They Left Everything Behind Except an Explanation

Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Upgrade your sleep with Boll & Branch—get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at https://bollandbranch.com/whyfiles with code whyfiles. Exclusions apply. Upgrade your glasses with Zenni—go to https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order plus free shipping on US orders over $65. Three people disappeared under circumstances no one has ever explained. A man runs out of a Bulgarian airport and vanishes into a field of sunflowers, leaving his passport and phone behind. A young woman survives a car crash on a dark New Hampshire road, then disappears in the nineteen minutes it takes police to arrive. A fourteen-year-old boy plans a trip to London down to the smallest detail, then walks out of a train station and is never seen again. These cases span three countries and three decades, but they share the same unsettling gap: a clear trail right up until the moment each person disappeared, and nothing after. We lay out exactly what happened, minute by minute, and the questions that still don't add up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip: the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 0:34AJ Gentile?

  Gather out. This happened on February 9th, 2004, in New Hampshire.

• 0:40AJ Gentile?

  On the side of a mountain road, Maura Murray's Saturn sedan sticks out of a snowbank. Someone stops to help, but she refuses. A neighbor reported the accident to the police. She didn't see a young woman. She said a man was in the car smoking a cigarette.

• 0:55AJ Gentile?

  When the police arrive, the car is there, but Maura's backpack, phone, keys, and bank cards are gone. 22 years later, we still don't know who was in that car smoking, and we still don't know what happened to Maura Murray.

• 1:15AJ Gentile?

  Rome had a pretty good run, until it didn't. Emperors kept shaving the silver out of their coins to stretch the treasury. A denarius that was almost pure silver under Augustus was less than 5% silver two centuries later. Same coin, a fraction of the metal. Prices tripled, then tripled again. People stopped trusting the money and started hoarding anything real: land, grain, silver they can hold. That's not a metaphor. That's just what happened. 2,000 years later, the playbook's the same, just with a printing press instead of a mint. You don't need a currency to be silver anymore for it to get diluted. You just need more of it printed. The mechanism's different, the outcome for regular savers hasn't changed much.

• 1:56AJ Gentile?

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• 2:37AJ Gentile?

  Maura Murray was a nursing student at UMass Amherst, and before that, a cadet at West Point. She made the dean's list, ran on the track team, and spent her free time hiking. Everyone who knew her described her the same way: she was smart, responsible, and driven. But something was wrong.

• 2:55AJ Gentile?

  In early February, her supervisor found her sobbing at her desk at her campus security job. When asked what was wrong, all she said was two words: "my sister." That weekend, her father drove up from Connecticut to help her shop for a new car. On Saturday night, she borrowed his Toyota to get to a party. On the way home, she ran into a guardrail and totaled it. The accident report didn't mention drinking. She was never charged, and insurance covered the wreck. Just a bad week, getting worse. Her friends noticed a change in her, too. Months earlier, she got caught using another student's credit card number to order food. She paid the money back, but the stress piled up anyway: school, money, a long-distance boyfriend stationed a half a country away.

• 3:37AJ Gentile?

  On Monday, February 9th, whatever was bothering Maura came to a head. At 1:00 in the afternoon, she emailed her professors and her work supervisor. They all got a version of the same message: there was a death in the family, and she needed to go home for about a week. Only, there was no death in the family. Her father was alive in Connecticut. Her mother was alive in Massachusetts. Her siblings were fine, too. But it was a lie nobody questioned, and it bought Maura Murray a week of invisibility. Then she started packing.

• 4:09AJ Gentile?

  Not a bag for the week. Everything she owned went into boxes, her whole life stacked and sealed in the middle of her dorm room. And then she left the boxes behind. At 3:15, she walked across campus to an ATM and took out $280, nearly everything in her account. At 3:40, she stopped at a liquor store one town over and bought a bottle of vodka, some dailies in Kahlua, and a box of Franzia wine, enough booze for a party, but the store video showed her shopping alone. Then she headed north. Her computer history showed directions to Burlington, Vermont, and to a resort in the Berkshires. She also searched for places to stay along the way.

• 4:49AJ Gentile?

  At 4:37 PM, she checked her voicemail, the last activity ever logged on her phone. Maura was leaving, and only she knew where. And wherever it was, she never made it.

• 5:08AJ Gentile?

  Route 112 in the White Mountains of New Hampshire isn't the kind of place you want to break down, especially in the dead of a New England winter. All that's out there are farmhouses, and they're miles apart. And it's dark. There are no streetlights. Your headlights are the only light. Just before 7:30 PM, Maura's Saturn came around a sharp curve, spun across the road, and slammed into a snowbank facing the wrong way.

• 5:35AJ Gentile?

  Accidents like this happen up here all winter. You swear, you check for damage, you put it in reverse, and you hope. But Maura wasn't going anywhere. The hood was crumpled, and steam hissed from her crushed radiator.

• 5:51AJ Gentile?

  A woman in the nearest farmhouse heard the crash and saw a car sitting crooked in the snow. At 7:27, she called 911. She told the dispatcher she could see someone inside the car, a man, smoking a cigarette. Minutes later, a school bus pulled up beside the wreck. Maura was still in the car. The bus driver, Butch Atwood, didn't see any blood. The girl looked cold and shaken. He asked if she was okay and offered to call the police. She begged him not to. She already called AAA, she told him, and a tow truck was on the way, she told him. Butch knew that was impossible. He lived 100 yards down this road. There was no cell service out here. She couldn't have called anyone. So he offered to let her wait at his house, somewhere warm, until help came. Again, she refused.

• 6:36AJ Gentile?

  Butch drove home, parked his bus, and called 911 anyway. His call went out at 7:42. At 7:46, a police officer reached the Saturn.

• 6:49AJ Gentile?

  The doors were locked, and red stains covered the inside of the car. Not blood, wine. There were textbooks and clothes, the liquor she bought that afternoon, the paperwork from her father's wrecked Toyota. Her gloves were still on the seat. And tucked between the seats, a book, not without peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range. Stories about people who died in the mountains, the same mountains she was driving through. But no Maura Murray. From the first 911 call to the officer standing next to her empty car, 19 minutes passed. In those 19 minutes, on a dark road with an earshot of two houses, Maura Murray vanished. The officer walked around the scene.

• 7:31AJ Gentile?

  The whole area was covered in two feet of snow, but there isn't a single footprint. Police dogs tracked her scent 100 yards east and stopped. The scent ended in the middle of the road, like she was lifted off the ground. But the state police had seen this kind of thing before. Maura left that road in someone else's car.

• 7:53AJ Gentile?

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• 8:37AJ Gentile?

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• 9:21AJ Gentile?

  That first night, the police treated it like an abandoned vehicle. They figured Maura got stranded and caught her ride into town. That explanation wasn't good enough for Maura's family. By the morning of February 11th, New Hampshire Fish and Game Officers pushed into the woods around the wreck. They found nothing.

• 9:39AJ Gentile?

  It was February in the White Mountains, where winter nights can fall below zero. Every searcher out there understood they were working against the clock. The search grew. Helicopters swept the mountains with thermal cameras. Dog teams worked the road sides and the riverbanks. Volunteers walked the properties near the crash. And her family hired private investigators and professional search teams of their own. There was no sign of her. No evidence that Maura Murray ever existed passed that curve on Route 112. The FBI opened a file. Investigators interviewed her family, her friends, her professors and coworkers. They built a timeline of her last day down to the minute. Then they searched her digital footprint. Still nothing.

• 10:21AJ Gentile?

  No ATM withdrawals, no credit card charges, no cellphone pings. She never reached out to a single person she knew, not ever. Two days after the crash, Maura's boyfriend Bill flew in from Oklahoma to join the search. And while he was traveling, he missed the call on a cellphone. The voicemail was just a woman whimpering and sobbing. She didn't say a word. Investigators traced the call to a Red Cross calling card, but that was it. The card couldn't be traced to a person. Now, Bill believed it was Maura, but nobody could prove it. Leads came in from everywhere. Torn women's underwear turned up near the search area, but DNA proved it wasn't Maura's. Human bones were found nearby, also not Maura.

• 11:03AJ Gentile?

  Five weeks after she vanished, another young woman disappeared in Vermont, Brianna Maitland. Investigators looked for a connection between the two cases, but never found one. Over the years, they dredged a pond, dug up the basement of a house near the crash site, and searched properties two towns over. Nothing. And the mysteries kept stacking up. Nobody ever identified the man the neighbor saw sitting in Maura's car. Nobody could ever prove who left that sobbing voicemail. And nobody, not her family and not the FBI, ever learned where Maura Murray was going that night. Her father asked to see the case file, and the state said no.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Fred Murray has been frustrated since the day his daughter disappeared with the response from police. And ultimately, he wanted access to the records. And so, he went to court to try and obtain all the records in this case. And this is a battle that went all the way to the state's highest court in New Hampshire.

• 11:57AJ Gentile?

  He sued for it and lost. It's been 22 years, and the family has never seen the full file. The case is still open, and New Hampshire still classifies the disappearance as suspicious. Her name is on file with the state cold case unit, the FBI, and Namus. Every few years, a new tip comes in, a new search gets announced, and her family drives back up to those mountains to search all over again. Route 112 is still two lanes. Cell service is still spotty. And Butch Atwood, the last person to speak with Maura Murray, blamed himself until he died. He said, "I just wish I could have gotten her to come with me."

• 12:42AJ Gentile?

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• 13:27AJ Gentile?

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• 14:10AJ Gentile?

  Gather round. This happened. There's a video that's been reposted on the internet for the past 12 years. It has millions of views. And the mystery is still unsolved.

• 14:21AJ Gentile?

  It's security footage of a man at Varna Airport in Bulgaria. He wears a yellow shirt and carries a backpack and duffel bag. He looks like any other tourist walking through the terminal. Then he starts to run. He sprints through the terminal, bursts out the doors, and keeps running until the cameras lose him. He climbs a fence, drops into a field of sunflowers, and disappears. He leaves everything behind: his wallet, his phone, his passport. Lars Maitank made his run on July 8th, 2014, and nobody's seen him since.

• 15:03AJ Gentile?

  People who knew Lars Maitank said he was a nice guy with a nice life. He grew up in northern Germany and worked at a power plant. He had friends, family, a girlfriend, people he was close to. After his father had a stroke, Lars went by his parents' house most days after work to help out. In 2014, he was 28 years old and had never been out of Germany. That summer, he and five friends flew to Bulgaria for his first trip abroad. They stayed at a beach resort at Golden Sands, right on the Black Sea, the kind of place where the bars stay open until the sun comes up. They spent a week hanging out on the beach during the day and hitting the clubs at night. His friends said Lars was relaxed and having a good time. They all were. One friend did notice that Lars wasn't eating much, just light meals here and there.

• 15:46AJ Gentile?

  But it was hot, and they were partying, and it didn't seem strange enough to change any plans. One of their last nights in Golden Sands, the group went to a bar to watch a World Cup game, Costa Rica against the Netherlands. Lars wore his Werder Bremen shirt, and there were Bayern Munich fans in the crowd. During the match, Lars and the other Germans got into an argument. People were drinking, tensions were high, and Lars and his friends left before it could get worse. On the way back to the hotel, his friends stopped to grab food. Lars wasn't interested. He told them he'd meet them at the hotel and walked off alone. They didn't see him again until the next morning.

• 16:23AJ Gentile?

  When Lars finally showed up, he had a ruptured eardrum. He said four men jumped him while he was walking alone, and he thought the Bayern fans from the bar hired them to do it. His friends told him to see a doctor. The doctor looked at the ear and didn't like what he saw. The pressure change on a flight could make the damage worse, so Lars couldn't fly home yet. He got a prescription for an antibiotic, Cefrazil, and was on his way. His friends offered to stay behind with him. Lars said he was fine. It was one extra night, and they all had flights booked. The next morning, his friends went home and left Lars alone in Bulgaria. He checked into a cheap hotel near the airport. It wasn't the best part of Varna, but it was just one night. Late that night, he called his mother Sandra. He was whispering.

• 17:05AJ Gentile?

  He told her the hotel was strange and that he didn't feel safe, and that the front desk had his credit card information. He needed her to cancel his card. Then he told her men were following him, four of them. He said they were trying to rob him, maybe kill him. Sandra said she can hear her son's heart pounding through the phone. They talked again and again that night, and on one call, he told her he was hiding. After the last call, he texted his mother one more question. He wanted to know what Cefrazil was. Back in Germany, Sandra was afraid to call back. If Lars was hiding, she didn't want his phone to ring and give him away. She booked him a flight home for the next day. In the morning, Lars called one more time to tell her the men were getting closer.

• 17:48AJ Gentile?

  Then he texted her that he'd made it to the airport. Sandra bought him a bus ticket in case he still couldn't fly, and wired him 500 euros to cover whatever he needed. He would never pick up that money. He would never get on that bus, and he would never take that flight.

• 18:10AJ Gentile?

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• 18:55AJ Gentile?

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• 19:23AJ Gentile?

  Lars walked into the terminal a little after sunrise. He was carrying his backpack and his duffel bag. His mother gave him one piece of advice. See the airport doctor before the flight to make sure it was safe to fly. So Lars found the airport medical office. The doctor on duty examined his ear and told Lars it wasn't serious and cleared him to fly. But Lars didn't want to leave the doctor's office. The doctor said Lars was nervous, erratic. He kept asking about his medication, the Cefrazil. He said he didn't trust it. The doctor told him it was just an antibiotic, nothing to worry about. Lars was just a few hours away from home. All he had to do was walk to his gate and get on the plane. Then a construction worker stepped into the doctor's office. The airport was under renovation, so workers were coming and going all the time.

• 20:07AJ Gentile?

  Nobody reacted, except Lars. He started to tremble. Then he told the doctor, "I don't want to die here. I have to get out of here." And he jumped and ran. The cameras caught all of it. Lars tore through the terminal, past the check-in counters, past travelers wheeling their luggage toward the gates, and straight out the front doors. Outside, he slowed to a jog, but he didn't stop. He kept moving, putting distance between himself and whatever he was running from. From the comm walk into the terminal to the dead sprint out of it, about half an hour. The footage gets grainier the farther he goes, until Lars is just a small figure in a yellow shirt, running away from the terminal. At the end of the airport property, there is a fence over six feet high with barbed wire.

• 20:50AJ Gentile?

  The cameras never saw him climb it, but two witnesses did. Lars went up and over it. His passport, his phone, and his wallet were still sitting in the doctor's office. Across the fence was a field of sunflowers, and in July, they're taller than a man. Beyond the field is a highway, and past that, thick woods where no camera ever caught him again. Lars went into that field with nothing, and nothing is what the searchers found.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 21:50AJ Gentile?

  Bulgarian police searched the field, the roads leading away from Varna, and the woods around the airport. They found nothing. No clothes, no belongings, no body, no sign that Lars had ever been there.

• 22:03AJ Gentile?

  His mother hired a private investigator, who checked hospitals for patients with no identification. Sandra went to Varna herself and handed out flyers. Still nothing. Germany's federal criminal police listed Lars as a missing person, and the news covered it. The broadcast alone brought in 75 tips, but none of them led to Lars. The airport footage went online, where it's been viewed millions of times and re-uploaded again and again. Lars has been called the most famous missing person on YouTube. Lars never filled that prescription. He never took a pill. That comes from the doctor at the airport, the last person to ever speak to him. He said, "I can't think of a single reason why he left my office in such a panic." He said he's still confused. Lars had no history of mental illness.

• 22:47AJ Gentile?

  There were no warning signs, not to his family, not to his five friends who just spent a week with him. And he wasn't a man who ran from his life. He was the son who came by after work because his father had a stroke. He had a girlfriend, a steady job, people counting on him back home. Lars knew how to hunt and fish, but he ran with no food, no water, no supplies, not even an extra t-shirt. Then the sightings started.

• 23:11AJ Gentile?

  About a year later, a truck driver thought he saw Lars hitchhiking on a road outside Varna. In late 2016, police in Brazil found a man walking along a highway with no ID, so confused he couldn't say who he was. His photo spread across social media, and thousands of people saw Lars Maitank in his face. He turned out to be a Canadian man who'd been missing for five years. In 2019, a German trucker gave a ride to a hitchhiker with long hair and a beard, and later realized that the man looked like an older Lars, but none of the sightings were ever confirmed.

• 23:46AJ Gentile?

  Sandra runs a website called Find Lars Maitank. She believes her son is alive, that he lost his memory, and that maybe he's still out there somewhere, too scared to ask anyone for help. Sandra has watched the video too. She says, "Every time I see it, I feel like I want to protect him. I want to rescue him."

• 24:04AJ Gentile?

  The cameras lost him at the edge of a sunflower field. Every July, flowers grow tall enough to hide a man. That was 12 Julys ago, and Lars Maitank never came out.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 24:58AJ Gentile?

  Gather round. This happened on a Friday morning in September 2007. A 14-year-old boy walked into a railway station in the north of England and bought a one-way ticket to London. He had 200 pounds in his pocket and a portable PlayStation in his bag. He did not bring a phone. Two hours later, his train pulled into King's Cross, and his security camera caught him walking out of the station and into a city of 8 million people.

• 25:23AJ Gentile?

  Andrew Gosden was never seen again.

• 25:38AJ Gentile?

  Andrew Gosden lived in Doncaster with his parents and his older sister Charlotte. He wore thick prescription glasses and looked younger than 14. His family called him Rue, because, as his dad put it, "He was little and bouncy as a kid."

• 25:53AJ Gentile?

  He loved heavy metal, Slipknot, Muse, Marilyn Manson. After school, he disappeared into the basement to play video games. And he was brilliant, ranked in the top 5% of students in the entire country. His teachers figured he was headed for Cambridge. The night before he disappeared, the family put a jigsaw puzzle out on the living room floor and watched TV. It was an ordinary night in every possible way. The next morning, his dad had trouble waking him, which never happened before. Andrew seemed irritable, and that wasn't like him either. But a few minutes after 8:00, he walked out the front door in his school uniform and headed for the bus stop, the same bus he took every morning. Andrew never missed a day of school, not once in his life. But that day, he did not get on the bus.

• 26:36AJ Gentile?

  A family friend spotted him at 8:20, sitting alone on a bench in a park nearby. He was waiting, waiting for the rest of his family to leave the house. Once they did, he walked back home and let himself in. He took off his school uniform and put it in the washing machine, then hung his blazer on the back of his chair. This is exactly what he did every day after school. Anyone glancing into his room would think Andrew came home at the normal time, on a normal day. Then he changed into a black Slipknot t-shirt and black jeans. He grabbed a bag covered in band patches and tossed in his wallet, his keys, and his PSP, and nothing else. A neighbor's security camera picked him up walking away from the house toward the train station. At 9:08, he stopped at a cash machine and withdrew 200 pounds.

• 27:21AJ Gentile?

  He reached Doncaster Station at 9:22 and asked for a one-way ticket to London. The clerk thought he looked a little young to make a two-hour trip alone and offered him a return trip, almost for free. Andrew said no. He boarded the train at 9:36, and a passenger sitting across from him remembered a quiet kid who played his PSP the whole trip. At 11:20, the train pulled into King's Cross. Five minutes later, CCTV caught Andrew walking out the main entrance. Then he disappeared into the city. His family wouldn't know for hours. That evening, the Gosdens sat down for dinner. The blazer was on the chair, and the uniform was in the washer, so they figured Andrew was home, down in the basement on his Xbox. They called him to eat. No answer. He wasn't in the house.

• 28:07AJ Gentile?

  They started calling everyone who might know where he was: neighbors, friends, his school. That's when they learned Andrew never showed up for class. The school tried to call that morning, but they dialed the wrong number and left a voicemail with the wrong family. So for an entire day, nobody knew Andrew was gone. His parents called the police. Their son was missing.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip. The Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 29:03AJ Gentile?

  Even in 2007, London was covered in cameras. More than one should have caught Andrew leaving King's Cross and moving into the city. But when transport police first went through the station footage, they didn't recognize it. Andrew was five foot four and thin, just another little skinny kid in a crowd of thousands. CCTV footage is recorded over every month, so the tape of Andrew leaving King's Cross is the last confirmed sighting of him. He walks out of frame and then he's gone. And Andrew was almost impossible to trace. He didn't own a phone. He went through a couple when he was younger, but he kept losing them. When his parents offered to replace his last phone, he asked for an Xbox instead. He had no email address and no social media. He played video games, but never online.

• 29:46AJ Gentile?

  He paid for everything in cash and never touched his bank card. The only computer in the house belonged to his sister. Police searched that, along with his school computers, and found nothing. No secret emails, no searches, no plan. Nothing. A 14-year-old boy with no digital footprint walked into the biggest city in Britain, carrying cash, and disappeared. And everything Andrew did that morning is documented to the minute. The cash machine at 9:08, the ticket window at 9:22, the train at 9:36, the station exit at 11:25. After 11:25, there's nothing at all. Not a camera, not a witness, not a single trace from anyone that's ever been confirmed. Once the story hit the news, sightings came in from all over the UK. And one of them felt real.

• 30:29AJ Gentile?

  Someone at a Pizza Hut on Oxford Street was sure they saw Andrew there that same afternoon, and his parents believed it. But it was never proven, and neither were any of the others. It was just dead end after dead end. So the family did their own detective work. His parents tracked down the clerk who sold Andrew his ticket, and they found the passenger who sat across from him on the train. They traveled to London, bought event magazines, encircled everything a kid like Andrew might attend, and there was plenty. The night he disappeared, 30 Seconds to Mars played London. A few bands were in town that same week. For a metal kid with 200 pounds in his pocket, the city was full of opportunity. His parents handed out flyers everywhere a boy like Andrew might go. King Tut was at the British Museum, they went there. They went to concert venues.

• 31:13AJ Gentile?

  They went to the steps of King Cross itself. They plastered his face all over the city. Andrew planned this, but nothing about it looked permanent. He left 100 pounds of birthday money sitting in his bedroom. He left his passport. He left the charger for his PSP that he took with him. He didn't even bring a coat. But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to years. And as he planned on coming home, something went horribly wrong.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Want to be the one who's always in the know about the game, the scores, the plays? Here's a tip: the Apple Sports app. Just pick your favorite teams and get automatic live updates without even knowing their schedules. And when your team scores, it shows up right on your iPhone lock screen, making it easy to check in anytime. So rule the group chat and download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone.

• 32:15AJ Gentile?

  With nothing new to go on, the same theories have circled for years. Maybe Andrew went to London for a concert, and somewhere in that crowd, something happened to him. Maybe someone was waiting for him at the other end, somebody he knew about. Maybe he wanted to start over as someone new and actually pulled it off. There are no warning signs, nothing to explain any of this. His father said that even if Andrew was hiding something from his parents, he would have told his sister. Charlotte and Andrew were best friends, who told each other everything, but he never said a word. Then 14 years after Andrew disappeared, police arrested two men on suspicion of kidnapping and human trafficking, and the arrests made national headlines. Police seized their computers and phones, and the family waited for an answer. And they waited for months, and then a year.

• 33:00AJ Gentile?

  Then in September 2023, police let both men go. They had nothing to do with it, and the Gosdans apologized to them publicly. The case is still open, and police say they follow up on every lead. The family still runs a website, and they hand out flyers showing their computers' guess at what Andrew might look like now, a grown man of 33. But one detail about Andrew isn't a guess. He has a double ridge on the cartilage of his right ear. It's the kind of thing nobody ever notices unless they're looking for it. His parents still put money into his bank account. Nobody's touched it since the morning he emptied it, but they keep funding it just in case. And then there's this. 11 years after Andrew vanished and three years before those arrests, a man turned up

• 33:42AJ Gentile?

  in an online chat room asking a stranger for help. He said his partner just walked out and he needed money for rent. He called himself Andy Rue. The stranger asked how much he needed. Andy said 200 pounds. Then he logged off and never came back.

• 34:08AJ Gentile?

  Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is AJ. This is The Y Files, and that was a Campfire story. No debunking, no analysis, just a creepy story to scare you and the kids. And that one is true and unsolved. Now, if you had fun, I'd appreciate it if you can like, subscribe, comment, and share. That stuff really helps. And like most topics we cover here, today's was recommended by you, so if there's a story you'd like to see, go to theyfiles.com/tips or send us an email. We'd love to cover that story. And if you'd like to hear any of these Campfire stories expanded into a full episode, there's a few I'd like to do, then definitely let me know. Remember, The Y Files is also a podcast. You can take us on the road. I post deep dives into the stories we cover on the channel. I also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. Podcast is called The Y Files: Operation Podcast, and it's available everywhere.

• 34:53AJ Gentile?

  And if you're listening on an audio platform, do me a favor, hit the thumbs up or the like or the follow or whatever those buttons are. Those really do help. But make sure you check out our 24/7 stream of The Y Files backstage. Over there, we run episodes back to back with some fun content in between, and the live chat is super, super fun. Special thanks to our patrons who made this channel possible and make every episode of The Y Files happen. Every episode is dedicated to our Patreon members. I could not do this without you. If you'd like to support the channel, keep us going, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as $3 a month, get access to perks like videos early with no commercials, exclusive merch, and two private live streams every week just for you to hear the whistle in my teeth. It's because I'm going too fast. The private live streams are a lot of fun for members only. My webcam is on. Everyone on the team has their camera on.

• 35:38AJ Gentile?

  You can talk to all of us. Turn your camera on, jump up on stage, ask a question. It's a lot of, I think it's the best perk there is. Another great way to support the channel, grab something from the Y Files store. That is shop at theyfiles.com, you'll find it. But if you're going to buy merch, become a member on YouTube. YouTube members get 10% off everything in the Y Files store forever. So if you're going to spend 40 bucks on t-shirts and festival mugs, become a member on YouTube for $3, pays for itself. And that money goes to the team, not to me. Those are the plugs. I got through them as fast as I could. And that's going to do it. Till next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  I played for Libya in Area 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. So I'm singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends. And it never ends. No, it never ends.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  I fear the crackhead and got stuck inside Mel's home with MKL truck. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set? Were the shadows people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told. And his name was Cold. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planet circle to Project Stargate and what the dark watchers found. In a simulation, don't you worry though. The Black Knight satellite told me so. I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  So one more zombie beat all through the night. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2. And one more zombie beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So one more zombie beat all through the night.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Girlie loves to dance. Girlie loves to dance on the dance floor. Because she is a camel. And camels love to dance when the feeling is right on wasting time.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  The award-winning series The Diplomat is back for its fourth season, now streaming only on Netflix. Keri Russell stars as Kate Wyler. In a stunning realization, Kate connects the dots that Russia's most powerful weapon is missing, and her husband Hal conspired with President Grace Penn in a dangerous plan to steal it, all behind her back. Kate is left reeling as she begins to question Hal's growing relationship with President Penn. Emmy winner Allison Janney returns with Rufus Sewell and Bradley Whitford. Watch The Diplomat, now playing only on Netflix.

• 40:38Speaker 05

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• 41:02Speaker 06

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• 41:09Speaker 07

  Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's premium wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.