True Crime
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
In this episode of 'Someone Knows Something,' host Sam Mullins introduces 'Uncover: Sea of Lies,' a gripping new podcast series that unravels a complex mystery involving a body fou...
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
True Crime •
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Interactive Transcript
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I'm Gavin Crawford host of Because News, Canada's hilarious weekly news quiz.
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This week, Chris Adiki, Alice Moran, and Queen Priyanka join me, so sit straight up in your
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chairs and get ready to find out why you can't recline them, at least on one major Canadian
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airline.
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This panel may not know baseball, but they will need to brush up on their strike knowledge
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to win this week.
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And there's one chip flavor that's only existed in Canada, but we'll soon head to the
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US.
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I guess we're doing crunch diplomacy now.
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We'll play around, if needed or ate it, try to figure out if it's a chip flavor or a drag
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queen.
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We're serving it all up wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is a CBC podcast.
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Hi, I'm Sam Mullins.
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I'm a writer and podcaster, and you might know me from shows I've made like Wild Boys
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or Dr. Dante.
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And I want to tell you about my brand new podcast series.
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It's called Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.
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When the Body of a Man is found at the bottom of the ocean, the only clue to discover his
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identity is through the Rolex watch ticking on his wrist.
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What starts out is a mystery of identity grows exponentially into a race against time to
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capture one of the world's most wanted criminals.
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It's the story of a man who couldn't stop lying, a story of murder, betrayal, stolen
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identities, diaper bags stuffed with gold bars, and the incredible police investigation that
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brought it all to light led by a miraculous string of luck.
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From small town Canada to coastal England, this is a story that spans continents and decades
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and centers on the ruthless villain who almost got away with it.
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So who is he?
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And how was he finally caught?
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But right now, here's the first episode of Sea of Lies.
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This story begins with a miracle.
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I don't know what else to call it.
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And when I say miracle, I don't mean it in the religious sense.
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At least I don't think I do.
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I mean it in the sense of luck.
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Luck is a spectrum.
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There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune.
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But then there's a tear of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it
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feels divine.
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And while the story that I'm about to tell you features the whole spectrum of luck,
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coincidences, right places, wrong times, million to one shots connecting, there's no story
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at all, no truth, no justice, without the thing that happens first.
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The thing so far beyond the brackets of likelihood, it was a miracle.
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Because a father and son who weren't even looking accidentally found something, someone
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who was never supposed to be found.
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We begin July 28, 1996 in the holiday town of Brickson, in Devon, England, where a
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college kid, happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward to two straight months
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of sleeping in.
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So I was back home from university in London, hoping to spend some time at the beach or
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relaxing at home, but my father had different ideas.
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Craig Copic was the son of a fisherman, a line of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally
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incompatible with the sleepy goals of a university kid.
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So whatever dreams he had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement from
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his dad.
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His deck hand was on holidays, so he told me that I'll be assisting him on board the boat.
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Craig had been helping his father on the troller since he was 11, so he knew all too well
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what assisting dad on the boat would look like.
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We used to leave it around 4.35 o'clock in the morning, we'd stop pick up some newspapers,
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head down to the boat, and then we'd be out fishing all day until dark.
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Day started off beautifully, very sunny day, very little wind.
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Those perfect days on the water, you can see your reflection in the sea.
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The kind of days that make you glad you're working on a boat, as opposed to the horrible
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ones where weather is absolutely terrible and you're questioning your life decisions.
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Craig and his dad headed out on their 10 meter rig, the Malkari, to troll for cod a few
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miles offshore.
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And after the first few hours, it was shaping up to be an underwhelming day of fishing.
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As for to say, on the first two toes, we weren't catching enough fish to cover expenses.
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But John Copic was as experienced a fisherman as you could find in all of England.
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His body seemed like it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on unstable decks.
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He was solid in stature and sharp of mind from countless years of reading between trolls.
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And he had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch for the day, a notorious area
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known to the local fishermen as the Ruffs.
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Other fishing boats tended to avoid it due to the nature of the seabed which is rocky
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and treacherous for nets.
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Craig's dad was unafraid of the Ruffs because he'd modified his nets specifically to traverse
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the big rocks that the other fishermen were wary of.
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After a couple of hours in the Ruffs, they started to bring up the net to see if their
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third toe would be different.
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And as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away that this was the catch they
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were after.
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But then their fortunes turned.
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We brought the net up from the bottom which involves bringing the cod end on board.
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The cod end is the very end of the net where all the fish accumulate.
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Then there's a rope to open it up and that will drop all the fish on the deck.
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But as soon as we got the cod end up in the air to bring it over the rail of the fishing boat,
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you could immediately smell something was dead.
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I had the occasional dead seal in the fishing net but this didn't smell like that.
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I'd never seen or smelled a dead body but I think something instinctively inside of us
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knows when you're in that situation.
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I opened up the cod end, dropped the catch onto the deck and immediately you could see the
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figure of a man lying on the deck in between the fish that we'd caught.
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Father and son stared at the body and disbelief.
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The body was barely touched.
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Usually when anything dies in the ocean it ends up on the seabed and then crabs and lobsters
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and little sharks and fish will be eating it.
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The man on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a button up shirt, trousers with a belt
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and lay-stuffed shoes.
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His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.
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And honestly it just looked like a really bad prop from a horror movie.
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So much so that it was unbelievable.
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The topics approached slowly for a closer look when they noticed two key details.
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The body had a tattoo on its hand.
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It was really difficult to tell what the tattoo was and we noticed quite soon that the guy
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was wearing the Rolex watch.
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Tion Craig there was a body on the deck and with it a mystery.
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But to his father a much more experienced seafarer all he could see upon the deck was the
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dilemma now before him.
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The right thing to do would be for him to go into the cabin and radio the Coast Guard
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about this.
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But the right thing in this case as it often is would not be the financially savvy thing
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to do.
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My father knew that immediately the catch would have to be condemned so all the fish that
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had been caught with the body would have to just be kept over the side dead by condemning
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the catch we were condemning ourselves to going home without a paycheck for that day.
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And beyond today Craig's dad knew there could be a second even bigger financial hit coming
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down the road from this.
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There was an urban legend among the fisherman community that they believed to be true.
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In the UK if you find a dead body and no relations can be found then after 13 weeks you become
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liable for the burial or disposal of that body the person who found them must to deal
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with the funeral arrangements cost.
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So before they did anything father and son would need to have a sober talk about their
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options.
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In the privacy of the Open Sea it was obvious no one needed to know about this.
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This could easily be kept between them and the goals.
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The more they thought about it the lost money the lost day the hassle of inviting cops
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on board and giving legal statements.
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Since it didn't seem worth it to get involved even though it felt wrong this didn't need
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to be their problem.
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Then myself and my dad had a discussion and my dad felt strongly that if one of us had
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gone missing its sea then my mother would definitely prefer to know we were dead than
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always be wondering what happened etc.
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We came to that conclusion that the right thing to do would be to report this so that
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the dead persons loved ones could get some sort of closure.
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Copy made contact with the Coast Guard over the VHF Radio and Central Command paged one
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of their most experienced men.
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My name is Paul I get I'm an ex-fisherman and I join the Coast Guard in 1983.
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I get was told that the cops had a body on their deck so he headed out on a small Coast Guard
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sea rider to meet them and as he crested toward them he felt confident that he knew the identity
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of the man upon their deck.
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He'd been expecting this call.
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We were actually looking for a buddy we'd had an incident a couple of weeks before we're
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young lad to go missing.
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It was all over the news a couple local 20 year olds found a petal boat on the beach
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when they were stumbling home from the pub and took it out into the bay.
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What they didn't know was that the petal boat they found was broken and what the surviving
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boy didn't know was that his friend never learned to swim.
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Two weeks of searching had yielded no trace of the kid except for a single item.
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Only we covered a white trainer which was identified by people ashore that as have been
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worn by the missing lad.
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So Agate boarded the copic ship with a body bag fully expecting to quickly zip inside
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a single white-shoed lad.
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But of course that wasn't a bee when I got there and I'm so would I so.
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As copic was steering the ship toward the harbor on the shore the police were setting up
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a perimeter on the customs pier.
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The authorities were hoping to tape off a relatively private part of the key where they
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deal with the body out of view of the holiday makers and kids with ice cream cones.
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So there was quite a crowd on the key side as we came alongside and then we just received
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instructions to wait for a certain police officer to come down to the boat.
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My name's Ian Cleenahan.
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I was the original officer who was allocated the investigation initially when the body
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was brought to shore.
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Cleenahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a scouser.
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And on the day he got his first call on what would turn out to be the biggest case he'd
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ever work, he was still in his 20s and it just been posted in Devon earlier that week.
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It was one of my first jobs that I picked up.
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It came through the body of Ben Trolled up and could I go down to commence investigations
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and to try to find out who he was and the circumstances behind that.
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Cleenahan like the Coast Guard was expecting this to be the body of the missing 20 year old.
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But on the right end Paul Aguette of the Coast Guard became certain of two things.
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One, this was not the body of the 20 year old and the second thing.
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So all the pockets were turned in so I didn't look right.
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It just didn't look right.
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And looking at him further, I noticed he had a very nasty wound in the back of his head.
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So now I've got a body that looks like it's been searched.
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It hadn't been the crew on board the boat because it was still in the net when I got on board.
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So this was obviously done before he went in the water.
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So we stopped everything.
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We didn't do anything more because now we're looking at a crime scene.
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Once the boat was docked, Ian Cleenahan and a couple of other Devon police officers climbed
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aboard to collect the body.
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When Aguette, the Coast Guard, raised his hand.
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And I said, no, we don't need to move this guy.
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It's not the guy we're looking for.
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I said, something really weird here.
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I think you better get a team down here and get on with it.
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As they waited for the team, Cleenahan and the other two looked at the body for themselves.
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When one of the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Copic and his dad.
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The pockets had obviously been turned out so he asked myself and my father if we'd taken
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the guys wallet.
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This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want.
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And partly why they had a moment of pause before they radioed the body in in the first place.
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Police suffered ability to make you feel guilty.
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Suddenly being questioned about grave robbing or stealing things from dead bodies, it wasn't
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much fun at all.
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Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his dad was a bright man who could
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think on his feet.
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We said if we were going to take his wallet, we'd probably have his Rolex watch as well.
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Crisis averted.
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The accusing officer circled back to the body.
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He picked up the guy's arm, took the watch off his wrist and said it's not a real Rolex
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because it's not working.
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At which point it started to take again because it was a kinetic watch.
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The time on its face read 1135, the 22nd.
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Today was the 28th.
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And it's at this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip of youthful confidence
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to offer what he thought was something helpful to say.
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The watch I was wearing on that day was engraved with my name and birthday on the back, which
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was given to me as a gift.
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I said it might be worth checking the back of the watch for an engraving.
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The officer shot Craig a look.
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And he said, your problem is you've been watching too much effing Inspector Morse.
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It was more than dismissed, he made me feel terrible, like watching too much fucking Inspector
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Morse.
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I was like, I'm not going to say anything else.
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While Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector Cleinehen continued
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looking at the body.
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There was nothing that kind of smacked me in the face as being this is suspicious.
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He had the watch on so that would kind of rule out a robbery.
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There was a cut on his head, but when you consider what he's just been through, he's been
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dragged along the bottom of his e-bed and he was fairly clean other than that.
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There was no signs of him being involved in an altercation.
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His shirt was tucked into his trousers.
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He was all neat.
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So you think, okay, well, I don't know, I don't know what the cause of death is.
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So that will be ascertained in due course.
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After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body was loaded into the coroner's
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van and for the first time in many hours, it was just Craig and his dad on the boat again.
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But the moment was brief as they noticed a figure approaching.
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The local pastor or Vicka came down to the boat, offered us some counseling.
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We suggested that if he gave us 20 pounds, we would go in self-counsel in the Buddha's
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arms, which was just across the road from the boat, but he wasn't keen on that course
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of action.
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So I just went for a pint with my dad just to rehash what had happened.
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I think he was just checking.
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I was okay.
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And then yeah, we went home and told everything to mother.
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Every night at 8 p.m., the bells of All Saints Church chained the tune to abide with me.
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The hymn was written right here in Bricksem in the early 19th century by a Vicka whose
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flock was comprised almost entirely of fishermen.
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The chimes are thought to call home all the souls of the men lost at sea, which is to say
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that Bricksem and the Devon Coast is a place where finding the body of an unidentified
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man in the ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence.
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It's a holiday town, so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get caught
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in storms, and stone throw away is bury head, a sea cliff well known locally as a place
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where people go to take their own lives.
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With the body now safely in the hands of the coroner and Devon police, they don't know
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who they have and they don't know what they have.
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But lying in their mortuary was the key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that spanned
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years and continents.
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An unimaginable web of lies was about to come undone.
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I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.
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Episode 1.
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Luck or something like it.
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Since Detective Ian Cleenahan was both young and new in town, he'd been partnered up with
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a veteran of Devon police.
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I'm Bill McDonald, Detective Sergeant in the Devon Cornwall Police, so I was a team leader
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effectively.
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Bill is measured with his words in a way that only someone with 30 years of interrogation
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experience could be.
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We interviewed him in his purpose-built bird-watching space where he patiently sits.
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Confident, the birds will come to him.
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We felt that in the next couple of days there would be something that would get reported
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which was an explanation.
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Soon or later, somebody would get reported missing.
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Because obviously that would be a case as well if your husband, brother, son, whatever
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never came home.
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After two days passed without anything, McDonald and Cleenahan decided that it was time
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to take action.
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So if you were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the name of an idealist man plucked
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from the bottom of the ocean, where do you even begin?
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Well, old-fashioned detective work.
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So you start by going through all the missing persons listed in the Devon Cornwall Police
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and you try and rule those out and then you go further afield and you look at missing
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persons in the south-west, then you go further afield and look at missing persons in the south.
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We were doing stuff within the media.
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This is the description of a guy.
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This is what he was wearing.
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We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.
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There's anyone got any information that may help us identify the man.
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Obviously within our police, computer systems and databases, you can also search on tattoos.
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But no, we didn't get anything, so it was never going to be easy.
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We contacted Ferries.
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We were talking to different shipping companies.
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To see whether there's any reports of any fisherman been lost at sea.
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Well, we got a passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.
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Everything was coming to a dead end, really.
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I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing from a cross-channel ferry, but
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over the coming days, actually when you looked at the description,
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you looked at the person involved, none of it matched.
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It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn't it?
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You're trying to find one name.
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You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press,
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something would come out somewhere, but it just didn't.
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It was just unexplained.
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Lacking readily available information from out in the world,
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the Devin police naturally were very interested to learn if the results of the post-mortem
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had a story to tell.
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An autopsy is looking at something which will give you more information.
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And you're looking for clues.
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The pathologists listed the body as male, five-nine, brown hair,
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receding, possibly in his 40s.
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Estimated time in the water one week.
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Both noted the tattoo on his hand, but either because it was old or it warped in the sea water,
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neither pathologist could make out what the tattoo was of.
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There was bruising on the right hip and on the outside of the knee on the same side of the body.
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But it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred.
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One thing that was obvious though.
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The cause of death was recorded as draining because of sea water detected in the lungs.
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So clearly when the body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned.
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And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into the sea or if somebody was taking their own
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life or there was an accident at sea, drowning would be the natural cause.
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And as for the gash on the back of the head, while the first pathologist thought it
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consistent with being trawled along the seabed and the ruffs, the other advised that it was
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inconclusive what had caused the gash and that they should keep an open mind.
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But really, there wasn't anything new to go on after the autopsy.
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And after devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like it was time to scale down the
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effort. If no one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to come forward with new information,
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there was little more the cops could do. This was looking like it would be recorded forever as an
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unidentified person. It's unusual if we don't identify them, there's not many that go unidentified.
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We were fairly close to just saying, well, we can't. So let's just like make arrangements for
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the body to be created and buried or whatever they're going to do with it as an unknown person.
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And that would have been the end of it, but it wasn't.
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Because I'm telling you, luck or something like it was leading them somewhere.
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The thing that saved this person from being forever unknown came in the form of a suggestion,
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from one of the staff members of the coroner. A casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you.
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Because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little had a chance conversation with a friend just
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afterwards. And he said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able to identify this person by
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contacting Rolex. Oh sure, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea when the coroner officer says it,
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but when the son of a fisherman says something, each Rolex watch has a, and we're talking obviously
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this fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will have a serial number which is recorded
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by Rolex. That's unique to that watch. No one who handled the watch saw the serial number at first
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because it's only visible when you take the pin out of the band to expose the side of the casing.
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So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex and just over a week later.
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Rolex robs tell us that yes, the watch had been serviced, had a service history and it
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been serviced at a jewelers called faturinis in Harrogate.
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Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from where the body was found.
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Devon is down in the southwest and Harrogate is way up in the central north.
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And sure enough, they had a record, a card in a filing system which had the serial number of
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the Rolex watch and then underneath had a name RJ plat and the plat was PLA double T.
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RJ plat. Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because the watch has got a service history
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from Uncle Platt that the person wearing the watch is the person called Platt but it certainly
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took us further forward than where we were at a particular time. It was only seven letters but
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RJ plat rolled off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from the sea. He had a name now.
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It was a start. Cleana hand spent the week typing the name into every tool at his disposal,
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checking registries, council tax receipts and state records and he found in a dress linked to a
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Ron J plat in Essex. Geographically Essex isn't near Devon either. It's way on the Belgium
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Netherlands facing side of England. So they needed a man on the ground in Essex to head to this flat
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and they found one. My name is Peter Redmond. I was a detective sergeant for Essex Police and I
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was stationed locally here at Chelmsord. My God, Redmond's voices straight up ASMR. My first
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involvement was a phone call one evening and it required being sent from Devon and Cornwall
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to look into an address in Chelmsord, Beardsley Drive. So Redmond headed out and when he arrived at
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the place he was able to confirm that plat had once lived in one of the flats there but had moved out
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a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about the address and they told him that
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plat had written on his termination notice, I no longer liable for property tax, I'm moving to France.
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Plat was moving to France. This detail would light up the imaginations of Cleana hand
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McDonald when they heard it because a move to France could conceivably place Ron Plat on a boat
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in the English Channel where his body was found. But the most useful bit of information that Redmond
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was able to find in Chelmsford came when he spoke to plat's old landlord. They dicked me the
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nine of his chapish to Garentoel for him. When he applied to rent the place Ron Plat needed to provide
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a reference. So he gave one Mr. D'Avivis. David Davis. In an investigation in which they had failed to
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find a single person involved in Ron's life who actually knew Ron learning the name and mobile
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number of a character reference felt like gold. And since this Davis person lived nearby in Essex
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Peter Redmond was the one who called him up. I spoke to him on the phone and strong north
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American accent. I didn't want to tell him that potentially he or her friends are dead. I tried
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to say could I meet him. I would go and meet him. And Davis obviously wanted to know what this
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was all regarding. So Redmond had to come out with it on the phone. What I told him that Ron was dead?
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I mean he didn't. He wasn't hugely emotional. But it was how I would have expected someone to be told
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that someone's dead really. I've done a few death notifications in the past.
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Redmond said that if it was okay with him he would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron
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in person. And Davis said, sure, I'll come to the police station. So my department
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became in. I got him through to my office sat him down. We had quite a long chat.
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Very personable character. Very distinguished looking, very smart, casually dressed, but you could
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tell by the shoes, the jeans, the jacket. Very expensively dressed. And he explained that Ron had
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gone off to France. After their chat, Redmond told him that his colleagues who were the ones
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investigating Ron's death in Devon would be contacting him as well. And they would be able to give
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him more information about the circumstances of their finding his friend. The first time Ian
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Clennhen called David Davis. There was no answer. But then as so often happens in British police
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procedures, there was a high stake scene involving Tee. I was making a cup of tea and I can always
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remember it. And the kettle was there next to a desk. My phone rings and you've got one of those
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phones where you can start star zero to pick up a phone that's ringing and it was him. And he started
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to talk to me. David Davis began telling Clennhen the story of how he and Ron Platte became friends.
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I mean, you know, he was a mate. He was a really good friend of his.
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They first met up in Herrogate, the northern town where the Rolex was last serviced. And then
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they'd both wound up living near each other in Essex some years later. As David Davis launched
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into the story, Clennhen standing at the Tee station was unprepared to take notes.
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So I grabbed a piece of paper that was nearby and I couldn't even find a pen. So I grabbed a
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piece of paper and a pencil and I started writing what he told me. The mundane detail of writing
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you, Tensil, was more significant than Clennhen realized in the moment. He had no way of knowing
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that in two years time, this very note would become evidence. I can always remember it,
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C7 was that piece of paper. Proof that the man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.
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He said to me that Ron had left England to travel to France to start up a TV repair business in France.
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When Ron Platte first broke the surprising news about his move to France, David Davis said that
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he offered to help his friend out financially to make it happen. And while in the exchange of
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money just before someone dies of mysterious circumstances, can be a red flag, it didn't sound
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like it in this case. He was a successful American businessman who had a lot of money and his
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mate Ron didn't have much at all. I mean, we went talk about a lot of money. I've got two, two
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and a half thousand pound in my head, which is a nice sum of money, I suppose. But it's not a
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world shattering life changing sum of money, but it's enough to get him over to France,
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maybe find some accommodation so that he can then find some work to support himself.
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But ultimately, as to the question of what the hell happened to him, like everyone else,
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Davis had no idea what his friend would have been doing in Devon, boarding a boat that would take
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him to France, that would make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone,
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Cleana Han asked if Davis could point them toward any other people who knew Ron.
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Davis said he'd never met Ron's family, but he knew that he had brothers. And then notably,
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Davis told Cleana Han that Ron had once served in the military. So maybe they could find his
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family that way. And sure enough, he had an army record. And we were able to go to his army
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record and compare the dental charts. They matched. And by searching his service record,
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it confirmed the fact that they had a record of this tattoo. This confirmed that they didn't just
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have a Ronald plat, but this Ronald plat. So we're starting to get some real progress.
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Finally, with a little wind in their sales, through the army records, they were able to find
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a family member of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and were out the door to meet Brian,
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Ronald plat's big brother. A brother lived in Hay on Why. He welcomed me into his studio. He was a
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cartoonist. They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office, a zoomed-in shot of
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the hand tattoo. And Brian confirmed the tattoo. And it was actually because we all was wondering
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what the tattoo was. It wasn't clear what it was. The best guess that anyone had at this point was
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that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation. And he confirmed that actually the stars
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were in the shape, actually, of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about his brother having
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dual nationality and holding a Canadian passport and the fact that he loved Canada.
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And then the three men sat down for the tough part. I explained obviously the circumstances.
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We had a difficult conversation. He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned
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and had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in Brickson or on the South Coast of Devon.
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In their conversation with Brian, Macdonald and Cleanahan learned that Ronald plat was the
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middle child with two brothers. That he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada
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before coming home to the UK at 17 to join the Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother
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as being quiet, private, that Ron suffered from depression and dark moods, which pricked up the
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ears of both detectives. Oh, we're looking at somebody who's taken their own life.
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Potentially this man plat had some form of mental health worries.
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But even here, sitting with a member of his new clear family,
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clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three plat brothers weren't close at all.
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There had never been a falling out or any animosity. It was just that where their brotherly bond
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was supposed to be. Instead, there was just a vacuum. Brian didn't know much of anything about his
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little brother's life and certainly knew nothing about the end of it. Cleanahan and Macdonald thanked
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Brian and started their drive back to Devon. And you would think at that point it would be obvious
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as to right what had happened, but actually it wasn't. And we were equally perplexed and left
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scratchy on our heads thinking, well, what's this man's connection with Devon?
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And we couldn't find one. And that in itself was just very odd.
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The mystery of what happened to Ron plat had consumed water cooler chatter at the police station
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for weeks. You can imagine you were in a busy office with lots of people. Everybody had a
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suggestion. And I remember being frustrated with you know, we're saying to a lot of people,
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without any evidence, you need evidence to draw a conclusion. And in the coming weeks,
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nothing knew would turn up. It was obvious to Macdonald and Cleanahan that it was time to let
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this one go. Wind it down and get this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing. The
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idea to the mystery man and notified the family so that they could have a proper funeral. That was
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something at least. It felt like it was over. We'd done it all. We could have done. I don't think
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we thought we would ever find out what happened exactly to him. Unless we got more information to say,
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well, look, you know, I've heard that he was setting out on this boat on this day to travel to
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France. Maybe we could have done some more digging, but I think it was accepting that we were
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never going to find out the true circumstances of what had happened at that point. Okay, he'd come
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off a boat. That was obvious. He drowned. That was reality. How are we ever going to find out what
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happened? How are we ever going to find out what happened?
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Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now and smile because we had some fairly
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imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near the true reality and
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and the story that unfolded, which was the most incredible story with the most sensational ending,
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I guess you would say.
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A 20-year-old soldier goes missing from a US Army base. How could she go missing on a military
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base? That's too ridiculous. What would come to light is horrifying and ignites a movement that
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sparks a reckoning in the US military. Listen to vanished. What happened to Vanessa? A new series
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from ABC Audio in 2020. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
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The day that everything changed begins with Clanahan at his desk in the police station.
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As far as he was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platt was filed and finished.
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The only minor outstanding thing that remained was for him to make contact with David Davis
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on behalf of Ron's brother Brian to retrieve some of Ron's possessions. So Clanahan had to call
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Davis. So one late shift I was sat in the office and thought, you know what, I'll give him a ring.
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But consequently there was a hiccup. I couldn't find the piece of paper with his phone number on
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anywhere in the office. So I thought, oh right, okay, so I thought, right, I'm going to phone up
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an officer in Essex to see whether he will go round because I'd lost his phone number basically.
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So he got Peter Redman of Essex Police back on the phone. And I said, look, I'm too
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would you pop rounds of this address, which I've got from in my previous conversation.
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He said, what are minds getting hold of him? Peter Redman again, the most low key cop of all time.
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And I said, yeah, no problem. I could do that.
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Redman's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He usually has a million things to do and
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wouldn't under normal circumstances drive the half hour drive to go and do another detachment,
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a favor right away. But this day he had a reason to want to make the drive.
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I'd go to a high car, I'd been delivered to me a new brand new car, that day for a trip up
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due to take the following days off with perfect. Offerings to take the new car out for a spin.
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So Redman heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.
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And that's where he all started to unravel.
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As Peter Redman drives his brand new car that day in 1996, he has no idea that he himself
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has become a vehicle of fate. He and Cleanahan and McDonald will spend the rest of their lives
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thinking about how big a roll luck played that day. What would have happened if Cleanahan didn't
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lose Davis's phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades. What if Redman didn't feel compelled
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to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.
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Woodham Walter is a beautiful chocolate box village that could be in Devon or New Yorkshire.
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The countryside is beautiful. He was told that Davis's home was a place on Little London Lane
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that was called simply Little London Farmhouse. When Redman took my producer Alex on this exact drive,
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everything looked the same as it did back then, but for one key detail.
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Driving down here, you got the two houses here. The houses all have signposts with their names on them,
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but they didn't then. From down here, saying, well, that's not it, that's not, doesn't appear to be it,
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that doesn't appear to be it. I pulled up at the end of the drive here, literally just here,
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and went knocked on the door.
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And this, Redman standing on the doorstep with his hand perched to knock, this dear listener
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is the biggest what if from that day? What if Redman didn't accidentally knock on the wrong door?
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And Frank and Audrey answered.
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Frank and Audrey, the neighbors, were both in their late 70s.
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Charmingly, whenever they met a new person like the police officer on their doorstep,
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they'd offer right away. We're not married to each other, we're both widows and live together
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just as friends. Peter double checked the address for David Davis and asked them if this was
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didn't learn the farmhouse. They said no, this is just a little under the house. Farmhouse is next door.
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Who'd you want? I said, I'm after David Davis. David Davis.
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Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of David Davis.
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And he said, oh no, we're on platelets next door.
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I beg your pardon. The man in that house right there in the address that David Davis said was his house
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to you. He's called Ron plat. That was the spalk. Redman took a second to process what he just heard.
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Suddenly this routine visit felt ominous. Ronal plat is dead, but Davis is platelet is alive.
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And living here next to this platonic couple. Redman needed to find out more.
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As Redman stands on the exact stoop with my producer Alex today,
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at the same crooked cottage with the same wooden door retracing the steps he took nearly 30 years
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earlier. All of a sudden, a man peers out from the side door of the house, suspicious as to why
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we're staring at his property armed with a microphone.
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My colleagues were called in. I'm making a podcast about a man who used to live in this area.
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Yes, the guy, the Rolex. That's the one.
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That's the one.
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That's the one.
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But the guy was actually, because they got the wrong house, the police were making him, they came to this.
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This is the policeman.
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Oh, is he the policeman?
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So you knocked on that door?
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He's the one, yeah.
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But he didn't have the name up.
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No, I, we put that.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it would be confusing, because that's a little under farmhouse, little undercourse.
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So what on earth did Audrey and Frank tell Redmond that day that was so memorable?
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So enduring that decades later, a future owner of the house would be able to recall it?
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Back to Redmond.
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I went in there had quite a lengthy conversation with them.
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Lovely cup of tea, biscuits.
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I got the impression that they knew the neighbors quite well, or as well as the neighbors would
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allow them to know. And they would tell them how they'd been there.
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Sometimes I think they thought they were American.
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They was Ron, and he's got much younger wife, very pretty, very pretty.
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And I said, she's very quiet, doesn't have a lot to do with anyone.
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It's him who is the dominant pal.
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They'd lived there for about a year, oh, and one more thing, they had a boat,
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that they were sailors and that they often went down the west country.
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After chatting for a fair while, Redmond stood up and asked if they would be so kind as to keep
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this conversation just between the three of them and made his way back to his car.
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Dizzy.
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Thinking, what an earth have I turned up here?
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All sorts of things that kind of remind me of.
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Why did I know him as Ron's plan?
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Yeah, he was to me, he's Mr. Davis, why?
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Redmond drove the new car straight back to the station in Chelmsford,
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because he knew two detectives in Devon who needed to hear about this.
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I was in the office in Painson, the police station, and I got the call from Peter Sen,
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oh, you're not going to believe this. And then he told me what he'd discovered.
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Cleenhan waved over McDonald and told him that the neighbors in Woodham, Walter,
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no David Davis, as Ron, platt.
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And you're both looking at each other with some disbelief, I guess, as to what's this all about?
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They knew immediately that this was something they were going to need to bring to the bus.
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I do remember going into Phil Sincor, and he was in the middle of a meeting and told me to go away.
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And I was only young, and he said no, go away, I'm come back later, I'm busy.
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And I should know boss, I think, and then he got really angry with me.
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And told me to do one, but no, I was insistent.
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Sincor finally relented. And after he absorbed the information, he had a plan.
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He said, we need to learn everything we can about the man living in that house,
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and we need to do it discreetly.
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There's too many unanswered questions. There's too many unknowns,
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because it would seem that David Davis was probably from what we could identify when the last
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people to see him alive. And then that was it, and then that was like the jaw drop in moment,
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it all changed then, and there will never be another job like this.
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Seriously, there will never be another job like this.
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Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one person who knows both Ronald Platz.
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When I look back for him, that was as so intipid as meeting. He saw gold when he walked in that
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office, and Ron said, oh, you want to be careful. You don't know who anything about him,
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you want to be really careful. I thought he was either on the run, involved in some sort of
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witness protection program, or with the CIA, but I will definitely have said, what is that?
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She was just sort of a non-reveemed, you know, she was too trusting of him beyond that.
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Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me,
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Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby.
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Mixing in sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers
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are David Waters and Darrell Brown. At CBC podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen
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and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor. Emily Cannell is our digital coordinating producer.
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Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer,
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and the director of CBC podcasts is Arif Nuremi.
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That was the first episode of Sea of Lies from Uncover. If you like what you heard,
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episode two is waiting for you right now. Just search for Uncover wherever you get your podcasts.
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For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.ca-podcasts.