Pod Insights Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries 160. Lost Media: Tapes Too Dark For The Public About this episode Today, I want to look at two pieces of “lost media” with you all. One piece is lost because it was deemed too dark for the public to ever hear, and the other was lost when it was intentionally destroyed by the US government. That’s right, we’re going over the case of Timothy Treadwell aka Grizzly Man, and the Cavalese Tapes. So roll up your sleeves and let’s dive into the darkness together.
TW: Animal Mistreatment
Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/grizzlyman
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2:01 Kaelyn Moore? In October of 2003, a woman named Jewel Palavec went out to check her mail and saw that there was a manila envelope with something crammed inside. The sender was the Alaska State Medical Examiner's Office. It looked like it had been hastily thrown together, like the contents were radioactive, and the coroner wanted whatever was inside away from them as quickly as possible. Now, inside the envelope, Jewel found a videocassette tape, and on it was an audio-only recording that was only six minutes long, in which she saw that. Her heart sank, because Jewel knew exactly what was on that tape, and that under no circumstances should she listen to it. What the videocassette had captured was the sound of her closest friend Timothy Treadwell
2:46 Kaelyn Moore? and his girlfriend Amy Huguenard being mauled to death by a bear in the Katmai National Park of Alaska. Just before their deaths, one of the two of them hit record on a video camera. The lens cap remained on, but the audio of the attack was recorded. Now, because Jewel promised herself she would never listen to this tape and never share it with anyone, it's become lost media. But over the years, investigators have been able to piece together what happened leading up to the recording, and some of the very few people who have ever listened to the tape have come forward and described it. So, the first story I want to tell you about today is the story of the Grizzly Man. Welcome back to another episode of Heart Sides Pounding.
3:30 Kaelyn Moore? As always, I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore. I want to get right back to today's episode. This is honestly our darkest episode of lost media yet. But first, I did want to give a quick shout out to all of the new listeners who may have found this podcast over the holidays. I am so happy to have you here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters with me while I guide you through these dark tales. Seriously, welcome to all of you. I also wanted to update you all that if you're interested in joining our book club, we are reading Riley Sager's The Only One Left, and we're going to be discussing it on Patreon later in February. You can join Patreon on the free tier to participate. Yes, this one is for everyone, so come on over and join us. Also, I wanted to give a huge shout out to members like Madison, Morgan, Janine, who
4:14 Kaelyn Moore? truly finished this book within three days. I could not believe how fast you guys read it, but I think that's a testament to how good it is. Okay, like I said, I want to get right back into this episode, to the story of the tape that is too dark for the public to hear. This story starts in Long Island in the late 1970s. There, a young man named Timothy Dexter had visions of himself up on the silver screen starring in big Hollywood movies. Timothy was described by his parents as being an otherwise ordinary child. He loved animals. He was a star on his swimming and diving team. But something in Timothy changed when he went to college. While he was attending Bradley University on a swimming and diving scholarship, he started making up these stories about his life.
4:59 Kaelyn Moore? Instead of telling people that he was raised by two parents in Long Island, he started saying that he was a British orphan. And this continued after school as well. Timothy moved to Los Angeles after college to pursue acting. But after just a few months in LA, he wasn't really getting many auditions. So the lies continued. Maybe as a way to make his life seem more interesting to casting directors, he changed his last name to Treadwell and would once again tell people that he was an orphan, making up all these different ways that his parents had died. He even went as far as putting on a fake Australian accent and saying that he was raised in the Outback. But none of this really helped. At one point, he almost booked a role on a sitcom Cheers,
5:42 Kaelyn Moore? but he lost to this up and coming actor named Woody Harrelson. And it was really after this event where Timothy's life took a dark turn. He started drinking. His moods became really unpredictable. Days of dropping headshots off around town turned into days of drinking alone at bars. Eventually, the alcoholism turned into drug addiction, and it took surviving a near fatal heroin overdose to wake Timothy up. He finally realized that he didn't want to die. And now we don't have a ton of details on this next part, but at least according to Timothy, when he was at his lowest, he had this encounter with a grizzly bear, and it made him realize his true purpose in life.
6:23 Kaelyn Moore? He felt like grizzly bears needed a savior, a protector. They needed Timothy. But for him to play this role, he would need to get and stay sober. And so... He decided to hone in on the bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska as the ones that needed his help the most. He felt like these bears in this park were at the highest risk of being poached. He would go on these long rants about how poachers had run amok in the park for decades. They hunted bears for trophies and to steal their gall bladders, which they would then sell on these, quote, "Asian black markets." So, every summer, starting in the late 1980s, he would fly to Anchorage, Alaska, and he
7:05 Kaelyn Moore? would live amongst the bears with just some camping equipment and his camera. He even gave the bears names and personalities. He would get very shockingly close to them and film himself even petting them sometimes. He felt like he was really starting to develop very special relationships with some of these bears. He filmed himself talking about chasing off poachers, even ones that threatened him with guns. But, one thing that he never got on camera was any actual footage of him facing off against poachers. No, his camera was never on for those interactions. And that brings me to really the problem with Timothy's plan. See, the bears in Katmai National Park are not really at risk of being poached.
7:49 Kaelyn Moore? Katmai is a national park, and national parks have extra layers of protection against poachers. Poaching there would be a federal offense, and it would carry a much larger consequence. And many conservationists, animal advocates, and the native Aludik people of the area all argued that the bears were perfectly fine without Timothy's intervention. High Country News reported, quote, "Poaching has never been much of an issue in Alaska, where grizzlies may be hunted legally, and the area in which Timothy spent most of his time is already protected from development because it's in a national park." But, that didn't deter Timothy. He never listened when park rangers explained to him that in their
8:31 Kaelyn Moore? entire careers working in the park, they had never seen more than a few isolated incidents of poached bears. Or, when members of the Aludik tribe talked about how they had lived amongst the bears for generations, but they knew that they had to be at arm's length because grizzlies were really unpredictable, harsh, and unforgiving at times.
8:51 Kaelyn Moore? But no, he never took any of this advice. Instead, Timothy started becoming somewhat famous for his trips. In the early 2000s, he made an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, where Letterman asked him an ominous and kind of foreboding question. He asked, quote, "Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of the bears?" He asked this in a joking tone, and he laughed. But Timothy took the question very seriously. He responded with a firm "no." He didn't think there was any world in which these bears would hurt him, let alone kill and eat him. "He had developed a relationship of mutual respect with the creatures," he said. "They knew he was their protector, and they wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that."
9:35 Kaelyn Moore? But that brings me to the end of the 2003 summer season that Timothy spent with the bears. From Timothy's first summer camping in Katmai, he and the park rangers did not get along. Timothy was angered by a lot of the National Park Service's safety guidelines, because he saw them as tools they used to stop his efforts in protecting the bears. Some of the precautions that he chose to ignore were: One, carrying a defense weapon on him, including a gun or bear spray. Two, putting up an electrical fence around his camp. Three, keeping a distance of at least 50 yards from the bears. In order to keep the peace with the park rangers, though, there were some restrictions that Timothy eventually did start to follow.
10:17 Kaelyn Moore? Now, campers were required to move the location of their camp at least one mile every seven days, and Timothy did do this. Unfortunately, most of the campsite locations he chose were far from safe. He would choose to set up his tent much closer to the bears than any wildlife ranger would ever recommend. But this summer, he wasn't alone in camping. With him was Amy Huguenard, his girlfriend, who had joined him on these trips for the last few seasons. Now, Amy was a physician's assistant, and from what we can gather, it seems like she was pretty afraid of bears. From reports I've read, she didn't really love the trips that Timothy took, but she would go down with him during the seasons. She only appears two times.
11:01 Kaelyn Moore? And the over 100 hours of footage that Timothy gathered. Now Timothy stars in most of this footage, but it seemed like Amy really wanted to keep an arm's distance from it. When she first started joining Timothy on his summers amongst the bears, he displayed this level of reverence and deference towards the animals. He would make sure to not keep his back turned to them. He wouldn't touch them that much or go right up next to them. But in the more recent summers, he was becoming a lot more relaxed with his personal rules for being in contact with the bears. He spent longer and longer sitting with them. That's when he started petting them, interacting with them during their feedings.
11:42 Kaelyn Moore? And this particular season, Amy was pretty eager to leave. Timothy was getting way too close and personal with the bears. Their campsites were getting closer and closer to the bear feeding areas. And Amy, on top of this, already didn't love the whole expedition, so she just wanted to get out of there. And the two of them were supposed to have left weeks earlier, but Timothy just kept pushing the date further and further into the future. So on September 26th, the summer season was finally over and Amy was sitting in an uncomfortable airport chair, though I'm sure it was more comfortable than anything she'd been used to in the last couple of months. The summer season had ended and she was ready to catch her flight home when all of a sudden
12:23 Kaelyn Moore? Timothy came over to her and he tells her that they're actually not going home today. Something about the flight being more expensive than he thought it would be. Also, he mentioned that he hadn't gotten to say goodbye to one of his favorite bears, Downey, and now he could. And Amy got this really, really bad feeling. But still, the couple headed back to the park, this time to a park called Coffey Bay, an area that Timothy referred to as the Grizzly Maze. Now, the Grizzly Maze was probably one of the most dangerous places that they could have camped at that time. The area was defined by having really thick brush and almost no open spaces, so visibility was minimal for both humans and animals.
13:08 Kaelyn Moore? This left the couple vulnerable to accidentally scaring a bear that didn't see them. And a scare like that could and would have deadly consequences. The area that this was in was also very remote. There was not a single other camper around. And it gets even more dangerous beyond that. The exact spot where Timothy put their camp was at the intersection of several bear trails. Trails that led to the lake that the bears would use to fatten up before winter. He quite literally put them between the bears and the source of food that the bears would need as they were getting ready for hibernation, which is the time in a bear's life where they are the most desperate for food. With all of this working against their safety, you would imagine that Timothy would have
13:52 Kaelyn Moore? done something to set up safety precautions. But other than keeping most of their food in bear-resistant food containers, he didn't really do much. He didn't have an electric fence. He didn't have any defensive measures. Nothing. Now, Amy begged Timothy to move their campsite, but he refused to leave. This was exactly where he needed to be, he told her, and he wanted to say goodbye to Downey. And that brings us to October 6th, just a few days later. A pilot that Timothy had arranged to pick them up was flying over their pickup spot looking down, and he didn't see any sign of Timothy or Amy near the shore. He landed and he called out into the thick forest of brush, but he hears no response.
14:37 Kaelyn Moore? Now, he would have gone to search for them, but he also knew that this area was not safe at this time of year. So he ended up getting back in his plane and just started circling the area, hoping that he would see the couple somewhere. But instead, what he saw were a few bears gathered around a food source. And even from the air, he could tell that what the bears were circling was human.
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16:06 Kaelyn Moore? By 2 PM on October 6th, investigators had arrived at Timothy and Amy's campsite and saw that it had been fully torn apart. Their gear and the tent were decimated and flung in every direction. And it would later be confirmed that what the bears were eating was human and was in fact Timothy and Amy. The attack was believed to have happened at 1:53 PM on October 5th. And one of the first people at the scene was Trooper Alan Jones. And as he was surveying the campsite, he noticed something pretty chilling. One of Timothy's camcorders was set up like it had been recording. There was a tape in the camcorder, but the lens cap was on. So it wasn't likely that there was any video of the attack.
16:50 Kaelyn Moore? Investigators figured they would pop the tape into a video cassette player just in case. They had no idea how disturbing this tape would be. Their assumption that no video had been captured was correct. But what had been recorded was 6 minutes and 21 seconds of the sounds of unimaginable horror as Timothy and Amy were attacked and eaten alive by bears. This is the tape that made its way to Jewel Powellback. And even though Jewel has never listened to the tape, it has been listened to by a few people, including filmmaker Werner Herzog, when he was making a documentary about this called Grizzly Man. And there's a very upsetting scene in the documentary
17:34 Kaelyn Moore? that shows Werner with headphones on, listening to the audio, while Jewel watches him. And even without hearing a single thing, Jewel bursts into tears at the thought of what is on this tape. When Werner's done listening, he tells Jewel. You must never listen to this, and you must never look at the photos I have seen at the coroner's office. I think you should not keep it. You should destroy it. I think that's what you should do because it will be the white elephant in your room all your life. Other people that were confirmed to have heard the tape before it got to Jewel were Trooper Alan Jones and Trooper Chris Hill, who were the first on the scene. There was Sergeant Maurice Hughes Jr., Medical Examiner Frank Fallico, Wildlife Biologist Larry Van
18:18 Kaelyn Moore? Dale, and Kevin, quote, "The Bearman Sanders" from Yellowstone Outdoor Adventure, who also claims that he's heard the tape, though it's a little bit disputed if he actually has. And based on the retellings of these people, the following summary of the tape can be made. Now, there's no way to confirm who hit record on the camera, but Amy makes the most sense in this situation. The attack on Timothy had already begun by the time the camera started recording. She might have hit record out of reflex, or Timothy could have yelled at her to turn it on. We just don't know for sure. But the tape starts with the sound of heavy rain hitting the tent. And the first voice we hear is Amy
18:58 Kaelyn Moore? asking if it's still out there. Next is Timothy's voice. His voice was captured even through the rain because he had been wearing his remote microphone clipped to his clothes, and he can be heard screaming to Amy, "Get out there. I'm getting killed out here." The tent zipper is then pulled open, and Amy's screaming can be heard too, over the sounds of the rain and the wind. Timothy then yells at her to play dead, and a few seconds passed before he yells at her again to play dead. Amy's screaming does seem to ward the bear off, at least for a little while, and then Amy and Timothy have a clipped conversation about whether or not they think the bear is really gone. Amy then makes her way over to Timothy, but backs off because the bear returns. Timothy can be heard screaming
19:42 Kaelyn Moore? that playing dead isn't working, and he begs her to hit the bear with something. The sound is muffled because of all of the wind and rain on the tent, but Amy can be heard yelling at Timothy to fight back. And then she yells, "Stop, go away," or maybe "Run away," and next comes the sound of a pan hitting the bear on the head, and it's believed that Amy is the one striking it. At one point, Timothy screams at her, "Amy, get away, get away, get away," to try to save her, but Amy stays. There's a sound of dragging, and then the sound of Amy screaming. And that's it. Wildlife biologist Larry Van Dale describes the screams as, quote, "The sound of a predator call used by hunters to produce the distress cries of
20:26 Kaelyn Moore? a small wounded animal, which often attracts bears." He thinks that this may have only attracted the bear to come back and kill her. The tape on the cassette runs out and then the recording ends. It's believed that Amy was still alive when the tape stopped, but the bear at some point returned for her shortly afterwards. Now, I've actually seen people talking about this tape on TikTok before, and there's a lot of comments that say things like, "I've heard this tape. It's out there." A lot of people really do believe they've heard this tape. And you may have seen a clip going around on YouTube that claims to be the original audio of the attack. This clip is only two minutes long, and it alleges to be the first two minutes of the entire six-minute recording. You may have even listened to that sound clip.
21:09 Kaelyn Moore? And I'm here to tell you that what you heard is not the real tape, despite how convincing it might sound. People who have heard the actual recording have confirmed that the YouTube video is not the tape. And anything you hear with bears roaring loudly in it is also not the actual recording, because contrary to what you've seen in movies, bears are actually very quiet when they attack. And so in the real recording, you can hear grunting from the bear, but you're not going to hear any roaring. The tape either lives on a shelf in Jewel's home, or it was destroyed by Jewel's, as Werner Herzog told her to do. But it was in the possession of Timothy's dear friend, someone who understood him on a level deeper than the general public could, and still loved him for it.
21:51 Kaelyn Moore? And Jewel knew that the world had been given one very specific version of her friend, a version that became famous in his death. So personally, I understand why she never wants the tape to be released. And the internet is also this insatiable beast. And I don't know that necessarily any good would come from anyone listening to it. Timothy set up a foundation called Grizzly People to aid in educating about grizzly bear conservation, a foundation that was run by Jewel after his death. Now, for our next piece of lost media. I want to tell you about a video recording that no one will ever be able to see. Like I mentioned before, sometimes media becomes lost accidentally.
22:33 Kaelyn Moore? Sometimes it's withheld because it's far too dark for the public. But sometimes it's intentionally destroyed because someone doesn't want any record of it ever existing. We've spoken about it before here, but sometimes big corporations or networks will erase unsavory footage, but for the most part, that's harmless. But not this time. In this case, someone recorded a horrible accident on video. Footage that was so bad, the US government decided to destroy it. This is the story of the Cavallaz tape. Cavallaz is a small ski resort town in the Italian Alps nestled in the Dolomite Mountains, about 20 miles northeast of Trento.
23:16 Kaelyn Moore? Now, Cavallaz wasn't the most luxurious destination in Italy. It wasn't bougie or exclusive. It was more family-friendly, pleasant, a place where locals could afford to ski and tourists could come for a nice vacation without breaking the bank. The town's economy really relied on that resort. It was the heartbeat of the community. That is, until February 3rd, 1998. It's just after 3pm. The ski resort is busy. It's a Tuesday afternoon and the slopes are full of skiers from all over Europe. Some are staying on vacation, trying out this resort for the first time. Others would have been yearly pass holders, locals who have skied these mountains their entire lives. That afternoon, 20 people pile into one of the yellow cable cars.
24:00 Kaelyn Moore? Seven Germans, five Belgians, three Italians, two Poles, two Austrians, and one person from the Netherlands. 19 skiers and one cable car operator. The gondola begins the beautiful ascent up the mountain. The sun is out, reflecting off the pristine white snow that blankets the Dolomites. The air is crisp and it's cold in that way that makes your cheeks flush, but feels refreshing after a few runs down the slopes. The ride up is totally peaceful, quiet, except for the hum of the cable pulling them higher and higher up the mountain. But then... Someone hears it. At first, the sound was distant. It was just the rumble of an engine somewhere in the valley. But it gets louder and faster.
24:44 Kaelyn Moore? And finally, someone looks out the window, maybe trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. But that's when they see it. An aircraft. Low. Way too low. It's not just flying over the mountain. It's flying through the valley, screaming towards them at an impossible speed. There's no time to process what's happening, no time to even fully register the fear. This plane is massive. It's dark against the bright sky, and it is coming right at them. The whole thing happens so quickly that most people inside of the gondola probably don't even process it. But the right wing of the plane strikes the cable from underneath, causing it to detach and plummet 260 feet, crashing into the face of the mountain.
25:28 Kaelyn Moore? It's like falling from the 20th story of a building. And once it hits the snow below, all 20 people die on impact. Even days after this disaster, the scene was haunting. Against the white snow, smashed pieces of the yellow cable car were roped off with orange and white police tape, guarded by Italy's paramilitary police force. To one side, rescue workers had piled the broken skis of the 19 skiers that were killed. Pieces of hats and gloves could be seen scattered in the snow. The severed cable car still drooped in the air, suspended by branches of a pine tree, like some really horrible reminder of what had happened. The whole town afterwards was devastated.
26:11 Kaelyn Moore? And during a special mass that was held for the victims, the local priest, Reverend Lorenzo Casarati, voiced what a lot of people were feeling. He said, quote, "The skies are for everyone, not only for the powerful and arrogant who believe themselves to be the masters of the lies of others." See, it seemed to only be a matter of time before an accident like this had happened. Locals had been complaining of low-flying planes for a while now. But these were not commercial Italian planes. They weren't personal planes flown by locals. No. The planes flying incredibly low and almost crashing into the gondolas every single day were US military planes.
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28:58 Kaelyn Moore? This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City Kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends and everyone
29:43 Kaelyn Moore? kept talking about it. And all of those "constant comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment. Curiously different, impossible to forget. Let me tell you about this aircraft first because it matters to the story. The Grumman EA-6B Prowler was a twin-engine, four-seat electronic warfare plane that had been in service with the US Navy and Marine Corps since 1971. It was primarily used for jamming enemy radar systems, and in its 48 years of service, not a single one was ever lost in combat. It was reliable, it was incredibly effective, but it was also loud, slow, and
30:27 Kaelyn Moore? very ugly. I mean, some reports I saw, people were calling it a "sky pig." One description even said, quote, "It resembled a flying chicken leg." But it seemed to get the job done. On February 3rd, 1998, one of these Prowlers took off from the Aviano Air Base in northeastern Italy for what was supposed to be a routine low-altitude training mission. Onboard, there were four Marines. There was the pilot, Captain Richard Ashby, who was 31 years old. There was Captain Joseph Schweitzer, who was 30, he was the navigator. And then there were two electronic countermeasure officers, William Rainey, 26, and Chandler Seagraves, 28, who had joined the crew at the last minute that morning.
31:09 Kaelyn Moore? The plane had already flown one mission to Bosnia and when it returned at around 12:20 PM, the morning pilot reported a fault in the radar altimeter, the instrument that tells you how high you're flying above the ground. Now, the instrument was changed out and seemed to be working fine afterwards. But what's also important to this story is that the Italian government had recently issued new directives on low altitude flights in the region, and it forbid flights below 2,000 feet. Copies of this directive had been given out to all of the pilots at Aviano. But after the accident, investigators would find one of these copies in the EA6B, and it had never been opened. They also found maps in the
31:53 Kaelyn Moore? flight deck that clearly marked the location of aerial tramway cables, but no one had opened any of the maps. And if you remember, the cable car was sitting at around 260 feet when it was struck by the plane at 541 miles per hour. Captain Ashby would later claim that he thought they were flying at 1,000 feet, which is already below regulations, but they were flying so much lower than that. After the accident, the Prowler sustained wing and tail damage, but it was able to get back to the Aviano airbase with all of the passengers alive about 90 miles away. All four Marines on board survived without any injuries, while 20 people at the resort fell to their deaths and were trapped beneath the cable car wreckage. Now, locals said that they had been seeing these US military
32:38 Kaelyn Moore? planes flying unusually low for a while, and it felt like these planes were taking joyrides in the beautiful Dolomite Mountains, putting all of their lives at risk for a pretty view. And afterwards, the community became incredibly anti-American, and it got so bad that even President Bill Clinton had to come forward and issue an official apology. But that was not enough. These people did not want an apology from the president, they wanted answers. They wanted to know exactly what had happened in that cockpit. What were those pilots doing? Were they following regulations? I mean, clearly not, but were they even taking this seriously? Well, there was a way to find out, because there had been a video camera in the cockpit recording the entire flight. But by the time investigators
33:23 Kaelyn Moore? asked to see this tape... It was already gone. Now let me tell you what we know about this tape. The video camera in the Prowler's cockpit was there to capture the scenery, just a way for pilots to record their flights, maybe as keepsakes for review later. And according to Captain Schweitzer, the tape from February 3rd contained footage of him smiling during part of the flight, right before the accident occurred. When the Prowler landed back at Aviano Air Base after severing the cable, the pilot, Captain Ashby, gave the tape to Captain Schweitzer, the navigator. And Schweitzer knew that it was bad. He knew that they were flying way too fast. He knew that they were flying way too low. They were barely one tenth of the altitude
34:07 Kaelyn Moore? of the regulations. And on top of that, there was a tape of him in the cockpit smiling as the plane hit innocent bystanders. So, that night, he built a giant bonfire, threw the tape in, and destroyed it. All four crew members were initially charged with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty. If convicted, they faced punishment ranging from reduction in rank to dishonorable discharge and several years in prison. Italian prosecutors wanted the Marines to stand trial in Italy, but an Italian court recognized that NATO treaties gave jurisdiction to US military courts, so the trial needed to be held in America.
34:49 Kaelyn Moore? And in March of 1999, Captain Richard Ashby went to trial at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. And he was charged with 20 counts of involuntary manslaughter. During that trial, though, it was determined that the maps on board the Prowler didn't actually show the cables they were at risk of hitting, even though we know that maps that did show them were in the cockpit. They were just unopened. It was also determined that the EA6B had been flying considerably lower and faster than allowed by military regulations. The restrictions required a minimum flying height of 2,000 feet. Ashby claimed at first he thought they were at 1,000 feet, which is still too low, but obviously they were even lower than that. Ashby also claimed that his altimeter had been malfunctioning
35:32 Kaelyn Moore? and that he had been unaware of the speed restrictions. When the verdict finally came, Captain Ashby stood at attention as the president of the jury, which was made up of other Marines. Colonel William T. Snow said, quote, "This court finds you, of all the charges and specifications..."
35:50 Kaelyn Moore? Not guilty. And the courtroom scene after this was an absolute mess. Ashby's sister, who was seated with about 30 other spectators in the courtroom, let out a loud whooping sound, which caused one of the prosecutors to turn to the relatives of the German victim seated behind him and say, "I'm sorry." For the families, this result was devastating. One of the women who was there, Cindy, whose father and sister were on the cable car along with her sister's fiance, said she worried that the Marine Corps jury wouldn't convict one of their own. Quote, "There's a saying in Germany," she said. "It says, 'One crow doesn't pick out the eye of the other one.'" And Rita Wonderlick, who lost her husband in the crash, said through a translator,
36:34 Kaelyn Moore? quote, "I buried my husband a year ago. Today was his second funeral." And about the whoop from Ashby's sister after the verdict, Wonderlick said that if her own daughter had done something that caused 20 deaths, she didn't know if she could even enter the courtroom. She said, quote, "I don't know if she were declared innocent if I could have screamed out of joy." But saddest of all, some of the victim's family members believed that this would have played out differently if that tape still existed. Would it show what really happened that day? A group of young Marines joyriding, smiling through the dolomites, too low, too fast? Maybe it showed the exact moment that they realized they were going to crash and what was said afterwards.
37:17 Kaelyn Moore? Did they come up with a plan to destroy the tape together? But the tape no longer exists, so justice would never ultimately be served. Well, actually, the story wasn't entirely over. There was still a chance for some justice, and it was because the tape was destroyed. In a second court martial, both Ashby and Schweitzer were charged with obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman. The prosecution argued that the crew had destroyed the tape specifically to obstruct the investigation, that there must have been something incriminating on it, something that they didn't want anyone to see. And this time, both of them were found guilty.
38:00 Kaelyn Moore? Ashby was sentenced to six months in prison. He was dismissed from the Marines and he surrendered all military pay and allowances. Schweitzer entered a plea agreement. He faced no prison time, but he was also dismissed from the Marines. An appeal by both pilots against their dismissals was also rejected in November 2007. Years later, in July of 2011, an Italian newspaper called La Stampa was investigating the tragedy. They wanted to see if there was anything that could be learned from the legal proceedings about the not guilty verdict. So they illegally obtained a classified US Marine Corps document from the archives. This document had been written just one month after the accident, and it contained a bombshell.
38:42 Kaelyn Moore? It recognized the Marines' full responsibility for what had happened, and it was an internal document. Quote, "The cause of this tragedy was that the Marine aircrew flew much slower than they were authorized to fly, putting themselves and others at risk." The document read. "It recommended that, quote, 'appropriate disciplinary and administrative action be taken against the mishap aircrew and also against their commanding officers for their failure to properly communicate flight restrictions.'" The document recommended the United States pay legal reparations for all deaths and damages. It also revealed that in May of 1999, the US Congress had rejected a bill that would have set up a $40 million compensation fund for the families.
39:27 Kaelyn Moore? Instead, in December of 1999, the Italian Parliament approved compensation of $1.9 million per victim. It was the country paying for the US's mistake, essentially. Though NATO treaties did oblige that the US government refund 75% of that amount, which at least was something. But none of that brings back the 20 people who died, and none of that changes the fact that we will never know what was really on that tape or how having it would have changed the verdict. Today, we covered two different kinds of lost media, but two that were intentionally withheld from the public for very different reasons. With the Timothy Treadwell tape, I'm not sure that anything can be learned from actually having that piece of lost media.
40:12 Kaelyn Moore? It seems like it serves more to satisfy the dark curiosity of the listener than to help solve anything necessarily. And all the people who needed to listen to it have. So it may sit on a shelf in Timothy's friend's house for the rest of eternity, or it could already be destroyed, we just don't know. But the Cavaliers tape could help bring closure for those families. It could have changed the outcome of the trial. But now I'm curious to hear from all of you, my darkly curious listeners. Do you think you could bear witness to either of these tapes? I mean, they're both incredibly dark. A lot of people out there do want to see one or both of them. But do you think that you could handle seeing them? Or do you think that it's best that they never be released to the public? You can leave a comment wherever you listen.
40:54 Kaelyn Moore? I'm very curious to hear from all of you, wherever that may be. And that's all I have for you this week. I will be back next week with another story for all of you. Join me here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters as we dive into another darkly curious tale. And until then, stay curious.
41:15 Kaelyn Moore? Heart Serves Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Serves Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Megan Gilbert. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, and the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartservespounding.com.
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42:19 Kaelyn Moore? price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust VistaPrint with their print needs. VistaPrint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code new20 at vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at vistaprint.com using code new20. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven-day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heartstartspounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.
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