The Honeymooners

A couple sets out on a honeymoon adventure to conquer the mighty Colorado River, but their journey ends when they vanish without a trace.

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  Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia DeAmbra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. It's a case that's gripped sleuths, outdoor enthusiasts, and the river adventure industry for nearly 100 years. The puzzling disappearance of newlyweds Glenn and Bessie Hyde in the fall of 1928 is a mystery that, just like the landscape and waterway they vanished from, has taken many ups and downs over the decades. And the truth continues to remain elusive. There are a lot of publications and resources out there about this case, but one piece of source material I found particularly helpful was a book by author Brad Dimick, which was

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  published in 2001. It's titled "Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glenn and Bessie Hyde." Some of the firsthand accounts and details chronicled in this book were instrumental in understanding the timeline of events leading up to the couple's disappearance, as well as the context of what happened in the aftermath of their ill-fated trip. And I know what you're probably thinking. Wait, wasn't this just a tragic river rafting accident? How is that a park predators case? Well, just wait, because the further we get along in this story, you'll see that nothing is as it seems. And the suggestion that something more sinister might be beneath the surface of these honeymooners'

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  disappearance is not as wild as it may sound. This is Park Predators.

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  On Sunday, December 9, 1928, a man named Roland Hyde was at his home in Idaho eagerly awaiting a telegram from his son, 29-year-old Glenn Hyde. Glenn and his new wife, Bessie, had been rafting on the Green and Colorado Rivers for several months and were due to complete their journey in western Arizona any day now. In fact, when Roland had last received communication from Glenn, Glenn had told his dad that December 9 was his and Bessie's target date to end their trip in Needles, California. After that, they'd take a train to Los Angeles to meet Roland and Glenn's sister, Jean. There was some buffer built into those plans, though. Glenn had said that at the latest, Roland should hear from him and Bessie by December 11.

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  However, December 11 came and went, and the couple was still a no-show. So, the following day, December 12, Roland got on a train and headed to Las Vegas, Nevada, to make his way toward the Colorado River in search of his son. As he made his way to the Needles area, he met two brothers, who were some of the only people who lived in the vast stretch of landscape along the river in that area. Unfortunately, though, those guys told Roland they hadn't seen Glenn or Bessie pass through recently. So, getting nowhere on his own, Roland decided he needed to start contacting government officials and anyone he could think of to try and get more resources and assemble a formal search for the couple.

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  He also got ahold of Bessie's parents, William and Lottie Haley, and informed them that their daughter was overdue. Author Brad Dimick explained in his book that, growing up, Glenn and his family were avid outdoor enthusiasts. Over the years, they vacationed far and wide, including trips to Canada, Alaska, New Mexico, and California. And during those outings, they traversed all sorts of landscapes, including mountains, glaciers, caves, deserts, you name it. They also enjoyed activities like camping, hunting, and fishing. So by the time Glenn was a teenager, he was pretty well-versed with how to handle himself in the great outdoors. Throughout Glenn's youth, his family had moved around a bit after experiencing ups

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  and downs with financial success and hardships. But eventually, the Hydes settled in southern Idaho. When Bessie was a child, her family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where author Brad Dimick explained she spent most of her formative years. Then, when she was about 16 years old, her family moved again to Parkersburg, West Virginia. She was a new face at a new high school there, but got involved in a number of clubs right away. She was passionate about art and drawing, and it was through that interest she met a fellow student named Earl, who also had a passion for the arts. After graduating, Earl and Bessie stayed close, despite him moving to Ohio to find work and her enrolling at a college a good distance away from him.

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  A few years later, though, the couple reunited and got married. It was not a public affair, and the only witnesses listed on their marriage license were family members of the minister who'd wed them. And it doesn't seem like the union lasted long, because about two months later, Bessie popped up living in San Francisco, California, and Earl wasn't with her. Anyway, by the end of 1926, it appears that she and Earl's relationship had ended for good, because she continued to live on her own in California without him. In February 1927, she quit art school and joined one of her roommates on a steamboat headed to Los Angeles.

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  The women had purchased one-way tickets with seemingly no intention of returning to San Francisco. And when they arrived in LA, Bessie had a new companion with her: Glenn Hyde. Author Brad Dimick explained that the couple had met aboard that steamship, and after getting to know one another, became pretty much inseparable. After that, Bessie traveled with Glenn to where his family lived in Idaho, and later that year, he went with her to West Virginia to meet her folks. During that introduction, though, things weren't exactly warm and fuzzy. Bessie told her parents that Glenn was someone she intended to marry, but there was a bit of a problem. Technically, she was still married to Earl, who, by the way, was someone her mother, Lottie,

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  seemed to like a lot more perhaps than Glenn. And when Earl learned that Bessie was intending to marry Glenn, he traveled straight to Parkersburg and attempted to convince Bessie to get back together with him. She didn't want to do that, though, and asked him for a divorce, but Earl wouldn't do it. Eventually, he and Glenn got into it over the issue, and when the dust finally settled, nothing got resolved. Bessie and Glenn left West Virginia and headed back west, and Earl and Bessie still remained legally married. Bessie had a plan, though, a pretty clever one. At the time, the state of Nevada had fairly loose divorce laws, as long as you were a resident for at least six weeks. So, Bessie moved there in the autumn of 1927.

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  She rented a room at a house, and then, in early 1928, six weeks after taking up residency in the state, she formally filed for divorce from Earl. A few months later, the petition was granted. And the very next day, she married Glenn in Twin Falls, Idaho. She moved into his house, helped him out on his farm, and things seemed pretty great. But by the summer of 1928, the pair was already making plans to hopefully leave Idaho for something better. The more they talked, the more they realized that boating down the Colorado River would be their next big adventure. Glenn had the skills and experience to navigate such an endeavor, and Bessie seemed eager to follow him.

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  Fast forward a few months, though, to when the alarm was sounded, when Glenn's dad and Bessie's parents raised concern about their children's disappearance. They made sure the highest members of their state governments heard them. Roland petitioned Idaho's then-governor to help arrange an aerial search for the missing couple. And William and Lottie Haley did the same thing to West Virginia's governor. Thanks to that pressure, officials acted, and on December 17, 1928, a formal search got underway, and a $1,000 reward was posted. Within the first week or so, Roland remained in Arizona, trying his best to get ahold of anyone who might have seen Glenn and Bessie during their trip.

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  What the Hydes' general travel timeline shook out as went like this. Starting in October, the couple had arrived in Green River, Utah, where Glenn spent two days building a sweep scowl canoe from scratch. During that process, several men at that location, who'd previously traversed the Green and Colorado Rivers, questioned Glenn's approach to the process, as well as his boat's design. But Glenn didn't seem to value those guys' input. One of the men would later say that, in his opinion, Glenn seemed conceited, surly, and naively unprepared about the whole thing. But that's just one guy's opinion, though. I'm not sure it's the most accurate description of Glenn as a person.

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  Either way, when the couple launched on Saturday, October 20, 1928, their boat was packed to the brim with food, supplies, fuel for campfires, a bed-spring mattress, and a rifle for hunting game. The one essential item they didn't pack, though, were life jackets. Apparently, in 1928, life jackets weren't commonly used by boaters in Idaho, which is where Glenn was raised. Most folks who traveled on the Colorado River, though, at the time, did use them. So, it seems that since Glenn was from Idaho and had more boating experience there without a life jacket, the life jackets were viewed as an optional item for their Colorado River trip, and they just didn't bring them.

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  Anyway, the Hydes spent the first week or so of their adventure, making their way south and successfully navigating a treacherous stretch of water where the Green and Colorado Rivers converged. That specific confluence is known as Cataract Canyon, and it's been dubbed "the graveyard of the Colorado" because of its dangerous rapids. According to accounts in Brad Dimick's book, Bessie nearly fell overboard in Cataract Canyon, but Glenn caught her just in time. After that, they spent the first days of November navigating downstream, battling heavy rains, and making camps at various places along the way.

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  On November 8, Glenn penned a letter to his father informing him that he and Bessie were two days ahead of schedule. He mailed that letter from a river outpost known as Lee's Ferry. Some men at that location had warned the couple that the pace of the river after that point, which led into the Grand Canyon, was going to be tough going. One guy seriously tried to talk them out of continuing the journey, but the Hydes remained adamant they wanted to keep going. Between November 8th and November 15th, Glenn and Bessie made their way through rough waters and camped when they needed to. They also spent some of that time writing letters to relatives and taking photos of one another with equipment they'd packed in their boat.

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  Many of these self-portraits and photos are in Brad Dimick's book and in online archives with Northern Arizona University's Klein Library. Eventually, the pair made it to Grand Canyon Village, which is on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. There, they took a much-needed break and restocked their supplies. While they rested, they did an interview with a newspaper reporter about the exciting and perilous details of their honeymoon adventure. And it seems that at that point, the hides were becoming a news story themselves. Newspapers at the time couldn't get enough of their adventure tale, and the fact that if they succeeded, they likely set several new records.

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  For example, Grand Canyon National Park's then-superintendent told the press that the newlyweds' journey might be one of the fastest ever in history. And Bessie would be the first woman to traverse the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. During their stop on the south rim, the hides also met two brothers, Emory and Ellsworth Kolb. The Kolbs ran a photography business there and had been working in the area since before the national park was designated as a national park. On November 15th, the hides hung out, had lunch with the Kolbs, and then Emory snapped two photos of the pair, one of which seems to be one of the most frequently referenced portraits of Glenn and Bessie in the available source material.

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  The black-and-white picture shows the two of them standing side by side in their layered coats. Glenn has a hat in his right hand, and Bessie is wearing a fur-colored jacket. They don't look noticeably distressed or anything like that. In fact, they almost seem amused at having their photo taken, or at least, that's how their shy smiles come across to me. But what's interesting is that apparently, when Emory Kolb was later asked about his time with the hides, he claimed that Bessie didn't seem all that excited to continue the journey. He said despite multiple attempts to get them to take life jackets, or at least some inner tubes, the hides refused to do so, which was concerning because, in Emory's opinion,

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  it seemed like Bessie was fairly tired and ready to call it quits. Still, the hides left Grand Canyon Village and continued on their trip. On November 16th, they met a 30-something-year-old tourist named Adolf Sutro, who was the grandson of a wealthy mining tycoon from California. Adolf lived for adventure, and he apparently had an endless budget to do pretty much whatever he wanted. So, he asked the hides if he could raft with them for a day or so and then be dropped off at the next river trail. The couple agreed to the proposal, and on November 17th, the three of them headed off on the river. About a mile or so into their journey, though, they got caught in a rough whirlpool and had to battle the violent current for hours just to stay afloat.

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  After that, Adolf got out of the hides' boat, and Glenn and Bessie continued on alone. That was the last known sighting of them. Some three decades after that day, Adolf told a historian named Otis Doc Marston that not only was he scared by the harrowing experience in the time he'd been with the hides, he believed Bessie was terrified, too. He said that in his opinion, the couple's watercraft was poorly made and inadequately equipped for such a treacherous journey. He explained that during the time he spent with them, he got the sense that they were only making the trip in the hopes of getting a movie made about them, or perhaps earning money from selling their story to the entertainment industry.

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  Adolf said Glenn in particular talked a lot about making money from the endeavor, and it seemed like, had it not been for him, Bessie probably would have never gone on such a dangerous trip. Years later, a former park ranger told Doc Marston something similar. He said that it was Glenn who'd seemed overly eager to finish the rafting trip in record time. This ranger also said that when he saw Bessie, she seemed over the whole thing and likely would have quit much sooner if not for her husband's insistence. Another witness account which seems to support the suggestion that the hides were on different pages regarding the pace of their journey came from a man named Bob Francie.

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  Bob delivered supplies via pack mule to travelers on the river. And he said that he'd heard from other men who'd been at a camp along the river after the hides dropped off Adolf, that the pair had gotten into an argument. Reportedly, this tiff ended with Glenn forcing Bessie into their boat. Years later, similar versions of this story would be told, including one account from Emory Kolb. In his book, Brad Dimick explained that no one knows for sure the validity of these rumors. But I, for one, would think that if Bessie was truly unhappy and didn't want to continue on with the trip after stopping at Grand Canyon Village, her letters to relatives

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  leading up to that point would have reflected such a sentiment. Yet, in none of her writings that historians and researchers have reviewed, did she outright express an overwhelming desire to quit, or that she felt Glenn was reportedly pressuring her to keep going? When it came to searching for the missing couple, though, the best starting point officials back in 1928 had was River Mile 95, which was the general area where they'd last been seen. That point was some 375 miles north of where they planned to end their journey. So, for two or three days, crews on the ground and in boats searched sections of the river above and below that point, and pilots flew over the canyon looking for any sign of the

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  newlyweds, but nothing turned up. Then, on December 19th, a glimmer of hope emerged. Two pilots spotted a lone wooden boat floating on the river.

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  I have no idea how I got there.

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  I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks like this.

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  It felt like electric stars on fire.

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  The wooden scowl that was presumed to belong to Bessie and Glenn had been found adrift near an area of the Colorado River known as Diamond Creek. Not long after the pilots saw it, they flew back to the south rim and picked up longtime area resident and one of the last people to see the missing couple, Emory Kolb. With Emory on board, the pilots made another pass over the scowl so he could positively ID the boat as belonging to the missing couple. Emory, of course, knew it was theirs as soon as he saw it, and a few days after landing with the pilots on the south rim, he embarked with his brother and another man to go and retrieve it. When they arrived a few days later, they saw that the boat was upright, undamaged,

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  and still loaded with supplies, including the couple's bed-spring mattress. As they approached it, the Kolbs and their companion made sure to film the whole thing. When the men boarded the scowl, nothing seemed to miss. The oars were still there, food was uneaten, blankets were in storage, Glenn's rifle was inside, and the couple's coats and hiking boots were still aboard. Bessie's camera and film were also sitting undisturbed. There was also a mooring line that trailed beneath the water and appeared to be fastened to a nearby rock crevice, which is how the boat had been kept in place. Wedged into the side of the craft was a journal Bessie had been writing in throughout her and her husband's trip, and the last entry was dated Friday, November 30th, which seemed

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  to indicate whatever happened to them happened either on or after that date. To get the boat back to safety, the Kolbs cut that mooring line, which, years later, some people criticized as a mistake. For example, a lot of folks, including Emory Kolb himself, wondered if maybe one or both of the hides' bodies could have been beneath the water on the other end of that line. There's also been speculation that perhaps the couple tied the line themselves and tried to hike or climb out of the canyon, and in the event they didn't make it, they might have planned to return to the boat. So, when the line was severed, it could have either untethered the newlyweds' potential

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  corpses, or left them stranded without a vessel if and when they did ever return to it. Even more interesting, as the Kolbs and their companion navigated the boat downstream, they realized the conditions were too difficult to keep it with them the rest of their trip. So, they made the executive decision to take as much of the contents from it as they could and then abandon it in the river, which meant officials on shore never got the chance to thoroughly examine it for clues. It wasn't until December 27th, more than a week after the boat was first found, that the Colbs and their companion made it back to dry land and turned over nearly everything they'd found inside of the boat to Glenn's dad.

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  Bessie's film rolls, however, went with the Colbs to their home studio so they could develop what was on them. It seems that after the boat was found without the couple in it, most people assumed they'd simply gone overboard and perished in the river. But Roland Hyde, Glenn's father, wasn't so sure about that. He suspected his son and daughter-in-law were still alive somewhere further upstream and just needed to be rescued. So he implored officials to send out more resources to search for them, but his requests were ignored. The formal search was called off on December 29, 1928, and it never resumed. By the start of the new year, newspapers and publications across the country lost interest in the Hyde story.

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  There were no more headlines to grab readers' attention anymore, and so the articles just stopped coming. After about two years of searching on their own, Roland Hyde and Bessie's dad, William, gave up trying to find their children. Money was a resource neither man had in excess, and at some point, they had to accept the possibility that the couple was likely gone forever. For years, rumors ran wild about what really happened to Glenn and Bessie. Some folks claimed Emory Colb and his brother were involved somehow, and had maybe paid the Hides to hike out of the canyon so that the Colbs could get notoriety for being the ones to spearhead the search for them. Other folks suggested an act of foul play might be involved, and there were even whispers

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  that Roland Hyde himself had found out what really became of his son and daughter-in-law, and in an attempt to hide the truth, had covered it up and played the part of the grieving searching father. In the 1950s, that historian I mentioned earlier, Otis dot Marston, started conducting interviews and gathering oral histories about the case. He spoke with river guides, mule packers, anyone who had ever gone down the Colorado River. Some of the accounts he collected claimed that Glenn and Bessie had survived their trip and were off keeping a low profile. Evidence that supported that theory was the fact that shortly after the couple's boat

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  was found adrift, searchers on land had found what they believed were footprints in mud along the riverbank not far from where their watercraft was located. But it was never confirmed if those footprints were officially connected to the case or belonged to Glenn. By the time Doc Marston came along, Glenn and Bessie's dads were both deceased, so he sought out other family members to interview to try and gather more information. Glenn's sisters pretty much shut him down right away and said they had no interest in providing any information about their family's history. Bessie's relatives, on the other hand, were much more cooperative. Her mother, Lottie, sent Doc Marston copies of all the letters that she'd received from

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  the Hides over the years, and Bessie's brother, Bill, also spoke with the historian. He suggested a theory that his late father had harped on for years. What happened to Glenn and Bessie was no accident. They were victims of a crime. Brad Dimick wrote in his book that for a period of time, historian Doc Marston looked into whether foul play was the reason for Glenn and Bessie's disappearance. Part of going down that rabbit hole required Marston to consider whether a certain man from Bessie's past could have been involved, and that man was her ex-husband, Earl. Obviously, the couple's divorce was a tense matter, and he had balked at her request to sever their union when he found out that she intended to marry Glenn pretty much right

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  away. Brad Dimick explained in his book that some folks around Parkersburg, West Virginia, where Bessie's family lived, discussed how mad Earl had gotten when Bessie divorced him. But as hard as Doc Marston probed into this angle, he never found anything substantial. After the divorce, Earl went on to remarry as well and had a family of his own. Very rarely, if ever, did he or any member of his family discuss his brief union with Bessie. Brad Dimick explained in his book that a researcher spoke with Earl on the phone in 1985 and asked about his prior marriage to Bessie. But all Earl said was, quote, "I don't want to discuss it. She is dead," end quote.

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  Then he hung up the phone. By the 1970s, it was mostly historian Doc Marston who seemed to still be obsessed with the Hyde story. By that point, he'd spent decades researching it and conducting interviews, but ultimately, he died in 1979, and his final conclusion? They likely perished on the river. And a lot of other folks by that point shared his same belief. That is, until a few years later, in 1980. That year, the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, which has jurisdiction to investigate potential crimes in the vicinity and boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park, launched an investigation into a very disturbing discovery.

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  According to news coverage about this case, in early 1977, Emory Colb's grandson was cleaning out a boathouse on his grandfather's property when he found something alarming. Inside a canvas boat, tucked up in the rafters of the boathouse, was a nearly intact human skeleton. Emory had died the year prior at the age of 95, and the boathouse that was being cleared out sat beside his longstanding photography studio on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The unsettling discovery of skeletonized human remains came nearly 50 years after Glenn and Bessie vanished.

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  On top of the immediate question, why was there a skeleton on Emory's property, people also wondered whether or not it could belong to one of the Hides. But for several years, the skeleton, a silver belt buckle, and some pieces of clothing that were found with it stayed with the National Park Service. It doesn't appear that much work was done at that time to determine who the person was or how they died. Then, about three years later, in 1980, a detective with the Coconino County Sheriff's Office took possession of the bones and sent them to a forensic and physical anthropologist named Dr. Walter Burkeby, who worked for the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona.

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  The clothing and the belt buckle were shipped off to the FBI. Dr. Burkeby determined that the skeleton was that of a white male who was about 18 to 23 years old. He also estimated the man had light brown hair and probably stood about six feet tall. After examining the skull, Dr. Burkeby found a spent bullet fragment in it and concluded that the man had been shot in the right side of his head with a 32-caliber round from a revolver. His estimated era of death was sometime in the 1920s. So to get more information, the doctor and his students developed a clay reconstruction of the victim's face. And when everyone involved compared that rendering to known images of Glenn Hyde,

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  well, there was a noticeable resemblance. Also, the age range of the victim and the fact that Glenn had been traveling with a rifle at the time of he and his wife's disappearance, well, it all just seemed to fit. Not to mention, the silver belt buckle that had been found with the skeleton looked a whole lot like one Glenn had been wearing in that photo Emory had taken of him and Bessie before they vanished. So, the question for law enforcement was, if this skeleton was Glenn, why and how could his body have ended up essentially hidden in a boat in the rafters of Emory Cole's boathouse? It implied that Emory might have done something to him, and by default, also Bessie.

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  I mean, after all, Emory had been one of the last people to see the couple. He was also one of three folks who'd retrieved their boat's contents. Him being a potential person of interest wasn't an unfounded theory for authorities to at least consider. Like I said, though, by the time the bones were even discovered, Emory was dead, so he couldn't be questioned, which left things mostly up to Dr. Burkeby to study the specific characteristics of the skull to determine if, in fact, it really could be Glenn. And when the doctor did his thing, which involved overlaying a photo of Glenn on top of a photo of the skull, he realized that the bone structure wasn't the same. He explained to Unsolved Mysteries that the skull's chin was different from Glenn's,

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  and the eye sockets were larger, and the cheeks were wider. So in the end, Dr. Burkeby was confident the victim was not Glenn Hyde. Further examination of the belt buckle also confirmed that the one from the skeleton and the one Glenn had been wearing in photos weren't the same. And that was seemingly the end of that avenue of investigation, at least as far as officials were concerned. Per Brad Dimick's book, Emory's grandson told the NPS that he remembered his granddad finding the skeleton sometime in the 1930s below a spot in the canyon known as Yavapai Point. But the grandson's mother, Emory's daughter, told authorities she remembered the remains had been found in 1919.

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  So, there was definitely some discrepancy there when it came to what family members recalled. But the issue was resolved, for the most part, by 2008. Per reporting by the Arizona Daily Sun, Coconino County's cold case squad kept pursuing the case and ultimately determined that the victim had been found in 1933, and he was a young man who died by suicide. Unfortunately, though, they've not ever identified him, though efforts to do so are ongoing. But to stay focused on Glenn and Bessie's story, another big potential bombshell moment came a few years before all that stuff happened with the skeleton being found in the boathouse. Author Brad Dimick wrote in his book that in November 1971, a group of people rafting

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  on a guided river tour were making passage through the Grand Canyon when an older woman in that group made some declarations that seemed unusual. The woman's name was Liz, and she was in her 60s. While gathered around a campfire one night, some guides for the tour overheard Liz state, quote, "I'm Bessie Hyde," end quote. According to these witnesses, Liz then went on to discuss the story of the Hides. She explained that she'd killed her husband after they'd had a big fight, and he hit her. She said she grabbed a knife and stabbed him to death, then sunk his body in the river. Afterwards, she sent their scow adrift and hiked out of the canyon to safety.

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  Once out, she took a bus back home to the East Coast. At the time, the people who heard Liz say all this didn't really take her that seriously. She'd been pretty stoic, though, while recounting the details of her story. So after the trip was over, the witnesses kind of started to wonder if maybe she'd been telling the truth. I mean, the age lined up. If Liz was in her 60s in the early 1970s, then that would have made her about Bessie's age in 1928. In 1985, an author tracked Liz down and interviewed her about her alleged confession, but she denied knowing anything about the Hides. At the time that author found her, Liz was living pretty close to Parkersburg, West

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  Virginia, which is where Bessie's family was residing at the time she married Glenn. Another historian eventually spoke with Liz, too, but again, she denied any knowledge of the incident. In the end, many people doubted she was actually Bessie Hyde, and naturally, that's where that avenue of investigation ended. Years later, some of the witnesses who claimed to have overheard Liz saying she was Bessie retracted their accounts and expressed remorse for having perpetuated a story that ultimately caused her to be harassed. Today, the truth of what became of Glenn and Bessie remains an enduring mystery. And unfortunately, now that so much time has passed, it's a puzzle that may never be solved.

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  For example, in December 1928, a month after the couple's disappearance, then-President Calvin Coolidge signed a federal piece of legislation called the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which ordered that the Colorado River be dammed permanently. In 1935, that project was completed, and Lake Mead flooded the river in the exact area where the Hides boat had been found in 1928. So if any trace of them remained there, it was likely wiped away when the dam project was completed. Another unfortunate reality of this case is that despite the fact that Bessie's journal survived the river, it was later destroyed. According to Brad Dimick's book, before turning it over to Glenn's dad, one of the

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  Cole brothers copied down some of the contents, but only entries that Bessie had made after visiting them on the South Rim. So their copy didn't contain her writings for the whole journey, just a portion of it. The original journal then went to Glenn's sister, Jean, who later destroyed it after writing her own version of it. After hearing everything I've told you, I pose this question: What do you think happened? Are you inclined to accept that the honeymooners simply perished because the great Colorado River overwhelmed them? Or does a part of you, like me, think something more sinister could have happened? If you find yourself visiting Grand Canyon National Park anytime soon, maybe the answer

• 36:45Speaker 01

  will come to you. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators. I think Chuck would approve.

• 37:06Speaker 02

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• 37:41Speaker 01

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids. It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory. Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp. That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into? I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.