer you.

And so even though this was somewhat valuable information, it didn't really point Pat in any direction.

And so he was about to turn and leave when the cop said, hey, you know, do you want to ride to the hospital?

Because it seems like you could be having some sort of medical event here.

But Pat politely declined and just told the officer to please be in touch with him if anybody came calling looking for somebody that kind of seemed like him.

And the police officer said he would.

And so after this, Pat left the station and went back to the shelter and basically told himself, I'm going to stay here and just wait until my memory comes back.

Because at this point, that was kind of all he could do.

However, weeks would go by at the shelter and nobody would contact the police looking for somebody like Pat Brown and Pat wouldn't remember any more details.

The only thing that kept coming into his head was those three names, Pat, Joel, and Chris, but that was it.

And so finally, after a few weeks of no progress being made, Pat decided he would leave the shelter in Cheyenne and go to Jackson, Wyoming, because some other people in the shelter had talked about Jackson, Wyoming as being a place where people who don't have ID cards could get jobs and basically start over.

And because Jackson was only a little over 400 miles away from Cheyenne, it was not unreasonable to try to hitchhike your way to Jackson.

And so almost exactly two months from the day Pat woke up inside of this ditch, he began hitchhiking his way towards Jackson.

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When Pat got to Jackson, he was able to get a job without an ID.

He got a job at a newspaper sorting mail and doing some clerical work.

And at first, he stayed in a shelter like he had in Cheyenne until he had saved up enough money to rent a room.

And as the months went by in Jackson, Pat did begin to remember additional details about what seemed like his former life.

He discovered while doing clerical work at the newspaper that he was able to use an adding machine without looking at it.

It was like his fingers just knew where to go.

He also discovered that he was able to do really complex math problems in his head.

And then also, in virtue of being at the newspaper, he saw a lot of information about the stock market, and he actually seemed to know a lot about the stock market, even though he didn't know why.

Also, while Pat was in Jackson, he started to feel this really intense compulsion to go to a Catholic church, and so he began going to Catholic Mass, and while he was in church, he just automatically began saying the prayers along with everybody else, even though, again, he didn't really know why he had that information in his head.

But the biggest clue that came back to Pat while he was in Jackson was this recurring dream he would have, where he was at this campground somewhere, and this little boy comes around the corner and looks up at Pat Pat and says, hey, dad, mom needs your help with Chris.

And then in the dream, he responds to this child by saying, okay, Joel, I'll be right there.

And so with all these clues kind of coming back into focus, Pat sort of felt like he had a grip on who he used to be.

Based on the callus on his finger and on that recurring dream, it did seem like he was a married man who had at least two kids, you know, Joel and Chris.

And so his wife was very likely named Pat, or maybe Pat was another child he didn't know.

And then also he felt like he must have been maybe an accountant or somebody who worked with numbers, you know, based on the adding machine and understanding the stock market and complex math problems.

And also, he was a devout Catholic, because that's the only way he would know all those prayers.

But despite kind of putting together who he seemed to be in his previous life, that didn't really tell him anything about what he should do now.

Like, he didn't know where his potential family was, or where his job was, or where he should go.

And so, even though he had this kind of former life formed in his mind, he couldn't act on it.

And so, Pat's weird life in limbo in Jackson, Wyoming just kind of continued to drag on.

And so by the end of 1997, so by this point it's been three and a half years since Pat has woken up in the stitch confused, he's still in Jackson, Wyoming, he still has no idea who he is, and it's starting to set in that unless he takes drastic measures here, he'll never figure out the truth about who he is.

And so early in 1998, Pat does take drastic measure.

He contacts a very popular TV show at the time called Unsolved Mysteries and asks them to please cover his story because if they did, it would be broadcast across the country and maybe somebody out there would recognize him and come find him.

And sure enough, when Pat contacted Unsolved Mysteries, they thought his story was totally insane and they covered it.

Pat's episode aired on April 10th, 1998, almost exactly four years after Pat woke up in that ditch.

And on the day his episode aired, in a city in Indiana, 1,500 miles away from Jackson, Wyoming, a phone rang in a woman's house.

And so she answered it, and it was her cousin, and her cousin told her, stop whatever you're doing, and turn on the TV.

Put it on channel CBS.

And so this woman, she walks into the living room, she turns on the TV, flips it to CBS, and she sees an episode of Unsolved Mysteries is playing, and it's Pat Brown's episode.

And this woman is staring at the TV, and she practically faints when she sees what it's about.

But she stays composed and just stands there staring at the TV, so shocked she can't even say anything.

And the whole time, her cousin is yelling through the phone, you know, saying, Can you believe it?

Oh my goodness.

And then at some point on the TV, a phone number flashed at the bottom of the screen where the producers of the show told the audience, Hey, if you know anything about this case, call this number.

And so, with this, the woman who's watching the TV, she hangs up on her cousin and she dials that number she sees on the TV.

Pat's drastic decision to call Unsolved mysteries would indeed solve the mystery of who he was.

However, the truth about who Pat was is not what you think.

It would turn out some of the clues that Pat had sort of naturally recalled in those four years that he was kind of figuring out who he was were indeed clues of his former life.

He really was a married father.

Those three names, Pat, Joel, and Chris, those were the names of his wife and his two sons.

Pat was his wife, and Joel and Chris were his two sons.

And he really was a devout Catholic, which is why he was able to remember all of those prayers.

But some of the other clues he thought of over those four years, like his incredible aptitude for math, or the fact that he could use an adding machine without looking, or the fact that he understood the stock market so easily, those were clues about his former life, but specifically, they were clues about why Pat was in this position in the first place.

It would turn out Pat Brown was actually a man named Carl Brodnick Jr.

And Carl Brodnick Jr.

was a wanted felon who had misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from the advertising agency where he worked as an accountant.

And Carl had been under serious criminal investigation when he suddenly disappeared from his home in Indiana on July 8th, 1994, which is five days before Pat Brown woke up in that ditch on the side of the road with a lump on his head, markings on his wrist, and having no idea who he was or what happened to him.

Now, there has never been a perfect explanation for what actually happened to Carl, but if you think about this logically, his claim of having amnesia is very likely true.

Why would a guy use amnesia as his cover story to flee the law, you know, run to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and say, I don't know who I am, I don't know what happened to me, only to then, what, a few years later, go on national TV and out himself and totally make himself a target for the police?

It doesn't make any sense.

And then also adding credibility to this idea that maybe something happened to Carl versus Carl running off to save himself is we know that when Carl disappeared on July 8th, 1994 from his home in Indiana, he took out $1,000 in cash from his checking account and then also took out another large sum of cash from his home's second mortgage.

However, when he woke up in that ditch, all the money was gone.

He just had 23 cents in his pocket.

Now, after Carl vanished from his house in Indiana, police did go looking for him because he was under criminal investigation, so they wanted to find him.

And they pretty quickly found his car 250 miles away from his home in a strip mall parking lot in Missouri, but there was no sign of Carl anywhere.

And then, right after the police found his car, they checked Carl's credit card and they discovered it had just been used in Colorado, so 900 miles away, to buy clothes.

But when they went to that store and tried to find security footage of, you know, when that transaction took place, there was no footage.

And so there was no way of knowing if Carl really was the guy in Colorado making that transaction or if somebody else had his credit card.

And then after that, there were no other leads.

Nobody had any idea what happened to Carl.

His family didn't know.

The police had nothing to go on.

And so very quickly, his case went cold.

Until four years later, when that episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired.

Now, there are many theories about what could have happened to Carl, but the leading theory that again is just a theory, is that Carl may have been in debt to some very dangerous people.

And so when he fled his home in Indiana, it's very likely that he was not running from the law, even though he was under criminal investigation.

He was actually running from these these dangerous people, and that the reason he might have been stealing from his company was to pay off these dangerous people, but apparently it wasn't enough, hence why he decided to just kind of take off and run away.

And these dangerous people seemed to have caught up to him, and they captured him, and it looked like they tied his wrists at some point because of the marks on his wrist, and they very likely tortured him or something, hence why he had this very serious head injury.

And then it seems like they dumped him on the side of the road, very likely to die.

They might have thought he was dead already, but he didn't die.

And when he came to, he must have really had amnesia from the injuries he sustained from these bad people that chased him down.

But again, that's just a theory.

When Carl's episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired, it was his wife, Pat Brodnick, who was the one who saw him on TV and couldn't believe it and called it in.

And then when she called this in, at first, you know, Pat was reunited with his family and it was this big happy reunion.

Pat comes back home, he sees his wife and his kids, and then he's immediately arrested and prosecuted for embezzlement.

Now, ultimately, Carl would plead guilty to the charges against him, but he would say the whole time, I don't remember committing this crime, I don't remember anything.

And so, ultimately, Carl did not get sent to prison, he instead served time on probation, and then after it was over, he just went back to living as Carl Brodnick Jr., despite still having huge gaps in his memory.

At least, according to Carl.

A quick note about our stories.

They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr.

Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive-produced by me, Mr.

Ballin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone.

Research and fact-checking by Shelly Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.

Audio editing and post-produced by Witt Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Minata and Delena Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner.

Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr.

Ballin podcast.

If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts.

There's this one, the Mr.

Ballin podcast, as well as Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted, Late Nights with Nexpo, and A Twist of History.

All you have to do is search for Balin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.

Ballin.

So, that's going to do it.

I really appreciate your support.

Until next time, see ya.

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