transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Fellow Conspiracy Realist, Itcher Boys, we're back with another standout classic episode of Stuff They Dont Want You To Know. At just 24 years old, a woman named Rebecca Coriam had her whole life ahead of her.
Speaker 2:
[00:17] Yeah, and she and her family, like a lot of families out there, decided to do something fun and exciting and go on a cruise. They couldn't have expected what came next.
Speaker 3:
[00:29] That's right, on March 22nd, 2011, Coriam vanished from the vessel, and her distraught parents and friends puzzled over the cruise line's official explanation, this idea of some rogue wave sweeping her out to sea. But there's more to the story than met the eye.
Speaker 1:
[00:50] From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of IHeart Radio.
Speaker 2:
[01:14] Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3:
[01:17] My name is Noel.
Speaker 1:
[01:18] They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission Control Deckard. Most importantly, you are you, you are here, and that makes this Stuff They Dont Want You To Know. Today's episode is about a disappearance, and it's a disappearance that you may or may not have heard of before. We learned about it through an early edition of Listener Mail. And as you know, we flag some of these topics when they warrant further investigation. The thing about disappearances is that they happen around the world all the time, every single day. There are probably, if you look at the entire human population, there are a couple of people that are disappearing in the time it takes you to listen to this episode. And the thing is, while these tragic unexplained disappearances aren't uncommon, the question changes, depending on the context. Like, it's pretty easy, even in the age of cell phones and surveillance, it's alarmingly easy to disappear for a little while in the US. But how do people disappear when they're on a heavily populated, isolated, continually monitored thing, like a cruise ship? How do people disappear on cruise ships? Why do so many of these cases remain unsolved? We'll get to those answers in part in today's investigation, the disappearance of Rebecca Coriam. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3:
[02:48] Yeah, so who is Rebecca Coriam? She was born on March 11, 1987, in Chester, England. Had a pretty, you know, unremarkable, for the purposes of this story, childhood. Her parents, Mike and Anne Marie, who was known as Anne, raised Rebecca with her biological sister, Rachel, and two foster brothers.
Speaker 2:
[03:12] Yes, and like a lot of the other kids who grew up in that area in Chester, she worked at the local zoo. What? How cool would that be to work at a zoo? She at least worked there for a time that we're aware of. When she was, you know, in her teenage years, she joined up with the British Army cadets. It's kind of like the ROTC, the junior ROTC here in at least the US. And then after high school, she went to a place called Plymouth University. She was studying sports science, and this was something she was very much interested in. She was good at athletics and interested in athletics. She studied that further at Liverpool Hope University, and she ended up teaching sports abroad in Maine, in the United States. And eventually she graduated at a different university, Exeter University, with a degree in sports science. So she clearly had a track that she was going down.
Speaker 3:
[04:07] Wouldn't sports science be the equivalent of what we would call sports medicine here, like kinesiology or something like that, or to be like a sports massage therapist, or in some way like a medic, or what would that be?
Speaker 1:
[04:20] Physical education teacher.
Speaker 3:
[04:22] That's right, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[04:23] Because sports education might be another equivalent. It's almost like this reminds me a lot of the careers of PE teachers, we call them here in the US. So shout out to any teachers of ours listening to the show. I can't believe you stuck with us through grade school.
Speaker 3:
[04:42] So congratulations on the new career.
Speaker 1:
[04:47] So in 2010, Rebecca Coriam takes an opportunity that comes along every so often. Disney Cruise is interviewing people, and they're interviewing hundreds of people. Coriam is hired. She's got the bona fides and the experience they're looking for in the position of youth entertainment. Someone who kind of is on the cruise ship taking care of the kids and engaging with them so the parents can go to the bar. Or whatever they're doing.
Speaker 3:
[05:24] It is kind of a glorified babysitter, but I've heard it referred to as almost like a counselor situation, where there's like activities and crafts and things like that. And apparently this was Rebecca's dream job. She was a big Disney fan and loved working with kids, and her parents have said that she was thrilled to land this gig.
Speaker 2:
[05:43] And just to put it out there, that position also requires a good amount of performance ability to entertain the kids, keep them excited, because one of the main things about Disney Cruise Ships is to keep kids in that magical spirit at all, and adults. But just to keep that flowing at all times.
Speaker 1:
[06:03] Yeah, that's a good point. You have to always be on. This is a demanding job. I wouldn't, I would not call it remotely glorified babysitting, because they're just like, I don't think they can just turn on a movie and leave the kids with some snacks.
Speaker 3:
[06:19] Yeah, you're totally right. I misspoke there.
Speaker 2:
[06:21] That's what this guy's doing right now.
Speaker 1:
[06:25] And I say that having never worked on a cruise ship. So this, this is, like you said, Noel, it's her dream job. And right when she's hired, she is flown out to the headquarters, to Florida. And she's there for four days for her intro onboarding training. And then she's off to the Disney Wonder. There are a couple notes we need to make here. As we've established in earlier episodes, after hearing from a lot of people working in the cruise industry, life on a cruise ship could be a little bit debaucherous. It could be a little bit spicy, which will definitely be important later.
Speaker 2:
[07:03] Hold on, Ben put a link into the outline here. So I'm just going to go ahead and take a moment. Oh, oh, oh.
Speaker 1:
[07:13] That's how you're supposed to hear spicy.
Speaker 2:
[07:17] It's a clip from Stefan, I believe, from SNL. Okay, we continue.
Speaker 1:
[07:23] So this will be important later. The duality of the two lives that every crew member is living, the life, as you guys said, the life in front of the passengers, and then the life below deck or on the crew pool, which is the only place that can really hang out unobserved.
Speaker 2:
[07:42] Yeah. And then that is not to describe every crew member's experience. That is just something that we have noticed.
Speaker 1:
[07:48] Right. Right. Exactly. So after she works for four months on cruises throughout the Bahamas, she goes back to the United Kingdom for two months off, catches up with friends, catches up with her family. She's very close to her family, talks to them regularly through the phone and electronic means. And then when she comes back, she's on board the Disney Wonder, and it's based in Los Angeles when she embarks.
Speaker 3:
[08:17] Correct. And while she was working on the ship, she would often sail in the Mexican Riviera, which passes through the Panama Canal. And when her father passed away, Coriam came back to Chester for two weeks. And that would be the last time that anyone in her family ever saw her alive.
Speaker 1:
[08:37] In person at least, right?
Speaker 3:
[08:39] Correct. So let's talk a little bit about the cruise ship in question. You know, we've talked about some Disney conspiracies and the idea that no one can actually be declared dead at Disney World. That's not true. But there's a lot of interesting things that this company goes to great lengths to maintain a squeaky clean image. This is very important to Disney, especially when it comes to their theme parks. The idea that no cast member can ever be seen without their head on, their costume on or whatever, because it would disrupt the illusion and could potentially traumatize kids. So let's talk a little bit about the Disney Wonder. This is huge. It's a massive, massive cruise ship. She was one of about 950 crew members on this ship. And that's just a portion of the 2,400 passengers that it can carry, all told. The ship's 964 feet long and has 11 public decks with all the bells and whistles that you would expect on a cruise ship. Because the idea of a cruise ship is just supposed to be able to unplug completely, everything is taken care of, no expense is spared, it's all-inclusive, as people like to say. And the ship began service in August of 1999, so it had already put in some miles on the high seas when Coriam started her tenure there.
Speaker 1:
[10:03] And like many of the younger people who were working in the cruise line industry, we got to keep in mind Coriam was only 24 at this point in her life. She found romance, you know, you're working these crazy hours. I mean, the folks in these crews are working seven days a week, and it doesn't matter if you're off your shift or whatever, if a passenger sees you, you're back on immediately. So it's stressful, and you form close bonds with your colleagues. She found romance beginning a relationship with a colleague named Tracy Medley. Tracy Medley was a US resident who was also working on the Disney Wonder. Medley will later become one of the last known people to see Rebecca Coriam alive. This is a little dark, but we're not at the crazy part yet, so stick with us. Six weeks after returning to The Wonder, Coriam sends a message to her parents via Facebook. This is on March 21, 2011, and she says, you know, the stuff you say to your parents when you're far away, I love you, I hope you're okay, I'm going to call you tomorrow. On March 22, The Wonder was off the coast of Mexico and was heading toward Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas. Coriam misses the start of her shift, so people start searching for her. She's not in her cabin, she's not anywhere, she doesn't respond to calls in the ship's PA system, and people start to escalate the search, right? Because like you guys said, The Wonder is a world-class ship, and part of being world-class means you have a lot of security, right?
Speaker 3:
[11:57] So they start scanning the CCTV so they can see if they can get a beat on her whereabouts, and they find something pretty troubling.
Speaker 2:
[12:04] Yes, they caught her on camera at 5.45 in the morning. So this is actually March 22nd, not March 21st, I guess chronologically, if you're looking at the timestamp. And it's in the morning, it's very early, and in the video, you can see her on the phone. And this is only gleaned from body language that you can see in the video. It's not gleaned from audio, but it appears that her body language would show that she's upset for some reason, or she's a little out of sorts. There is a young man that can be seen on this video that approaches her, and he appears to ask her a question of some sort. It seems like he's asking about how she's doing, like whether or not she's okay. And again, no audio, so we don't know exactly what he said. She then appears to just give the affirmative, like, I'm fine, everything's okay. Then hangs up the phone and walks out of frame.
Speaker 1:
[13:02] Two things though, we can see her face visibly when she says, yeah, fine. So you can, you can, lip readers have looked at this and they know, we know what she said. And she's also dressed in baggy clothes that look like a dude's clothes, maybe not what you would normally wear.
Speaker 3:
[13:17] Yeah, there's a still frame in an article that I am looking at that is, she's kind of got her head in her hands, like very distraught looking.
Speaker 1:
[13:26] She pulls her, her parents have identified the two physical things that she does after the call, which is to pull her hair back and put her hands in her back pockets. That is something that, that's something that she does often. So it's definitely her. And she does appear, as you said, Matt, she appears to be agitated. And but when they find that tape, let's be clear, that's all they find.
Speaker 3:
[13:52] According to the official story.
Speaker 1:
[13:56] According to the official story, there's also a pair of flip-flops found and then later moved back to her room by Disney. But the search intensifies. Disney does the right chain of escalation. They contact the US Coast Guard. They contact the Mexican Navy. They say, hey, we were at International Waters. This is the coordinates where we're heading. And so these two organizations search the path of the wonder. And just in case there would be a trace of, as horrible as it is to think of it, there might be a trace of someone going overboard. And they also don't find anything.
Speaker 2:
[14:35] That alone is troubling. Just thinking that anyone could fall off of a cruise ship and the crew of the ship would be unaware. The people who are monitoring cameras, the people who are running the ship. It's if she did in fact fall off in that moment, just that nobody saw it, nobody heard anything. It just happened and she was gone, if that's what occurred. That's pretty terrifying in itself. But then it gets even weirder as you go deeper into this thing because then you look at what kind of investigation can occur when something happens on international waters and who gets jurisdiction. Is there some kind of special police force that looks at matters of disappearances on international waters?
Speaker 1:
[15:20] Sea police? I love the idea of sea police.
Speaker 2:
[15:25] Do they have dolphins? No, they don't. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe the aquanauts could come out and help.
Speaker 3:
[15:35] It makes me think of that story, I think we covered it on the show at some point, of the scientists at the research stations in Antarctica. There was a murder or a death, and there was this huge kerfuffle as to who had jurisdiction over that, because it was between two scientists from different international research stations. This is not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a super sticky question as to where the jurisdiction lies when you're in international waters because who knows when the actual event happened, and maybe that jurisdiction could shift since you're in motion, right, and you're traveling through different jurisdictions. And the case has been made often by, you know, folks who claim that cruise ships are a really great place to commit the perfect crime, that this is exactly why that's the case.
Speaker 1:
[16:27] The problem is complicated too in a way that might seem counterintuitive. Despite the fact that Disney is a US company, this boat is registered in the Bahamas under something that's called Flags of Convenience. It's kind of a thing for tax purposes. And it's very common. But this complicates the investigation immediately. And it goes directly to that jurisdiction question.
Speaker 3:
[16:51] And just really quickly, last thing, to your point, the whole Flags of Convenience, I hadn't heard that term, but it's the same argument that came up when the cruise industry just took an absolute nosedive when COVID hit. The argument that they shouldn't be given bailout money because they don't pay taxes to the United States.
Speaker 2:
[17:11] Well, there you go. Something to think about. Well, in the case of The Wonder, it is, like we said, registered in the Bahamas. So a detective from the Royal Bahamas Police Force, a man named Paul Roll, R-O-L-L-E, flew all the way from the Bahamas over to Los Angeles to investigate once the ship arrived at port there, because that's where it came back to. And this was three days after the initial disappearance.
Speaker 3:
[17:38] And presumably, it's not like they moored the ship instantly after finding that she had disappeared. No, they kept on, they keep it on. And also, Coriam's parents also flew out to LA, and I saw an interview with them. I'm sure you guys caught this one too. It was a Dateline episode, a British Dateline, where her parents are interviewed extensively. And they said they were shocked to find out that the FBI would not be involved, and that this detective from the Bahamas was flown far out of his jurisdiction to quote unquote investigate and to interview people on the ship. Apparently, he just spent a day on the ship, interviewing a handful of people, like the very definition of, you know, phoning it in.
Speaker 1:
[18:25] Yeah, no forensic evidence collection. He interviewed six crew members, again, of the approximately 950 or 949, if you want to be brutally accurate. And he didn't interview any passengers at all whatsoever. The parents also started taking issue with some of Disney's actions. And this is not us accusing Disney of anything yet. This is what the parents said. They said they were kept in a car with all blacked out windows, and they wanted to go and talk to passengers, right? And they had wanted to talk to crew members, but they were not admitted to the ship until all the passengers from that cruise had disembarked and left. And then they were kind of ushered in through a little used side entrance. They met with the detective. They met with Paul. They met with the captain. The captain expressed his profound condolences. And then the captain is the first one who floats a theory. This is before the investigator does anything, because the investigator has to finish a report and make conclusions. But the captain says something along the lines of, you know, it's heartbreaking to say it, but I've been thinking of this. And the only thing that could have happened was that your daughter, Rebecca Coriam, was washed overboard by a high wave while she was out by the crew pool on Deck 5. As I mentioned earlier, the crew pool, you can see pictures of this, the crew pool is isolated from the rest of the public decks, and it's one of the only spacious places where the crew can hang out without being at work, you know? So that's a place where a lot of people spend their free time.
Speaker 3:
[20:16] And this is a thing. I mean, it's called a rogue wave. It's this idea of a very, very large wave that picks up momentum, you know, on the open sea and can be really, really dangerous, even for large fortified cruise liners like this. But I would think it would register on some instruments, or there would be proof that such a thing happened, or it would be, you know, on the surveillance tape. If you could see her on the surveillance tape shortly before her disappearance, you would think if such a wave happened, they would have footage of that too, or it would, you know, make a real mess on the deck, you know?
Speaker 1:
[20:54] Yeah, you've raised two interesting points. This didn't seem plausible to the Coriam family. They noted, they were physically at the area, they noted that the pool was surrounded by high walls, over six feet tall. So they had questions, and these questions just became more profound as time went on. The number one question was and is, what happened to Rebecca Coriam? We'll explore this after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. The theories abound. Okay, the official investigation concluded the same thing that the captain said to the parents. The official investigation by the police in the Bahamas said that Coriam went overboard accidentally, possibly due to a rogue wave, sometime between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. on March 22nd. But the Coriams and their legal team and the private investigators that they worked with later never received a copy of this final report, despite the fact that that detective did promise them one. British detectives received a copy of this report, but they said it's horrible. They said it's botched, it's not meeting the bare minimum of detective work. And furthermore, they said they couldn't release it to the Coriams because it contained restricted personal information. That's personal, I guess.
Speaker 2:
[22:30] Just to add on to this, we were talking about the possibility that Rebecca Coriam went overboard sometimes between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. on that day, right? They last saw her just before that, 5.45, then it seems that that's when she would have gone. I just want to talk about the speed of the Disney Wonder. When you're just imagining this in your head, you've got a cruise ship traveling along, perhaps a wave comes up and washes somebody in. How far away do you get? How quickly is that cruise ship moving away from a person that is then in the water? The operating speed, the service speed is what it's known as, is around 21.5 knots, which is about 25 miles per hour or about 40 kilometers per hour. That's how quickly this massive ship is moving away from you, if you happen to fall into the water.
Speaker 1:
[23:21] You can't swim to that.
Speaker 2:
[23:23] You cannot swim to that, and also they would be gone rather quickly.
Speaker 3:
[23:28] Well, and that also means that this would have to be the most monster of rogue waves ever for it to not just kind of pass it by, right? Like if you're moving at 25 miles an hour in this massive wave, like it's, I don't know, like it's just, waves crash pretty slowly, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[23:48] It would have to be, it would have to be big. That's what I mean.
Speaker 3:
[23:51] It would just have to be huge to the point where there would have to be video evidence of it if all of these cameras were in service, which they appear to have been.
Speaker 1:
[23:59] That's another question. We're getting to it. Right now, at least one British politician takes explicit issue with the official story and has gone on record against the official explanation. Labor MP Chris Matheson, who since 2015 has represented the city of Chester. Oh, we didn't mention that. Chester, for anyone who's not familiar, it's like a little bit south of Liverpool. So that's where it's located. He believes that Coriam did not go overboard in accident. He believes that she was a victim of crime and possibly assaulted or murdered, and said, the more you look into this, the more it smells rotten, the more it smells like a crime has taken place. And those kinds of statements, or those sentiments, rather, were shared by many people. That's why the Coriams hire a private investigator named Roy Ram, which is a great name. He's a former specialist of Scotland Yard. He knows his way around. And they also sought the aid of that MP, Mathison. They also sought the aid of the former Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Prescott. And Ram's investigation reveals several key pieces of information that don't, they don't conclusively prove what happened to Coriam, but they do, I tried to put this very diplomatically, they do challenge the official explanation from both the Bahamas and from Disney, the mouse. So first, that rogue wave question. Here's the answer. Any wave capable of washing a person of Coriam's size, and think of her as like average person size, overboard from that Deck 5 pool, that wave would have to be at least 100 feet high. You would notice when it hit. Secondly, the weather and sea conditions in this part of the ocean where they're at, at the time, if you look at all the monitoring done by various agencies, there wasn't a storm. Like what would have made this wave occur, a wave of this size?
Speaker 2:
[26:12] Yeah. And perhaps even more damning in my opinion, at least, is that the CCTV footage that was accessible to both the investigation from our friend there from the Bahamas, as well as what was known to be aware to the family, it seems to have been cropped to obscure the time stamp and the location and some of the information that would actually be embedded into that footage. That is... that's weird. That shouldn't happen. There should be a raw file that is, you know, given to any investigator looking into this.
Speaker 3:
[26:50] I mean, even knowing what we noticed about like the way video recording works, it's like you... it's either gone or it's like it's supposed to be. Like, this detail is very troubling, like someone... And it's also odd, like a weird way of trying to obscure something, to go in and crop the footage as opposed to just getting rid of it and blaming it on a glitch. You know what I mean? It's very strange, very unusual.
Speaker 1:
[27:12] And also, you know, I was trying to think through the possibilities, just like chain of custody for this footage. Did Ram get this directly from Disney? Or did he get it directly from the detective in the Bahamas? Or did he get it from British law enforcement? And depending on where the, what the providence of it was, it is possible, it is possible that somebody between Disney and this PI had done something with the tape. But Disney's...
Speaker 2:
[27:47] I would say in that era, like 2011, 2012, around this time, it was a little more difficult than it is now to just bring a piece of video to an editing software, or export a piece of video and do it correctly without messing something up with the aspect ratio. I'm serious, like...
Speaker 3:
[28:05] No, you're totally right.
Speaker 1:
[28:06] No, yeah, Matt, I was there with you when you were doing this stuff.
Speaker 2:
[28:09] I just mean, especially if you're not a power user, it's more difficult to get it completely correct. So that is a possibility.
Speaker 1:
[28:17] So we're being overly fair. That is a possibility. But Disney's story makes it suspicious. First, I want to describe a little bit about these cameras. And we'll get further into this. But these cameras are disguised so that the passenger, like everything is about maintaining that magic feeling of the magic kingdom on the deep blue sea. So the closed circuit TV cameras are hidden in things like they're hidden in these long tubes on Deck 5. But they also, they blend in with the outdoor nautical and safety equipment. You have to be purposefully looking for them to find them. And Disney says, okay, this footage we have, the screenshot we've described in that phone conversation, it happened inside or on Deck 5. But Rob and other investigators now believe it was shot on Deck 1, which is nowhere close to Deck 5. The family has been denied access to copies of the video as well as the final report. They saw the footage. They were not allowed to have a copy of it.
Speaker 2:
[29:29] Got it, got it. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:
[29:31] So there's a bit of a, almost a Cinderella trope here, too. Their forgotten shoes, or in this case, sandals, flip-flops, you might call them, depending on what part of the world you live in. This was allegedly discovered on Deck 5, and officially, the ship's management concluded that this sandal belonged to Rebecca Coriam. However, it had the name and cabin number of a different person, and both the Coriam family and members of the crew, who were friends with Rebecca, said the sandal was, first off, not her style at all, not her vibe, not something she would wear. And then secondly, it was the wrong size. They got the wrong shoe. Because, again, there's not any investigation of the disappearance until at least three days afterwards, the sandal gets moved by management of the ship, and they return it with the rest of Rebecca's things to her cabin and her family. Like, when her family gets there, one of the things they do is collect her stuff from the cabin.
Speaker 2:
[30:39] Can I just point this out? That is something that goes down on a lot of cruise ships. Even if a person hasn't officially disappeared or anything like that, if there are any personal effects that are anywhere else on the ship, especially if they are crew members and they are specifically marked as so, they will be returned to the cabin of that crew member, which can make it very difficult to trace things when an investigation needs to occur about a person who in fact has gone missing.
Speaker 1:
[31:11] Yeah, and this, so these answers are already, they are not proof of a cover up, to be clear, but they are disturbing. And this prompts, this prompts a flurry of speculation and prompts some really great investigative journalism. We especially like to shout out John Ronson over at The Guardian. He sailed aboard the Wonder as a civilian, about seven months, I want to say, after Coriam's disappearance.
Speaker 2:
[31:43] It was October, I think.
Speaker 1:
[31:44] Yeah, and while he was on this, while he was on this cruise, he started, you know, quietly befriending and talking to the crew about this. And this is when he hits a little bit of a stone wall with some chinks in it. We do also want to want to shout out Ronson in particular. He's done some great work with the Bilderberg group as well. And he appears on one of our peer podcasts that just came out called Labyrinths, made by a friend of the show, Chandler Mays. Did you guys check this out? The sound design is top notch.
Speaker 3:
[32:17] It's excellent. Yeah, I actually had the fortune of working with Chandler to make a kind of early 90s hip hop sounding track that was used in an episode of the show. But it's top notch stuff. Amanda Knox and her partner investigating kind of stories of people getting lost and found. And Ronson also was the guy who wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats, if you remember that film with George Clooney about kind of like, this almost a remote viewing type program that was in the military.
Speaker 2:
[32:45] The one that we've spoken about many a time on this show, Stargate, I believe.
Speaker 1:
[32:50] Well, we should speak about that more again. You know what we should do? We should get a goat and stare at it. We always talk about it, but we never get together and do it. We've got to just put our money where our hopes are. But you're right. You're right. We like Labyrinths. And there's a great interview with Ronson about his surreal experiences investigating the Bilderberg group wherein he interviews one of the co-founders too in that process. So do check that out. That's out now. You can check that out now.
Speaker 2:
[33:20] How interesting is it? Yeah, listen to ours first. But how interesting is it that Amanda Knox is a host of a show? We've spoken about her, I believe, once or twice on this show, just with her ordeal that she went through. Well, it makes sense.
Speaker 3:
[33:34] I mean, it's the story of people going through transformative events and perhaps coming back out on the other side, which definitely happened with her.
Speaker 1:
[33:43] So we just want to let you know, Ronson has his bona fides. He's not just some guy who is like, what's an interesting thing I can do on this cruise? He was there on a mission for a reason. He had a motive. So you can read the article in full. We want to give you some of the pivotal moments of his investigation. So he's talking to a bartender, I believe it was, a crew member, and he asks, hey, what about that Coriam disappearance? And this person ends up saying, at first they say, oh, it didn't happen. Sorry, you know that's what I have to say. And so he doesn't have luck with that person, but he goes to another crew member, and one crew member is talking to him about that phone call, right? The phone call is a big mystery, or was for time. And this crew member says, Disney knows exactly what happened. That phone call she had, it was taped. Everything here is taped. There's CCTV everywhere. Disney has the tape.
Speaker 2:
[34:50] Yikes. You can imagine, right? You'd think that a company like Disney operating a cruise ship would want to have, you know, evidence of everything, just in case they're going to get sued for one reason or another. You've got it on tape. You've trained your employees there. You know, you're probably not going to get into an issue with an employee, you hope or you believe, right? If something goes wrong on your ship that costs millions of dollars to operate, that you've got so much investment in of your image and everything, you'd want to be able to prove that the person who was on your ship, who paid to be there, did something wrong and it wasn't your employee or something to that effect, right?
Speaker 3:
[35:29] Yeah, just to cover yourself.
Speaker 2:
[35:30] Yeah, it makes sense. So logically, you'd think just like this person is saying that there would be CCTV of every inch of that place.
Speaker 1:
[35:40] Yeah, of course. I mean, can you imagine the liability alone? Like this can end a cruise ship if the wrong thing happens and it's not Carnival.
Speaker 3:
[35:51] So it could end a company. I mean, if it's not Carnival, if it's not COVID. Well, okay, fair enough. Fans of the HBO series Succession might remember a plot line in that. It's about a giant company that's sort of a multilateral company that has theme parks and obviously big television and film interest and also a cruise line. And there's a story about kind of a cover up involving a sexual assault and falling overboard passenger. And in the show, this is not a spoiler, really, if it is maybe fast forward 10 seconds, they have copious evidence of all of these things that they do keep.
Speaker 1:
[36:31] Yeah. And this and there's no reason that fiction, that fiction show might not have at least partial basis in real events. So Bronson reaches out to Disney directly and is in a conversation with a spokesperson for Disney Corporation, and when Bronson asks the spokesperson whether or not that telephone call is taped, he gets a very weird reply. They say that pertains to specific details about the investigation, and so it's not appropriate for us to share that kind of information, which is a matrix dodge. That's not even a question that can exist in this conversation.
Speaker 2:
[37:17] It's also a yes.
Speaker 1:
[37:20] Maybe a yes that's not a yes, but then the spokesperson adds, we wish we knew what happened as much as anyone. So the implication there, or the way you're supposed to feel from that statement, is that Disney is on board with learning the truth. They just, they can't, their hands are tied, is what they're arguing, which is maybe not completely accurate. So they, he also found Disney claims to have no footage of Coriam going overboard, and while they admit they have CCTV, right? They refuse to disclose the number of cameras or their locations, anywhere on the ship for security reasons, which I understand, that's something you don't want people to find with a quick internet search or whatever. But you would think law enforcement should be able to get that information, right?
Speaker 2:
[38:15] Yeah, you know what you would do? I mean, you would have, you would have Disney Wonder export every moment of CCTV footage from every camera on the ship, and from the hours of 5:30 a.m., maybe even 5 a.m. until the moment that she was found to not be on the ship. That's what you would do. And you could comb through every moment of it as a third-party investigator, and you could find out what happened to her in all likelihood. I mean, that's all it would take, I think.
Speaker 1:
[38:47] Yeah, and maybe it's a thing where they feel they should have more cameras and don't want people to know how few they actually have. I'm not sure, but Ronson's conclusion is that the only way Coriam could have fallen is from a jogging track, the deck below, on deck four. He said that the railings everywhere else, just like the Coriam's parents pointed out, the railings everywhere else are just too high. And he says maybe after this early morning phone call, Coriam went on a jog, which checks out she's an athletic person, and maybe she slipped and somehow fell overboard. While he was on the Disney Wonder, he explored deck four and he found four different CCTV cameras, two on the port side, two on starboard. And so he thinks there was something, but every time he asked crew members about the disappearance, he received some version of the same answer. She fell overboard from deck five at the crew pool. There's nothing dark or sinister, they say, not here at Disney. But what else did the crew say when they got comfortable? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2:
[40:06] And we're back. Before we left, we were discussing just the fact that the crew told John Ronson that the same story, right? That she fell somehow overboard and on that deck five by the crew pool. That is, again, if you believe that the only way that she got off of the ship was by her own volition, by falling off or jumping off, rather than being pushed or, you know, someone forcing her off. Or even, as dark as it is, her body maybe was thrown off. That's a possibility. We have to keep all of these things as possibilities as we go on. So let's get into some of the other crew speculation that Ben alluded to right before we left. There was a single crew member, one of Coriam's friends, who says that Coriam was having a fight with her romantic partner, that person that we mentioned earlier. I believe it is Ms. Medley. There's another crew member that disputed this claim. This other person was saying that Coriam was on the phone with a mutual friend of Coriam and Melody's, and not Melody herself. But again, that's kind of one person said, the other person said, so it's difficult to know what to believe there. But there's another crew member that stated that after this phone call, Coriam may have taken a walk. We'll get in a little further about why this person believes that maybe she had taken a walk. And at this point, this person says perhaps she wasn't pushed over or swept away by some wave, but by the wind. A possibility, but again, it's just, it's tough to believe. But it's a possibility.
Speaker 3:
[41:51] That's the oldest excuse in the book. It was only the wind, you know?
Speaker 1:
[41:55] Yeah, and they have a, they, they, you know, you can, you can read in full their quote, but they're, they're saying that they know the deck by the crew pool specifically was very windy and slippery, and that management had called everybody to get inside and not be on deck, and that Disney took this very seriously. One guy violated that and he got sent home. So that's, that's their argument, that there was something to the wind. But many crew members believe the company is not sharing everything it knows, and may also be actively covering something up. At this point, we have to say, rumors abound in this kind of work environment. You know what I mean? There's, there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of intrigue going on, from everything from like preferential treatment to who is partying too hard, to who hooks up with whom, you know? So it's not at all strange that something we might call a conspiracy theory could arise or germinate in this soil. Anyhow, outside of the crew, people like Stephen Mosley, another MP over in Britain, also came out and said that they had problems with the investigation. Mosley said specifically that Disney seemed more interested in getting the ship back to sea than in the case of a missing crew member, and also noted, it is appalling that only one policeman from the Bahamas, an authority internationally recognized, these are his words, not ours, as almost toothless, was called to investigate this crime. And it is, it is weird, to your, to our earlier point, there was a law passed after the passage of Rebecca Coriam that gives the FBI jurisdiction for cruise ship investigations if it's a US resident who has gone missing or murdered. So that's some kind of progress, but a flag of the convenience countries, you know, the odds are stacked in favor of the cruise line in this case. You know, the lawyers that they have and the interlinking jurisdictional territorial things. Matt, you mentioned the you mentioned the girlfriend. We mentioned the romantic partner a couple of times, but she was silent about this for about six years. And then she came forward and shared some new information that cast the disappearance in a bit of a different light.
Speaker 2:
[44:33] Yes, her name is Tracy Medley, that's a romantic partner of Coriam. She stated that she and Coriam had apparently had a threesome with another person working on the ship, another crew member, a man named Devin Hyde. And there, you know, through these private investigations that happened after the disappearance, they claimed that this alleged threesome took place in this man, Devin Hyde's cabin, who, by the way, was a married father and a married man. And this was, quote, the first time Miss Coriam had had sexual relations with a man, which apparently, according to this investigation, left her, quote, distraught and traumatized. This certainly is a wrinkle in something like this. And we know that crimes of passion a lot of times, you know, occur quickly. And, you know, we've talked about this many times in the past. When there is a sexual relationship involved in any form, it increases the chances that that person, perhaps, is involved in a disappearance.
Speaker 1:
[45:42] Sure.
Speaker 2:
[45:43] When, you know, when disappearances occur, very often the romantic partners are looked at as the prime suspect.
Speaker 1:
[45:49] What's that trope? It's always the husband. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[45:54] And sometimes the wife or the, you know, whoever else.
Speaker 1:
[45:57] Well, it's true. It's going to be someone who knows you, statistically.
Speaker 3:
[46:03] But the other wrinkles that this kind of puts in the story is that Medley has come out and spoken relatively recently on the matter, and she's now married and has a child, and she denies that she had anything to do with the disappearance and believes that Rebecca was actually like depressed and was taking drugs and was suicidal and had made claims or threatened to jump off the side of the ship, which would hold up given how much effort it would have taken to do that. You know, knowing how high those walls were and how absolutely unpractical it seems for like a wave to have lifted somebody up or the wind or whatever. So this this definitely tracks and she believes this because the night that she went missing, Coriam was incredibly upset with Tracy, was drinking heavily and was telling her girlfriend that she, quote, felt like a failure because she wasn't brave enough to jump off the ship. And, you know, after the threesome, and I'm not being flip here, but threesomes are complicated, too. They're very complicated. If they if there are already emotions at play and you do it, maybe because you think it will make someone like you better or you feel put on the spot and then you do it. And then there's a shame factor. I'm not speaking from personal experience. It just it makes sense. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:
[47:25] OK, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:
[47:26] But it's true. Like, it's a thing where all of a sudden now you've compounded your insecurity and you've complicated the matter even further emotionally.
Speaker 1:
[47:36] Yeah, that's that's part of the issue. So, the implication here is that Medley and Coriam had a bit of inequality in what they wanted from their relationship. Tracy Medley was being casual, you know what I mean? Why be constrained? I want to be free, which is a very understandable thing. And she had a relationship with this fellow, David Hyde, who is a married father, by the way. She had a relationship with him before things got romantic with Rebecca Coriam. And while Hyde is on shore leave, this romance kind of sparks, right? And Rebecca Coriam is saying, you know, I want to take this to the next level. I want to, let's commit to each other. And Tracy Medley is saying, hey, let's not put chains on ourselves if we don't have to, essentially. And when Devin Hyde returns, I may have said David earlier, but it's definitely Devin Hyde. When Devin Hyde returns to work as a bartender on the ship, Tracy says, OK, this is the guy I was dating and he's back, so I'm going to keep doing this. And there's a strong implication that Coriam felt, as you alluded to Noel, Coriam felt somehow pressured into this sexual act because she thought it was the only way she could continue a romantic relationship with Medley. And so after, you're right, the night before the disappearance, she did say that she felt like a failure because she wasn't brave enough to jump. When the windy threesome occurs the next evening, Coriam asks Tracy, Hey, will you go on a walk with me? And Tracy declines, but she says, Hey, you're coming back, right? And Devon gives Coriam clothing to wear, some of his clothes. That's what she's wearing in the CCTV footage of that phone call. And they leave the door unlocked in case, you know, Coriam wants to come back to that cabin after she takes a walk. But instead she goes, makes a phone call, walks away and disappears from history. There's a big question, though. Who was she talking to on the phone? Matt, you mentioned earlier, one of the crew members said it was Tracy Medley, but that doesn't make sense necessarily. I mean, it's an internal phone system, right? So maybe. But somebody else came forward, one Tracy O'Brien from Liverpool, and she said that Coriam was calling her. And furthermore, that Coriam kind of always called her in these situations.
Speaker 2:
[50:17] Yeah, she was almost the go-between. And this is what Miss O'Brien told investigators. She said, she called me crying. She said they'd asked her to do a threesome. I told her not to go back to them and to go to bed. O'Brien then continued saying, she stopped crying. I told her I'd talk to Tracy about it in the morning, as I always had to talk to her when they were arguing with each other. So essentially just acting as a friend as you would if you're supporting Rebecca Coriam there and also supporting Tracy and just being a go between. It's really interesting to me that a lot of this information or some of this information at least comes from a man named Mark Rotherham, who was the, I think, head of security on Disney Wonder.
Speaker 1:
[51:07] At the time, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[51:08] At the time. But he is the one who is giving that, you know, or is giving us that quote of Coriam, the only way that Coriam was to be able to be with her girlfriend was to have a threesome with Mr. Hyde and that she was very uncomfortable with it, but she did it anyway. I think this is her first time sleeping with a man. It's interesting to have that person who's security on the ship giving us that information through this investigation. I mean, I guess he'd be the right person to do it, but that feels like a very important piece of information to have. It feels like something you would continue to dig into a little bit further, maybe rather than taking it at face value.
Speaker 3:
[51:50] There's so many things that should have been dug into further rather than taking it at face value in the story. I think that's the biggest trouble with the whole thing. It just seems like Disney was not being above board. Let's pivot back to the parents' perspective. Because you got to think, I mean, it's just like your child has vanished. Promising young woman who had, like you said at the top of the show, Matt had a real career path and goal-oriented and all that stuff, and obviously just like the love of their life, to just be strung along in the way they seem to have been, and not really given any answers, and for there to be all these loose ends, I can't imagine, and in the Dateline piece that I saw, they said of this that it never gets easier, in fact, the more time that goes by, they feel like it gets harder, because they just ruminate on all these questions, and this official story just doesn't feel right.
Speaker 1:
[52:48] Yeah, it might be official, but it doesn't feel legitimate, does it? So yeah, from the parent's perspective, I would say there's one thing that we've been alluding to, but we haven't gone head on into yet, because it's a very painful and harrowing subject, not just for this case, but for a lot of us listening along at home, wherever home is, and that is the question of suicide. Could it be possible that Coriam, distressed, traumatized, chose to take her own life in those early hours of March 22nd? She's athletic enough, she's in good enough shape, that she would have been able to climb over anything preventing someone from falling off the ship. But her parents do not believe this is possible. To them, their daughter always seemed upbeat, positive, very family oriented. She had recently bought them tickets so they could all go to Disneyland Paris together. When they take that as evidence that she was looking forward to the future, she had plans. Some of the crew members argue that the parents were not aware of the extent maybe of Coriam's partying and said that, you'll see a quote often that says they felt she was sunny and cheerful but haunted by an underlying sadness. However, I would argue, the truth is, this applies to most people, the truth is that we are so many different people at any given time. The you that your parents know is not the you that your friends know. And it's a good argument to be made that we are only stories we tell ourselves. Matt, I think I'm plagiarizing my own story from 13 Days, but it's true. It's true. I'll stop overusing that line. So after she went missing, something happens that further convinces the Coriams, to your point, Noel, further convinces them that something is amiss here. Two of her friends that she was hanging out with when she went back to the UK for a while, two of her friends visited the Coriam parents, and they said while she was hanging out with them, Rebecca had voiced fears of being assaulted, sexually assaulted, or attacked while she was on the ship. And that led the Coriams now to their stances, they, well, back when they could still talk about it. That's the twist at the end here. The Coriams strongly suspected that Rebecca was murdered following an attack of a sexual nature. And this is something echoed by other professional investigators like Bill Anderson.
Speaker 3:
[55:35] Yes, Bill Anderson is a thing called a maritime investigation coordinator. But you'd think that would be like the jurisdiction of a maritime investigation coordinator or anything that happens.
Speaker 1:
[55:44] Sea police.
Speaker 3:
[55:45] Boom, exactly. And he is one of these in the UK who has been assisting the Coriams in their case, in their search for the truth. And he says he is fully convinced that a sexual assault took place and that they were aware of it on board the vessel.
Speaker 1:
[56:04] It's a heavy claim.
Speaker 3:
[56:06] It's a heavy claim. And it makes me, again, all this stuff is conjecture at this point. Well, we'll get to the next step. But I do feel like the episode or the theme in Succession was definitely based on this exact case because it's a similar type of company to Disney, the dynasty represented in that show.
Speaker 2:
[56:27] I would just say, Noel, there are so many cases like this.
Speaker 3:
[56:31] No, it's true. I think it's the Disney angle and the type of company that is in that show that makes me think that they're looking at this one. But there is a settlement.
Speaker 1:
[56:41] Yeah. I do want to say it's like the SVU game. For any fans of Law and Order SVU, I watch it. I'll admit it. There's no shame in it. But one of the games you can play with SVU is you watch the episode and you think, okay, what real world case is this loosely based on? And it gets increasingly surreal as SVU gets more and more on the nose with their responses or with their episodes. But you're right, Noel, there is, this is what we're talking about when we say the Coriams had this view back when they still could talk about it because now they can't. In 2015, Disney and the Coriams settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. And this settlement seems to have ended any legal challenge in the US. But there are, you know, there are multiple countries involved, right? So there could still be in question inquiries in the UK. As a condition of this settlement, the Coriams are prevented from discussing the case.
Speaker 2:
[57:45] That's crazy, right? You can't talk about your daughter's disappearance anymore because here's some money.
Speaker 3:
[57:52] Yeah. And I mean, to be devil's advocate, they had to agree to it, you know, they could have kept pressing it and not received any money. But I mean, I guess, I mean, money is no resolution, but it certainly makes it, I guess, easier to go on with. I don't know, I would have a hard time if my, this is please, no shade or any judgment on the Coriam family. But I think I feel like maybe if my child went missing and then I accepted some money and it changed my quality of life, I think I would always kind of, in the back of my mind, associate it with this horrible event.
Speaker 1:
[58:25] I was thinking about this too. It might have been, this is terrible, but it may have been an economic necessity. Remember, this is a family, there's two people going up against one of the most powerful corporations.
Speaker 3:
[58:38] That's a really good point, which makes it even more itchy, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:
[58:41] At least four years after they disappeared.
Speaker 3:
[58:44] That's like we've bankrupted you in fighting us. And now the only way you're going to be able to claw your way back is if you settle with us and then make you sign a gag order.
Speaker 1:
[58:53] I'm not saying that's what happened.
Speaker 3:
[58:54] I know, but I think that's really smart, Ben.
Speaker 1:
[58:58] I'm saying it's possible. We're being very careful not to get the mouse on us.
Speaker 3:
[59:02] Nobody wants the mouse after you.
Speaker 1:
[59:04] Nobody wants the mouse after me. No, he found us. Well, let's get this through before we have to, before we end and go officially on the run from Disney. Coriums disappeared. That's where we're at now. There's been a settlement signed. The official explanation is still washed over board by a rogue wave on Deck 5 near the crew pool. That official explanation, as I think we've proven, doesn't add up for a lot of people. But it also takes us to a larger phenomenon. You see the disappearance of Rebecca Corium is unfortunately far from the only example of people going missing on cruise lines, passengers as well as crew members. How many people disappear on cruises? What happens out there in the gray area? Not just the gray area of the deep blue sea, but that legal no man's land of international waters, flags of convenience, the halls of corporate power. It's bizarre.
Speaker 2:
[60:06] If you go back to the Guardian article that was written by Mr. John Ronson, he mentions that it was something like 171 disappearances across all cruise lines from 2000 until 2011. So 11 years, 171 roughly disappearances on all cruise lines. That's not a ton if you think about the number of human beings that are traveling on all of these ships, but it's way more than zero.
Speaker 1:
[60:42] Yeah, and of course, we're not trying to vilify cruise lines because the open ocean is a dangerous place. And a lot of times, people who are not familiar with the risk, looking at passengers who are not, you know, who are maybe a little too confident, ignoring the rules that are there for a reason can land you in a dangerous situation very quickly.
Speaker 2:
[61:08] Or passengers who take advantage of the now widely available packages where you can drink everything you want on the ship.
Speaker 1:
[61:16] That's right.
Speaker 2:
[61:17] You just pay a little fee there and you got an open bar while you're at sea. Yikes. But also, gay?
Speaker 3:
[61:25] Well, I wanted to say too, like, you know how the cruise ships sort of gently trying to come back to life? I saw a commercial for it that was very COVID-centric without actually saying the word about how everyone needs an escape and all this language. And at the end, I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at the plight of a major industry, but at the end there was in the fine print, like free open bar for any ticket holders. So they are really doubling down with this open bar thing and trying to track people back to cruise ships.
Speaker 1:
[61:53] And perhaps we end on a note for the survivors of these tragedies, the Coriams and all the other relatives and friends who now have an absence in their life. Several relatives of people who have gone missing from cruise ships have formed a loose community of sorts, monitoring disappearances, pushing for investigations where they think the original investigation doesn't add up. But here we are now, years later, and several cases, multiple cases, like Rebecca Coriams, have official conclusions that don't seem to tell the whole story. We want to know what you think. Is there a cover up afoot? If so, what and why? How does a place with a lot of CCTV footage, how does it miss footage of someone slipping overboard? How likely is a wave?
Speaker 2:
[62:54] Is it possible that someone knew where there were holes in the CCTV footage when something went down? Just putting it out there, we've discussed that as a possibility in other cases where somebody was aware of cameras and where they were located.
Speaker 3:
[63:10] Is there a situation where the FBI could get involved? Or is that really just the nature of the beast with this type of travel?
Speaker 1:
[63:19] Yeah, it can. Again, to reiterate, there was a law passed after the disappearance of Coriam that allows the FBI jurisdiction for investigations in these kinds of disappearances so long as the person who disappeared is a US resident. So it wouldn't have helped in this case because this is a UK resident.
Speaker 3:
[63:39] That's true, but that's still a big step in the right direction. I've glossed over that entirely, Ben. Thanks for reiterating that.
Speaker 2:
[63:45] By the way, we mentioned a group, you know, people who have been affected by disappearances on cruise ships who've gotten together. If you want to check out something called International Cruise Victims, we would recommend you do so. You can find it at internationalcruisevictims.org. You can read there a lot of information. There are a lot of contacts and resources for you or anyone else there on that website.
Speaker 1:
[64:12] And while you're on the Internet, if you would like to share your thoughts with us, as well as, more importantly, your fellow listeners, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter. We like to recommend Here's Where It Gets Crazy, some of the best mods in the business and some of the best memes on the net. Once again, voted the best site on the Internet. Four times in a row running now arbitrarily by us on the show.
Speaker 2:
[64:39] Just Facebook, you mean, in general or?
Speaker 1:
[64:41] No, no, our page on Facebook. Just that page. That page is Keeping Zuckerberg In Business. Sorry, everyone.
Speaker 2:
[64:51] Awesome. If you don't want to do that, head on over to YouTube, find us, we are Conspiracy Stuff On That Thing, and you can watch all kinds of videos that we've been making for a long time. You can see videos of these podcasts, of our faces saying words. Yeah, you can see it. Do I look like Noel? Does Noel look like Ben? Who knows?
Speaker 3:
[65:15] You'll never know unless you go to youtube.com/conspiracystuff. While you're on the Internet, why not leave us an iTunes review? Or what do they call it these days? Apple Podcasts. Super helpful to help people find the show and to get it up in the rankings. We've actually been up in the rankings a decent little bit lately. So perhaps these desperate pleas for reviews are working. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[65:35] And so is the radio. Ye vast radio network. Hey, and if you don't want to do that stuff, please leave us a voicemail. We have a number.
Speaker 1:
[65:43] That's right, Ben. You can contact us any old time or any new time at 1-833-STD-WYTK. Three minutes. They're all yours. All that we ask is that you let us know if it's okay to use your name and or nickname and or voice on air. And if you hate doing that, if you just heard that and you thought, what a terrible idea. Using a phone, social media, sheepers, you guys. Well, we do have good news for you. There's one other way you can always reach us. It's our good old fashioned email address.
Speaker 3:
[66:20] We are conspiracyatiheartradio.com.
Speaker 1:
[66:23] And it's weird that we don't mention this as often as we should. We have t-shirts. Is that crazy? We have t-shirts. We've got mugs. I should have one on air now. And they're all on sale.
Speaker 3:
[66:36] That's right. T-Public is having a holiday sale. All of the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know swag is 30% off. But act now because it's only for a limited time.
Speaker 2:
[66:46] That's right. It's 30% off until December 17th, which is just around the corner. So get over to the store right now and get some cool stuff from Stuff They Don't Want You To Know before the holidays. So just head over to T-Public. That's T-E-E-Public, P-U-B-L-I-C. And search for Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. You'll find it there. You can get all kinds of great things like the Doc Rendezvous T-shirt or our official tin foil T-shirt.
Speaker 3:
[67:14] Yeah, you can even get a version of our logo with the hand that looks like a turkey.
Speaker 1:
[67:19] And we have more designs on the way, so do check it out.
Speaker 2:
[67:41] Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.