Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Mystery of the Death Valley Germans About this episode In 1996, a small group of German tourists disappeared in Death Valley National Park without a trace. Fifteen years later, the tenacity of one man solved the case.
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1:40 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:49 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know.
1:56 Josh Clark? I don't really think you could call it part of our ongoing true crime suite, but certainly unsolved mystery suite, I think.
2:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, semi solved mystery, I guess, at this point, because we're talking about what's known as the Death Valley Germans. Pretty good band name, but it's in fact a very sad story from July of 1996, when a blended family of German tourists came to the United States for a three-week tour of California and Nevada and were never seen again alive.
2:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, they just vanished into thin air essentially in Death Valley National Park. And there've, I mean, it's weird, like essentially there was one guy who will meet later, who got it as close to solved as possible, just from sheer determination. But the family that you're talking about, they were made up of Egbert Rimkus, who was 34, he was an architect, he was the dad. George, I'm not sure how to say George without an E. You took German, are you familiar?
3:00 Speaker 03 Uh, no, I guess it's George.
3:03 Josh Clark? Okay, he was 11, he was Egbert's biological son. Connie Meyer, Cornelia Connie Meyer, she was 27, she was Egbert's girlfriend. And Max was Connie's biological son from a previous relationship, he was four. And Egbert had gone through a fairly difficult divorce recently. And so this trip was essentially meant to be like a fun bonding experience for the four of them.
3:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:28 Josh Clark? To kind of form a family unit in this new, you know, new realities, new circumstances they were in.
3:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, so they got to LA on July 8th. They had a return flight to Dresden, which is where they're from, for July 27th. And the, on the docket was about a week or so in the LA area. Head on over to Las Vegas for a few days. Go to Death Valley National Park, check that out. Head over to Yosemite from there and then go back to LA and fly home. It's a, it's a pretty standard little itinerary for that, that kind of, you know, three-week adventure, I would say.
4:09 Josh Clark? Yes. And for the adventure, they rented a car, a 96 Plymouth Voyager minivan. And they rented it from Dollar Rent A Car. Being German, they would have rented it from Dollar because that's the American subsidiary of Deutschmark Rent A Car.
4:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:27 Josh Clark? And it was due back on the 26th of July, which is the day before their flight back to Germany, right?
4:33 Speaker 03 That's right.
4:34 Josh Clark? The problem is, is Dollar Rent A Car never got their minivan back. And the family didn't make their flight to Germany. And not everybody noticed this. I mean, certainly no one in America paid much attention, but remember Egbert had an ex-wife, who was the mom of George. And George's mom, Heike, she was, she wanted to know where her son was. So she alerted the authorities and very quickly Interpol put out an international alert for four missing German tourists, last seen in Southern California. And here's their itinerary. And it went absolutely nowhere. This is the end of July, beginning of August, 1996, and nothing happened for months.
5:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think about, I guess until October 21st, when a ranger was flying around in a helicopter looking for meth labs. And he said, hey, this is a very remote part of Death Valley, even for Death Valley. And there's a Plymouth Voyager minivan with three flat tires that had clearly been, you know, mired in the, in the sand. So immediately like, what is this thing? Once they figured out who the family was and this was who was missing, they were nowhere to be found. There were no signs of life. There were no signs of death. There was nothing at all. And so the, the mystery of the Death Valley Germans was born right there in one of the most inhospitable places on earth.
6:02 Josh Clark? Yeah. And the whole thing wouldn't be solved or close to being solved for another 15 years. And for those of us who aren't familiar with Death Valley, it's a national park, like I said, that straddles California and Nevada. And it is, it's, it lives up to its name. It's, it doesn't have the highest temperature ever recorded on earth, but it has the second highest, and it's very close. The highest temperature ever recorded in Death Valley in the summer of 1913 was 134 degrees Fahrenheit.
6:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:37 Josh Clark? 56.7 degrees Celsius. Hot. I think the record was in El Aziza, Libya in 1922. It was only two and a half degrees hotter than that. So clearly Death Valley is very hot. And even in a regular summer, it's still crazy hot. And in 1996, in the summer, remember, they're in there hanging out in late July, which is the height of the summer of Death Valley. The daily high temperature, the average, was 124 degrees Fahrenheit. And 91 was the low.
7:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, so it's scorching hot, which is just, you know, it's very dangerous conditions, especially if you're not used to that kind of thing, not prepared for that kind of thing.
7:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:21 Speaker 03 Apparently Death Valley is something that was, I guess, two days ago years old when I found out, is a very popular tourist site for Germans.
7:31 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:32 Speaker 03 There was a writer in the 19th century named Carl May, spelled M-A-Y. German writer, had never been to Death Valley, but wrote a bunch of hugely popular travel adventure books set in the American Southwest, including Death Valley. Some were made into spaghetti westerns, including one called The Valley of Death in 1968. But this dude, whom I've never heard of, sold 200 million books. So like, you know, one of the top-selling authors of all time. And so Germans, as a result, became fascinated with, with making that trek out to Death Valley. And that's what this family did.
8:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, you didn't know that?
8:09 Speaker 03 I had never heard of this guy, had you?
8:10 Josh Clark? No.
8:11 Speaker 03 Okay.
8:13 Josh Clark? So, this is popular with German tourists, but that's not to say that all German tourists who go to Death Valley die or get lost, or even don't have a good time.
8:21 Speaker 03 Like, of course.
8:22 Josh Clark? It's a very popular place. But people do die in Death Valley National Park every year, every summer in particular. And between 2007 and 2024, 68 people died in Death Valley. That's a lot of people who died simply from being exposed to the local weather. They died of hyperthermia, most of them, I think 20, or not most, but 20% died of hyperthermia. Which, if you've ever been in a hot sauna that got too hot for your comfort, that, imagine dying from that, that's dying from hyperthermia. I think the rest who died from exposure died from dehydration, because that can come on really quick, too.
9:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. So, a day after this minivan is discovered by helicopter in Death Valley, the ranger came back with the local sheriff on the ground to check it out. Or maybe they flew out there, who knows? But at any rate, at some point, their feet were on the ground. They opened the van up, they, like I said, there were three flat tires. It was stuck up to its axles in the sand. And they determined that it had driven for at least a couple of hundred feet on the flat tires. The whole thing was covered in dust, you know, clearly hadn't been, you know, seen by anyone else or disturbed. That was the things you would expect to find from disappeared people on an adventurous vacation like this. Like, their luggage and their clothes, like, nothing really weird, empty water bottles,
9:46 Speaker 03 empty juice containers, a couple of unopened bottles of Bud Ice beer.
9:51 Josh Clark? You remember that?
9:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, dates this thing in the mid 90s. I was never into the ice beers.
9:56 Josh Clark? No, I think, if I remember correctly, it just, it got you more crunk than the average beer?
10:01 Speaker 03 I, I feel like that was how they sold it. Who knows? I mean, that was before things like high-gravity beers really came to the forefront. So maybe it was like, you know, these things have an extra percentage of ABV?
10:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think the slogan was Bud Ice gets you plastered.
10:17 Speaker 03 I remember the dry beers too. I thought I was fancy in college at one point because I was drinking Michelob Dry.
10:22 Josh Clark? Oh, at this point, speaking of fancy, I was drinking Zima.
10:26 Speaker 03 Oh, I never went down the Zima road.
10:28 Josh Clark? Oh, they were, they went down easy.
10:31 Speaker 03 What was the flavor? What was it? Like a Sprite?
10:34 Josh Clark? Yes, it was, it was close to that. Like you wouldn't take a sip of Zima and be like, that's Sprite. But that's probably the closest thing you could just mention off the top of your head. Some people put Jolly Ranchers in it too, to flavor it even further. It also had a bit of like a, a dry, like in the sense that champagne can be dry. It had a little bit of that. Nothing that you'd be like, wow, it's a really dry drink, but yeah. And I think ultimately it was malt liquor, which really could get you plastered too.
11:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, I used to drink the Mickey's Big Mouths in college and the occasional little giant Schlitz tall boy can.
11:15 Speaker 03 Oh, those were the days. I keep it pretty simple these days.
11:18 Josh Clark? But, but yeah, but you're right. That Bud Ice definitely dates it to the mid 90s for sure. And they're, like you said, they're, this is kind of important. That's why I'm going back to it. There's, there were a couple of bottles of unopened Bud Ice beer still in the minivan.
11:31 Speaker 03 Yeah. And then one other just sort of small clue as far as to show where they'd been, there was a business card from the Seahorse Resort in San Clemente, which is where they stayed while, I guess in the LA area, which is not super close to LA. So I guess maybe they wanted to be between LA and San Diego or something. I don't know.
11:50 Josh Clark? I think they just saw pictures of the view and were like, there, because the view is very nice. So there was a guidebook there too, in German, a guidebook that they purchased, or that was purchased at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley. And like I said, it was in German. And so they went to the visitor's center, investigators did later. And they found that on July 22nd, there were two German language guidebooks sold at the visitor's center at Furnace Creek, and none on July 23rd. So with that, they started to be able to begin to retrace their steps. That was the first clue that they were able to kind of extrapolate from.
12:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, so their second clue came when they found undeveloped rolls of film and cameras. So sort of like the end of The Hangover, they were able to get those developed and piece together, you know, at least roughly by way of the pictures they took at least. What they had done on their trip, maybe even as we'll see clues to where they, like the last picture taken, obviously would be the most instructive. So from these pictures, they realized they stayed in San Clemente for a little while, seeing the LA area. They drove up the California coast and then over to Las Vegas, Nevada. And there, they stayed at the Treasure Island Hotel, which also dates this in the mid 90s.
13:15 Speaker 03 And there, they found that the father, Egbert, had called his bank in Germany on July 12th, tried to have another 1,500 bucks wired to Bank of America in San Clemente, but they sent it to the wrong bank. And at Treasure Island, he, you know, he was clearly in need of some dough. He even faxed his ex-wife and said, "Hey," which also dates this, "can you send more money?" And she never responded.
13:40 Josh Clark? Yeah, what I didn't get, and I didn't see anyone explain it, is why he was just like, "Oh, well, they sent it to the LA branch of Bank of America rather than San Clemente. I guess there's nothing I can do to go get it." He just never went and picked up the 1,500 dollars.
13:54 Speaker 03 Well, maybe he didn't know. I don't know.
13:57 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, I would still spend some time trying to figure out where my 1,500 dollars, and that's about $3,000 in today's money. So it seems like he just shrugged it off from his actions. I just think that's really strange.
14:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it also could have been one of those things where they're like, "Well, sir, we don't know which bank it's in."
14:14 Josh Clark? Stop bothering us.
14:16 Speaker 03 And like, "We can find out in a week."
14:19 Josh Clark? Yeah, it could be.
14:20 Speaker 03 And, you know, they had a schedule, so who knows?
14:22 Josh Clark? Yeah, so the long and short of it, though, is they were low on funds now.
14:26 Speaker 03 Right.
14:27 Josh Clark? And luckily, if you're going through national parks like Death Valley and Yosemite, and the only thing you're doing after that is making it back to the airport to turn in your car and take your flight home, you can get by on some pretty low funds. You can still buy some Bud Ice. Wasn't particularly expensive. So they seemed to kind of be making their way low on funds. And that actually helped track them a little bit further later on. But there was one other clue, too. And it was an American flag. And it had Butte Valley Stone Cabin on its label. That's where it belonged to in Death Valley. It's locally called the Geologist's Cabin.
15:10 Josh Clark? And I think it is, it does what it says on the label, which is it houses geologists who are conducting experiments out there. So there's food there, there's water there, but they keep it locked. If you're a geologist, it's kind of like a gas station bathroom. You have to go get the key first before you start using the geologist's cabin. So they seem to have just taken the flag as maybe a souvenir or something like that. Like, I know if I were in the Black Forest and I came across a German flag, I would take it. And then take it back to America as a souvenir.
15:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, I guess that's what this was being used for back then, because I think now you can actually stay there.
15:46 Josh Clark? Oh, really?
15:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's like a, you know, along the Appalachian Trail and just sort of all over in national parks, there'll be like a a remote cabin that, you know, you come, you can stay there. There might be some food and water rations if you need it. And you're, the idea is that you're supposed to leave something.
16:01 Josh Clark? Yeah.
16:02 Speaker 03 And leave it better than you found it. Because I've seen pictures of people that, you know, in the 2010s that have have stayed there and like, it's a destination for people who are in the Death Valley. Cause it's super cool looking. It's out in the middle of nowhere. It's like a stone cabin. And it's on a lot of people's list of like, I want to go stay at the geologist's cabin. So I guess that just wasn't the deal back then.
16:22 Josh Clark? Right.
16:23 Speaker 03 Cause it was locked up. What I don't get, well, we'll get to what I don't get later.
16:29 Josh Clark? Okay.
16:30 Speaker 03 Should we take a break?
16:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think that's a good spot.
16:34 Speaker 03 All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back with more on the Death Valley Germans right after this.
16:57 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
16:59 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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20:09 Josh Clark? Okay, Chuck, so where we left off, they had pilfered the American flag from the geologist's cabin. And like all of this stuff, this is just the stuff they found in the van. This is as far as the search has gone.
20:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:21 Josh Clark? And so the rangers of the park start conducting their own investigation. And they go to like Furnace Creek Ranch, which is a resort kind of upscale. There's a campground, but you have to pay for all those. And there was no record of the family staying at either of those places on July 22nd or 23rd or anytime, really. One of the other things they did was check logbooks. Apparently, they pick up logbooks even at sites that don't have anyone working there. They'll still have a logbook. And they struck gold at one of them, the Warm Springs Mine Logbook, which is an abandoned mine above Death Valley in the mountains, I guess, on a ridge. And you can get to it. It's a road. There's a road that goes to it.
21:04 Josh Clark? It's nothing that you would normally call a road, but in Death Valley National Park, it might as well be a luxurious eight-line, eight-lane highway.
21:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:13 Josh Clark? It's gravel, it's rough, but a Plymouth Voyager can get on this road to Warm Springs Mine. And in the logbook, they got a huge clue that would help track them down later.
21:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, they signed it. It was in German. Apparently, it was barely legible. And it said, "We are going over the pass." Signed Connie, Egbert, George, and Max. So on October 23rd, this is two days after the minivan is found. They finally conduct a big four-day search, looking for this family. About 250-plus people, couple of helicopters, eight horses. A lot of these were volunteers, but dozens of them were trained search-and-rescue people.
21:58 Josh Clark? Right, no slouches.
22:00 Speaker 03 No slouches. Well, there was one slouch, but he didn't last long, because it was Death Valley.
22:04 Josh Clark? They like go-von Eugene.
22:06 Speaker 03 Exactly. And the only evidence from this four-day search was an empty bottle of Bud Ice and a butt print, basically, in the sand next to it, where someone had clearly sat down and enjoyed that Bud Ice. It was about 1.7 miles away from the van. And, yeah, clearly, somebody took a little break in the shade and had that sweet, sweet, extra potent iced beer.
22:30 Josh Clark? Right. And they could even figure when... They probably figured it was Egbert, because the size of the butt print was fairly large. Well, that's how I saw it described. I think they're just saying larger than, say, a woman's or a child's, which was the only other people with them in this party, right? But it was on the east side of the bush, so that if he was taking refuge from it in the shade, that means that the sun would have been in the western part of the sky. So he would have been sitting there in late afternoon, which seems ludicrous to even point out, but it will come into play later on.
23:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's right. So, again, in that visitor's log, it says, "We're going over the pass." The only pass near there is called Mingle Pass, M-E-N-G-E-L. And if you look on a map, back in 1996, before you had smartphones and things like that, or people on the internet saying, "Hey, don't go this way."
23:24 Josh Clark? Right.
23:25 Speaker 03 It looks like it's pretty possible to drive from Warm Springs, go through that Mingle Pass, into an adjacent valley, and then hit a dirt road toward Yosemite. Yosemite, which was their their next destination. They didn't know, you know, they didn't have the knowledge that it wouldn't, it wasn't going to be just like a little sort of rocky path, but something you really, really need a four by four vehicle for like full stop. It's not like, well, maybe we can make it in the Plymouth Voyager. Like you, you can't make it down this road with anything other than a four by four. And even that's dicey.
23:59 Josh Clark? Yeah, I saw that not only do you need a four by four, you need an experienced driver who has, who can get through this stuff too. Like you can't just put some Yahoo in a four by four and expect them to make it. It's that dicey.
24:11 Speaker 03 Maybe a winch.
24:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, probably.
24:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, you just like go from bowler to bowler, winching yourself over the pass, right?
24:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:20 Josh Clark? So to get to the pass, you go by the geologist station. And remember they had the flag from the, the geologist station. So now they're really starting to retrace their footsteps. The problem is, is the van wasn't anywhere near the road to Mengele Pass. As a matter of fact, it wasn't really near anything that was a road, an actual road in Death Valley. It was essentially like they just drove through the middle of the desert, which is how they found the van.
24:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:45 Josh Clark? So after this four day, very extensive search by at least 250 people, all they found was the beer bottle at the bush and the butt print.
24:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:57 Josh Clark? That was it. Those were the only physical clues that they found. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in Death Valley at any given time in the whole area of Southern California. So these rescue groups got called off to other stuff and the park rangers went back about their business. And the case just went totally cold for years and years and years. And it probably would have stayed that way if not for a guy named Tom Hood, who will meet in the, in a second. But in the interim, that, that vacuum between the end of the initial search and Tom Hood picking this whole thing up.
25:32 Josh Clark? People just kind of came up with their own theories to explain it because it was just so, they just vanished off of the face of the earth, it seemed like.
25:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, so, you know, one of the, I guess it was probably the most popular theory, and it makes sense in some ways, is that this was an intentional disappearing, like, hey, let's, this family set it up to make it look like they'd been disappeared. Because Egbert, it was, he was going through a pretty rough custody battle with his ex-wife. It was a pretty contentious divorce. And apparently, there were rumors that he had talked to his coworkers about, like, kind of dropping out and moving to Costa Rica with his, with his son. And so, people are like, yeah, they purposely disappeared so he could just get away from his ex-wife and have sole custody of his son.
26:15 Josh Clark? Right. One of the big problems with that is like, if you're on a trip in LA, you could disappear way more easily than in Death Valley. It's kind of a dumb place to stage your disappearance, you know?
26:26 Speaker 03 Uh, well, I mean, I think staging a disappearance there is different than disappearing. You know what I mean?
26:33 Josh Clark? I guess I do. What about psychos and crooks?
26:38 Speaker 03 Sure. Uh, you know, they were, they were looking for meth labs out there by helicopter, so the idea that there was a drug gang or just some nerdy wells out there, uh, or just some, some random psychopath was rumors that circulated.
26:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, it didn't hurt that the Barker Ranch where the Manson family hung around is not too far away. So I guess some people are like, well, there you go. I guess there's some 100-year-old Manson family member that they ran across that who killed them.
27:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:10 Josh Clark? Uh, and then there was, this was the, probably the most conspiracy theory-minded of the conspiracy theories, or the theories of what happened to them. Not too far away, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere, is the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, which is a military testing range. I've seen top secret. It seems to be quite top secret, and of course, anytime you have a top-secret military testing facility in the middle of nowhere, people are like, they're doing crazy stuff there.
27:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:41 Josh Clark? And the idea was that Egbert, either being a curious person, was drawn to the site, this is the real reason he wanted to go to Death Valley, was so he could sneak into China Lake Naval Weapons Center and see what they were working on, or perhaps he was a spy, or something like that, and that the family had gotten caught trying to get into the weapons center and had either been, um... Sent to like a ghost prison or killed and buried in the desert. Who knows what the government will do when they're, this is the, the, the technology bandied about on the internet. When their hybrid propulsion systems are at risk.
28:19 Speaker 03 Yeah. Some random German shows up.
28:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. But also, I mean, could you get more vague than hybrid propulsion? Like, what's a propelling? What is it a hybrid of?
28:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:29 Josh Clark? But it's just so like futuristic sounding.
28:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Uh, I was driving down the highway the other day and I saw a pickup truck next to me that had a,
28:41 Speaker 03 I don't know what it was. It was a military green, like, something or other. Like, it was in the, it was in the bed of a pickup truck on, on like a, on a pallet. But, you know, it had a screen and buttons and it was square. And it was clearly military. And then I looked at, I can't remember the name of the company that was transporting it, but I looked up the company and it said like, you know, we manufacture things for the, for the warfighter.
29:09 Josh Clark? Huh.
29:10 Speaker 03 And I was like, what the hell is that next to me on the highway?
29:13 Josh Clark? Maybe it was a military issue chicken coop.
29:16 Speaker 03 It might've been something. It was probably something that silly because these guys were just driving it in a pickup truck. There were no, they didn't look armed. I mean, they may have been armed, but it's not like it was surrounded by Humvees or something like that. But it was definitely something weird to see, you know?
29:29 Josh Clark? I'm, I'm curious. Hopefully one of our listeners can, can tell us what that probably was.
29:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. It was like a trash compactor or something.
29:37 Josh Clark? Okay. So this is where it would have been left. Like he was looking for hybrid propulsion. They ran across some meth manufacturers. He intentionally staged the, the disappearance. Um, that's just, that was it. Like everybody was like, we're probably never going to figure out what happened to him. But there was this one guy who I mentioned earlier, who found out about this. His name's Tom Mahood. He's a retired civil engineer. Uh, he lives in Orange, California and he, um, he got bored in his retirement and started looking for things to do and did a whole bunch of different stuff. But one of the things he did was desert exploration. Which is a very specific kind of hiking exploration. Like you can find yourself in real trouble really quickly in the desert.
30:20 Josh Clark? So it takes, it's a certain set of skills, right? And so Tom Hood had this and he got interested in the story of the Death Valley Germans. And he put those-
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31:38 Josh Clark? Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of Vivgart, Vivgart is also known as its generic name, Fgart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab, you'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.
32:01 Speaker 03 Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.
32:14 Josh Clark? These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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33:31 Josh Clark? Two things together, and he became kind of obsessed with solving the whole thing.
33:36 Speaker 03 That sounds like a pretty good place for our second break, eh?
33:39 Josh Clark? Yes.
33:40 Speaker 03 We met Tom Mahood, and he's going, guys, cut the break. Build the tension.
33:44 Josh Clark? I was gonna say, I think Tom Mahood would approve, too.
33:47 Speaker 03 All right. We'll be right back with more on Tom Mahood right after this.
34:19 Speaker 03 All right. So Tom Mahood is on the scene. Like Liam Neeson, he has a particular set of skills. And he had heard about this case in 2008 for the first time. And in 2009, 13 years after their disappearance, he said, you know what? I'm taking it upon myself to figure out what happened to this family. He went out to the site. He went out to where the van was found. He brought a camera. He retraced the steps all the way to the beer bottle bush. That butt print was long gone. I like to think that Tom maybe sat in that spot and had a butt ice if he could get his hands on any in 2009. He looked around, headed back home. When he got home, he was looking at the maps.
35:04 Speaker 03 He was looking at the pictures. And he said, wait a minute. I have a theory about how they ended up there and where they might have gone.
35:13 Josh Clark? Yeah. And remember that four day search was really thorough. Like if you read Tom Hood's blog, otherhand.org, he has an extensive, multi-part description of this whole thing, the case, his search, all that stuff called Hunt for the Death Valley Germans. It's totally worth reading. But on this, he praises the, the search. Like, he's like, this was a really good search, but they didn't search everywhere. And one of the places they didn't search was south. The reason they didn't search south is because there's nothing there. He would have to be a complete idiot to try to go south. The only thing there is China Lake Naval Weapons Center. And that is really remote.
35:58 Josh Clark? It's in the middle of nowhere. And he started to try to think about why somebody would go south. And he put himself in the mindset of some German tourists visiting America in a national park. And that's how he ended up cracking the whole thing.
36:13 Speaker 03 That's right. So he was like, they're low on money. So that's a, that's a bit of a clue or an indicator of what they might do.
36:20 Josh Clark? Yeah.
36:21 Speaker 03 They didn't have a lot of time. It was July 22nd and they needed to be back to LA in four days. And they still wanted to go to Yosemite. That was on their itinerary.
36:28 Josh Clark? Right.
36:29 Speaker 03 So there was a time crunch. There was a money crunch. And then one of the last pictures on the camera, you know, I mentioned, obviously the last ones would be the most instructive as to pinpointing where they were. What they were doing was sunset in Death Valley. And the ranger said, hey, this is, we know the sunset. That's Hannah Paw Canyon on the west side of Death Valley. And we know it was taken on July 22nd because it was, you know, pictures were dated. And that was the night they arrived at the park. We knew that they couldn't afford to camp out at Furnace Creek or get a room at that hotel. And so, you know, like most national parks, or I guess all of them, there are places where you can backcountry camp for free.
37:08 Speaker 03 Just, you know, there are areas and a lot of times you have to like apply and fill out a little thing so they know where you are. But you can camp in the backcountry at Hanapa Canyon. And this is just not a very touristy area as far as Death Valley goes. It's the east side is more tourist friendly and this is again on the west side.
37:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, hours and hours away from the welcome center. At least, have you been to Death Valley? I have not.
37:32 Speaker 03 I did a TV commercial for a couple of days in Death Valley.
37:37 Josh Clark? Okay, so it's huge, right?
37:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I was just in one little tiny part of it, obviously.
37:42 Josh Clark? But it's massive. Please, yes.
37:44 Speaker 03 It looks big on a map, yeah.
37:45 Josh Clark? Okay, there you go. So this clue to Hanapaw Canyon kind of showed, I guess, being in the mindset of Egbert kind of helped Tom and Mahood figure out what their next move would be. And so if you look at a map and you're in Hanapaw Canyon and you're trying to get to Yosemite, it would make sense to go this route past the Warm Springs Mine toward Mengel Pass, right? And so he knows now that he's kind of in Egbert's head. Because it's, all this stuff is kind of making sense to him now why they did what they did. Ultimately, again, they're trying to look for the fastest, cheapest way to get to Yosemite from Death Valley.
38:26 Josh Clark? So they went by the geologist's cabin, again, not open for business at the time. And Mahood essentially says that he probably thought it was a visitor center or something like that. But it wasn't, so they continued on. And as they were driving to Mengel Pass, they came upon roads that were like, okay, this is not a good road. This is not even a gravel road. This is kind of rough, but the minivan can take it. If I drive slowly, if I drive carefully. And Egbert was doing a fairly good job, it seems. But when they got to Mengel Pass, which is, all they had to do was cross Mengel Pass, make it a little further and they could take a road to Yosemite. But when they got there, they were stopped dead in their tracks.
39:11 Josh Clark? There was just no way to pass it.
39:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, not eating that sweet, sweet Plymouth Voyager.
39:18 Speaker 03 If this episode isn't sponsored by Bud Ice and Plymouth Voyager, then we're doing something wrong.
39:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah.
39:23 Speaker 03 We need a time machine, I guess. It could live alongside the 2012 Camry, probably.
39:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, the 1996 Plymouth Voyager. It's ready. Are you?
39:33 Speaker 03 And then just the sound of a Bud Ice cap being twisted off.
39:37 Josh Clark? And somebody glugging it and then hitting the ground.
39:41 Speaker 03 So they realized that they can't get through there. They have, there's, the only way to go is back. It would have been around, you know, between 12:30 and 1:30 PM by this point, at least 105 degrees. So they backtrack to that geologist's cabin. It's still locked. And this is what I meant earlier when what I don't understand, what at this point, I don't understand why they didn't break into this cabin. This is dire circumstances and get some, some food and water.
40:12 Josh Clark? Here's the thing. Tom Ahud explains this really well. He's, he was saying, no, these are German tourists. They're safe in America. They're in a national park. To them, it was not a dire situation yet, that they were still on, on track. They were just having a little trouble. And the map that they had was misleading them all over the place. So he, being in Egbert's head, said Egbert made the decision, rather than go drive all the way back to the visitor's center to get out of the park in a way that you know how to do, but it's going to cost you many, many hours. And it's going to take a really long time to get to Yosemite.
40:52 Josh Clark? Why would you not follow these roads on the map that are essentially a shortcut to Yosemite? It's going to take hours off of your trip. If the map shows a road there, why would you not take it? And the problem is their map showed them roads that either were really misleading and weren't really roads or weren't roads at all. That was the map that Egbert was dealing with and that was what ultimately got them killed.
41:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, the one thing I couldn't find was what the gas situation was like in that car.
41:22 Josh Clark? I didn't see that either.
41:24 Speaker 03 I looked too, because that, that would have really factored in, obviously, because if you've ever taken out west road trips or anywhere in the world where there's just few and far between gas stations that, that, I mean, I almost got trapped a couple of times low on gas, you know?
41:39 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's nerve wracking.
41:40 Speaker 03 So we don't know the gas situation. He's in his head speculating this stuff. Seems pretty logical to me.
41:48 Speaker 03 The shortcut that they took started off pretty easy. They're almost lured into it because they felt like, all right, this Plymouth Voyager, I know this car, it can take it. But eventually they descended into Anvil Canyon. And this is where the road becomes awash. It's a dry creek bed.
42:06 Speaker 03 Dry creek beds are, you know, there's a lot of sediment, a lot of loose gravel, a lot of sand, and it's really easy to get stuck in one of those. I've been stuck in one of those.
42:14 Josh Clark? Yikes.
42:15 Speaker 03 And the only way to kind of, to avoid getting stuck is just to keep that thing going forward as quickly as you can.
42:21 Josh Clark? Right.
42:21 Speaker 03 Not dangerous, obviously, but just kind of keep those wheels going forward. What you don't want to do is stop. And it looks like that's what Egbert was doing, was trying to go pretty quickly through that gravel. And that's ultimately what, how he got those tires, you know, popped.
42:35 Josh Clark? Right. How they ended up in the middle of the sand up to their axle is there is a fork right behind them. And the fork veered to the, they took the veer, I think, to the left and realized, oh no, we want to go to the right. This left isn't actually the road. And he tried to cut over through the, I guess, median between them. And that was just nothing but sand that they got stuck in.
43:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:02 Josh Clark? So now they're stuck. And Tom Hood makes the case that they still didn't view this as a survival situation yet. This is a deeply inconvenient issue that surely they could get help with, right? I mean, again, they're in a national park, but they're four miles from the geologist's cabin. That's, that's something they could do. But again, this is totally in the wrong direction. And they're hoping to find somebody a little closer to help them pull their van out of, out of trouble and get some new tires. So this is where they think that Egbert walked off with a bottle of Bud Ice and sat in the shade and tried to figure out what to do next.
43:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, clearly, he isn't worried about survival if he's drinking a beer.
43:44 Josh Clark? Right.
43:45 Speaker 03 Because that will dehydrate you even further. Not sure if Egbert knew that. But he's German, plenty of beer over there. You would think he would know that. And again, in his defense, too, now that I'm coming around to this idea, he may not have even known, like, who knows what you can see in the window of that geologist's cabin? If there were like, you know, big water bottles or something within plain view or not. So, he may not have thought like, hey, maybe we should go back there and get some rations at least.
44:09 Josh Clark? Right.
44:10 Speaker 03 Because he may not have seen any. Again, just speculating here. But directly south of that site, again, is that China Lake Military Base. And what Tomahood reckoned was, hey, maybe he knew about this base and maybe he figured at least there will be people there. Maybe there's a perimeter fence with cameras. Maybe there's some dudes patrolling the perimeter. But at the very least, even if it's a top secret place, we could probably go get some help or something and they could drive us out of here.
44:40 Josh Clark? Yeah.
44:40 Speaker 03 You know?
44:41 Josh Clark? If we show up at the fence of a secret military base, they're gonna come to us, essentially. Makes a lot of sense. And on the map that Egbert was using, the border of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center is marked off. So to him, it looked like that fence, that perimeter fence, was just a few miles walk from where they were now, where the van was stuck, right?
45:06 Speaker 03 Right.
45:07 Josh Clark? The reason why they didn't search south in the initial four-day search was because China Lake doesn't have a perimeter fence. It's so isolated in the middle of this very deadly desert that they're like, if you try to hike to us, you're going to die. You're so dead, we don't even need to put up a fence. And so, this is Tomahood figuring this out. Like, if you are in Europe and you go to a military installation, there's going to be a fence, it's gonna be patrolled, and that would have been a really smart idea to just take the shortcut to the military installation to get help. Unfortunately, it was just doomed not to work out because there was no fence whatsoever.
45:50 Josh Clark? And at some point, Egbert figured that out. And then it started to sink in that they were in really big trouble.
45:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, so Tomahood wants to find at least some human remains at this point. He's, I don't want to get in Tomahood's head, but,
46:08 Speaker 03 And say like he was obsessed, but he was very much into the idea of finding out what happened to this family. Let's just say that.
46:13 Josh Clark? Yeah.
46:14 Speaker 03 He got his friend, Les Walker, and said, all right, let's get together another team. Let's go search south this time. About an hour after they started this search, he found an empty wine bottle under a bush. He said, here's another clue. Then he found a crumpled up piece of paper. He thought it might have been toilet paper at first. It turned out it was pages from a daily planner in German. So he said, I'm really, the trail is hot at this point, like literally and figuratively. And not too long after that, his buddy Les radios and says, Tom, we have some bones here.
46:49 Josh Clark? Yeah. So I guess Les Walker had come to the base of a cliff that was about 30 feet tall. And it would make sense that this is where you would find the bones of somebody stranded in the desert because it was the only place that was offering shade.
47:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:05 Josh Clark? And the bones were strewn about. They were sun bleached, but the thing that gave it away that these were definitely the family, the remains of the family. Cornelia's wallet was found with them, like all the credit cards had her name on it. And so Les and Tom left the bones in Situ, but they took the wallet because they were afraid that they were going to be taken for a couple of local yahoos who were trying to, who came up with a wild story, but now they had
47:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:32 Josh Clark? physical proof that they had discovered the Death Valley Germans and that got things moving really quickly.
47:38 Speaker 03 Yeah. So this was nine miles from that abandoned minivan. So to make it nine miles in that kind of heat really speaks a lot to their tenacity, trying to get out of there and trying to save themselves. Very, very sad.
47:51 Josh Clark? With young kids too.
47:53 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, Max is four years old, right?
47:56 Josh Clark? Yeah.
47:57 Speaker 03 That's just, yeah, devastating to think about. They were, like you've mentioned, four miles from the border of that naval base. And they were headed in the right direction, like they were kind of doing the right thing to what they thought was a reasonable idea of rescue, you know, looking back.
48:14 Speaker 03 They, you know, they, they got those bones DNA tested. I think they were positively matched with only Egbert. Is that right?
48:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
48:23 Speaker 03 But that's not to say that it wasn't Connie. It's obviously Connie. There were no confirmed remains of the children. That part is very troublesome to me still.
48:33 Josh Clark? Yeah, the closest they found was a small shoe. That it was so, it was so beaten up that it could have been Connie's shoe. It could have been a woman's small shoe, but it also could have been a kid's shoe. So that's the, that's the only physical evidence they found that could possibly be linked to the kids. The bones were distributed all over in this kind of one site at the base of the cliff, because it was, there was a wash, I think, on either side of the cliff. So over the course of all these years, 15 years, the rains and the ensuing torrents of water would have essentially spread the bones out. I don't know that that would have done anything just to the kids' bones.
49:18 Josh Clark? I don't know, maybe they were so light that they got carried away and spread and dispersed even further. I'm not sure, but it is sad that they never found the kids' remains, too.
49:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I just can't imagine anything more terrifying than being with your family like that and slowly dying of sunstroke and dehydration and malnutrition. It's just over the course of who knows how many days, you know? It's brutal.
49:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, the thing that gets me is that, like, thinking of what it must have been like for Egbert to climb some ridge and be able to see for dozens of miles and see that there was no perimeter fence anywhere. And for it to just hit you then, and then you have to walk back and, I guess, tell your, tell your girlfriend, like, yeah, we're in trouble.
50:07 Speaker 03 We salute you, Tom Mahood, for picking this case up and bringing about some sort of resolution. Obviously, it feels awful for his ex-wife back in Germany, you know, that her son was taken from her and on this fun sort of bonding trip and never came home. It was just, just a very sad story.
50:25 Josh Clark? It is. Yeah, and I mean, that's, that's as close to solved as it gets, and it seems pretty solved.
50:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, agreed.
50:32 Josh Clark? Well, since we don't have anything more to say about the Death Valley Germans, except rest in peace, all four of you, I think it's time for listener mail.
50:42 Speaker 03 This is about The Far Side. We did an episode on Gary Larson's great cartoon, The Far Side, and got a lot of great feedback. It's clearly a beloved cartoon that we heard from a lot of people that just really enjoyed our tribute. Hey, guys. The Far Side was also a huge part of my comedy experience in my middle school to high school years. Been happy to share it with my son, who's 11, who laughs out loud or sometimes says, "I don't get this one." Your podcast made me think about how polarizing the humor of The Far Side can be, and sometimes you just don't get it or don't really like it. My mom always thought it was such a dumb comic, but would see me laughing on and on, reading The Far Side galleries. One day, she had the paper first and really liked The Far Side from that day, and laughed out loud and said, "Oh, Pete, you're gonna love this one." And
51:27 Speaker 03 it was Grandma Worm telling the little worms how Grandpa got the ax and made them, you know, chopped up into little worms. And I said, "Ah, it's okay." But she was insistent. "Don't you get it?" And I said, "Ma, I get it. He cut himself into more worms." My mom was so mad about my reaction that she couldn't talk to me for a couple of hours. But I think that's what's so brilliant about Gary Larson. Any single cartoon can be the funniest thing ever to a particular person, and not so much to another, even if they love it. Thanks so much for the show, guys, and the countless hours that you have given to entertain me and my family. And that is from Pete. And hello to Pete and your family and your 11-year-old son.
52:06 Josh Clark? Yeah, hello, Pete. Thank you for that. Yeah, we got a lot of people sending in their favorite The Far Sides.
52:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was fun.
52:13 Josh Clark? Yep. Thanks to everybody who wrote in about The Far Side. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, strongly recommend. It's a good one. And if you want to be like Pete and send us a good email like he did, you can send it off to [email protected] .
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52:46 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Efgart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.
53:28 Josh Clark? Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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