Star Wars Program and European Militant Groups

It's february twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, a mild late winter's day in northeast Albuquerque, New Mexico sixixty eight year old William Neil McCastlin leaves his home sometime between eleven AM and noon presumably wearing his hiking boots for reasons unknown, his phone and his prescription glasses are left behind someoneere takes only his wallets and his revolver Three hours later, Neil's wife reports him missing authorities issue a silver alert due to Neil's age They scour the footage from cameras stationed at both ends of a street. Dispatch drones and helicopters. At night, they use infrared to search for Neil's heat signature in the surrounding area. It's New Mexico Practically every surface is hot, even this time of year The following month, his disappearance makes national news breaks through the noise of thousands of other missing persons cases Because Neil is a retired U. S. Air Force major general who once commanded the research laboratory Patterson Air Force Base as in the prior headquarters of Project Blue Book rumored home of Hangar eighteen, which some say contains the real remnants from the Roswell incident Whatever secrets Wright Patterson may or may not hold Neil. would have known about But it's not just this one disappearance that has people talking. It's the fact that Neil fits He's one of at least ten people who've died or gone missing as of late. who knew about top secret information. This story is still developing, and as of this recording, federal investigations have been opened by the FBI and the House Oversight Committee But it turns out Something a lot like this string of deaths and disappearances has happened before in the nineteen eighties in Britain When as many as twenty two men, all of them defense scientists, died under mysterious. Circumstances Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We'd love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod This episode contains discussions of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, murder, and struggles with mental health. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen If you or someone you know is struggling emotionally or feeling hopeless Visit spotify dot com slash resources Stay with us Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we faced An offer you can feast on. seell your car today on Carmana Pick up these mailly So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi', Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack Hear that. That's the sound of busy to a restaurant, all that shouting and banging might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off. Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound This Chizz Busy means business, which is why toast gives restaurants the tools and tech they need to help them perform under pressure. Sounds pretty good, right? Toast, built for busy It's august fifth, nineteen eighty six in Bristol, England. Beimal Djgibbi parks his car within sight of the Clifton suspension brridge. A twenty four year old software engineer is a long way from where he lives and works in London, over one hundred miles, in fact, so not a quick drive But now He gets the chance to stretch his legs. He presumably walks from his parking spot up to the massive bridge overlooking a vast gorge Nobody knows why VimMal is here or what happens next. There are no witnesses We only know that at around midnight H body is found at the bottom of the gorge fall of nearly two hundred and fifty feet The few clues he left behind only puzzle investigators more I don like the fact that there was wine in his car. even though he reportedly did not drink, And there's not one, but to paper cups He's also found with his pants around his ankles. and there's a strange puncture wound on his left buttock Authorities can find no indication of what or who led VML to Bristol O than the second impromptu wine glass, there are no clear signs anybody else was with him ors can't even say for sure that foul play was involved Nor can they pin the death on a suicide The corner returns an open verdict, a conclusion that really doesn't conclude much of anything at all. There's simply not enough evidence to say how Vimal died. As for the puncture wound, a coronners spokesperson calls it a mystery and they leave it at that. for now At first, the case comes and goes without attracting much attention Malls family Grieves in private And when his body is finally released to them, they prepare to cremate his remains just before they do. They get a phone call urging them to stop the cremation Pice want to take another look at Vimal's body becausecause now There's been a second mysterious death And there's a chance that the two cases be linked It's now October, and another young computer expert has been found dead just like VML twenty six year old Ashad Sharif lives and works in London, and for some reason, he drove all the way out near Bristol been found dead in his car. We'll get into exactly how he died a little later For now, let's focus on the really glaring similarity between both of the cases Bimal and Ashad work for the same company Cononey electronics and defense subsidiary of General Electric Company or GEC which by the way, is not the same as GE General Electric in the US Marconone is a huge company with several divisions. Although both of the men were based in London, officials say they worked in different offices and wouldn't have known each other But I'm sure any good detective can see that they had related lines of work Mall was employed by Marconi underwater systems. From what we know, he kept guidance systems in check Pedots underwater missiles. And Ashad was with Marconi defense Sys He was testing out equipment that could simulate. underwater vibrations So they're both working on underwater defense projects for a giant defense company, which, by the way, is currently contracted to work on the Strategic Defense Initiative, AKA President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program aims to create a defense system against nuclear attack from the Soviet Union Just like what's happening today with all of the deaths and disappearances of scientists peopleople in nineteen eighty seven start to ask if there was some nefarious plot behind Vimal and Ashad's deaths Rumors fly that they'd actually been assigned to top secret research for Star Wars this theory that both deaths are linked. really starts with one journalist who writes about computers for a living. Tony Collins is a journalist for computer newews One day, he gets a tip that Vimal actually specializes in computer simulations. some kind of wonder Kin when it comes to programming them. And he was supposedly at work on a defense project coden named Oosmos Tipster describes cosmos as a simulation tool that essentially allows someone to this nuclear war. kind of like the plot to the movie, War games, but To our knowledge, Cosmos doesn't almost destroy the planet. So Tony starts digging for more information over at Marconi. As he later tells the TV news show twenty twenty. The company does not like him poking around. He also says that he discovered some of the information he got about Vimal turned out to be untrue or unlikely I don't know for sure, but could be referring to how involved V Mall was with the Cosmos project even so Marconi allegedly tells Tony he's messing around with highly sensitive information Information that could pose a threat to national security And Marconi claims they've opened an internal inquiry to track down his source No matter though. Tony's not scared off In March, nineteen eighty seven, he publishes his article Mystery shrouds the deaths of two Marconi system staff piece catapults the story into the public. comes out right around the same time Another computer scientist dies. you know car accident That same month David Sands is heading into the office He works for a Marconi sister company Right now it's seven thirty in the morning. And he's driving down a straight road in clear conditions. and then suddenly he makes a sharp U turn He drives up a small connector road, also known as a slip road and he floors it His car reaches eighty miles per hour until he crashes it into a deserted restaurant And the vehicle explodes into a massive fireball because inside David's car Tw ten gallon jugs of gasoline Nobody knows who put them there High speed, combined with a fire, kills David instantly is considered the third Marconi employee to die under mysterious circumstances in just a few months. Reports differ on what exactly David did at his job Some say he worked on satellites or secret radars. others paint him as more of a design guy on command and communication systems According to the LA. Times, his employer is involved with Star Wars Although the company insists David wasn't part of those projects regardless of his specialty David's gruesome death forces more people to take notice of what's going on A British lawmaker named John Cartwright writes to the Ministry of Defense calling on them to take up a formal inquiry hisis request is denied A spokesman from the ministry admits he finds the deaths altogether odd He had There, any relationship stops In other words This is all a coincidence, a series of separate events There is nothing more to investigate. The story keeps getting bigger Journalists call it the Marconi mystery adding suspicious deaths to the list like Richard Pugh. He's found dead in his home in january nineteen eighty seven. His legs were bound and there was a plastic bag on his head Officials deemed it a quote, sexual experiment. Apparently it looked like a case of auto erotic asphyxiation gone wrong The details are sparse questionable so onto the list, Richard goes. Then there's forty six year old Peter Pepople In February, about a month before David Sands drives his car into that restaurant Peter spent the evening with his wife and their friends playing trivial pursuit. later that night He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Peter is found in his garage below his car. And The really puzzling part about his case was how he could have gotten under there His head was practically up against the garage door, but the space is so tiny. There's hardly any room between the car's bumper and that door. I mean, we are talking inches So even the police are baffled They say it's impossible for Peter to have closed the door first and then manoeuvered into that position Neither could he have gotten under the car and then closed the door Once again, the coronner had to settle on an open verdict At the time of his death Peter was reportedly studying the Soviets' use of beryillium which is used in atomic reactors And Richard Pgh designed computer warfare systems Neither of them were working for Marcononey, but people think it's enough of a coincidence that they did work for defense contractors Officials keep denying that there are any compelling links between all these guys Ites doesn't seem like they worked together or knew each other or touched the same projects There are practically no personal connections to be found Except for one In january nineteen eighty seven twenty six year old Avar Sida went missing from a reservoir in Derbyshire He was a few months away from completing his PhD in acoustics technology at Loughborough University O to our specialty. There are a few better schools you could be going to Era is a leader in underwater warfare tech stay by the reservoir O Tar was working alongside feellllow researcher testing out equipment At one point, his colleague announced he was taking a lunch break When he returned Oar was gone. family was baffled Otar and his wife had plans to celebrate their wedding anniversary He'd already bought her a present So they find it hard to believe he left on his own accord. Why would he willingly vanish when he was about to complete a four year program, get his doctorate, and turn in his thesis paper, a paper that reportedly focused on some kind of underwater signaling research That makes Avtar the third scientist added to the list who is involved with this type of defense. along with Ashod and Val. which get some people thinking al also went to Looughborough University years earlier. And what do you know He was there at the same time is off Tar They lived in the same dorms and knew each other. It's not the wildest connection, notot exactly a jaw dropper, but there is finally a clear link between two of the scientists the kind of connection that officials keep saying doesn't exist Marconi tries to minimize the relationship between VMal and Ovar, calling them quote Nodding acquaintances When you see somebody all the time in passing, but you aren't confident that you remember their name and it's too late to ask them again. so you just nod and say, Heyy, what's up buddy? Every time you see them? No, Marconi' suggesting There's really nothing to see here. But Even if those two guys didn't know each other that well, The rest of the coincidences are still troubling And yes, The police are investigating each case They're not coming up with any satisfactory answers And the Ministry of Defense continues to deny a need for an inquiry Endless questions Zero answers. Until in May of nineteen eighty seven the fate of Av Tar Sing Gida, the missing researcher, is uncovered Hey, it's Kelly Rowan. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBLlS? EblS Labrchab LBKZ, a two hundred fifty milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older, who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies, EBGlS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids Don't use if you are allergic to EBGlS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBGlS. Before starting EBGlS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Pay partartnership with Lily. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EBGlS and visit eBGlS dot com or call one eight hundred Lillily RX or One eight hundred, five four five, five, nine, seven nine You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfare gets it. Pning on dining alfresco or relaxing poolside Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to seventy percent off during Wayfare's Fth of July clearance. sccore huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, sururprise Flash Deals July sixth. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's Fth of July clelearance now through july sixth at wayfare dot com d Way fair, every style, every home In May of nineteen eighty seven, a headline in the evening teelegraph reads Exclusive We find missing Derby scientist It's written by a mustachioed reporter named Tony Tweety He's back from Paris. where he says he's spoken to twenty six year old Avtar Singida. Very much alive Four and a half months after the researcher went missing from a reservoir, Interpol reportedly tracked Ovar down And now Tony wants to see the man for himself. I mean, Ovar was believed to be a possible victim of foul play linked to several mysterious deaths of fellow scientists, One of whom he'd gone to school with, he was part of a growing conspiracy theory playing out in Britain And now, Tony hears he's fine. And he's been working at a random sex boutique in a red light district in Paris. If that's true Tony Tweety wants the scoop First He calls the shop and simply asks for Avar And his coworer happily hands over the phone The man who picks up the other end of the line denies everything. says he just happens to have the same name as the missing man Tony's looking for So Tony travels to Paris and shows up at the sex boutique It's called presence And it's located on a street cramped with similar shops. This time Avtar agrees to talk He leads the reporter to an adjacent alley. I don't know what this alleyway looks like, but I'm gonna to go with Cy. Anyway Tony, this guy looks like the same avar everyone's been looking for. But The man claims he's never even been to England He says he's a refugee from India and he insists he's definitely not some ed researcher in underwater defense technology If he was, he says, whyy would he be working at a sex shop in Paris? That's a fair point The man is also very cagey and he refuses to have his picture taken He also demands to know Tony found him classic move when you're completely innocent When Tony interviews the coworkers, they unwittingly give Obtar up One reveals Ovtar told him he came from England. So Tony knows he's got the right guy after all Eventually, officials confirm it The missing scientist has been found Authorities now have a logical answer to one part of the Marconi mystery. Now they can point to Avar's case and say, seeee There was no foul play after all. He's alive and well Mystery solved Yeah, sure, dropping out of your prestigious PhD program and moving away to sell lingerie and sex toys? Yeah. what more explanation could you possibly need We don't know what rationale Ovar gave for leaving his family behind He might have just wanted to start over in a new city. But why Here's where officials latch on to a possible explanation for what's going on Why Avar left home and why other scientists are dying They say the world of secret defense research is extremely tough Employees are susceptible to high stress levels There's an element of loneliness certain clearance levels mean you can't talk to your family about work. Even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's office supports this reasoning They refer to all the Marconi mystery deaths as parent suicides And there is some reason to entertain the theory. An article from Australia's newspaper, The Age mentions that Marconi employs something like forty seven thousand people at this time big company They don't provide a breakdown of employees' ages or genders, but based solely on numbers The newspaper says the suicide theory can't be totally written off. If these were all suicides then Marconi's rate is well below the national average Acept they caution doesn't take into account few things For example, none of these victims had any mental health diagnoses With that in mind, Marconi's suicide rate is actually higher than the national average Then there's the fact that only one of the deaths we've talked about so far was actually ruled as a suicide Like I mentioned, most were an open verdict Meaning investigators can't determine whether it was suicide homicide or accident Before we get further into this section, please note that the warning signs of depression can be silent. I know we cover this pretty frequently on this show, but it's important We can't ever know what was going on in someone's mind right before they died being said There are details about some of these deaths that I haven't mentioned yet If you don't want to hear the grizzy parts, you may want to skip ahead. What you really need to know is that several these scientists died in ways that are so bizarre and violent, people find it difficult to believe they could have all been Self inflicted You already know about David Sand, whose car full of gasoline went up in flames. In addition to that, you have Ashad Sharif, the second scientist on the list The one who I mentioned was discovered dead in his car in a public park Mashad was found with a rope tied around his neck other end was secured to a tree then Someone stepped on the gas pedal until the shod was nearly decapitated. Notably, this case was ruled a suicide That's because police found an audio tape inside the car. whatever was on it convinced the coroner to make that ruling. However, when the tape was released to his family They did not agree that it sounded like a suicide note Throughout nineteen eighty seven and ' eighty eight, the list continues to grow One scientist is found electrocuted to death in his home in a truly heinous way. There were wires jammed into an electrical socket leading into his mouth, where they were taped down onto his back teeth where he had metal fillings. There's also the case of Alistair Beckham in august nineteen eighty eight On his last morning alive, Alistair pruned the trees in his garden went into his quaint little shed and was also electrocuted to death He was found with a handkerchief in his mouth and wire wrapped around his arm wire had been rigged with a paper clip so that it tapped into the main electrical source for his home And this happened while his daughters were inside the house. Alister worked for years as a software engineer at Pessy Naval Systems His wife Mary tells twenty twenty that hours after he died, Men showed up at her house to remove sensitive documents from her husband's office Porter, Stone Phillips. says he was told a similar story by other families too Mary also insists Alisair had no reason to want to end his life. And again, I know we say this a lot, but it's true It is common for family members to find the suicide angle hard to believe Only one widow publicly accepts suicide as a possible answer for what happened to her husband a man with a metal fillings The families in these cases say the same thing They don't buy that their loved ones would come up with such violent ways to die And as a mental health expert tells twenty twenty, many of the deaths do not fit any sort of pattern expected of people from this background As journalists pursue other theories and connections between cases, the list swells to as many as twenty two dead defense scientists The Sunday Times lays out a timeline that actually begins long before Vimal Djibai in nineteen eighty six. They wonder if another unexplained death from nineteen eighty two could also be related That year, a professor named Keith Bodden was driving home late after a dinner party when he ran off the road He wasn't intoxicated Other guests from the party said Keith wasn't drinking So his wife wasn't satisfied when detectives couldn't come up with any answers She hired a private investigator I found it odd that Keith's accident occurred on an empty road while driving a new car So we tracked down that car and inspected it. according to this private eye Heeath's tires te bald. There was no tread left on them whatsoever as if someone switched them out Before he drove home that and the Sunday Times notes Keith was a computer scientist who did classified work For the Ministry of Defense Even with this expanded list of twenty two defense employees though, journalists can't find a clear connection Maybe there's a reason for that too The official seecrets In essence, it's meant to protect British national security and deter espionage. Basically, the first rule of top secret projects is You do not talk about top secret projects The legislation has been in place since nineteen eleven, so it's nothing new Critics say the official Secrets Act is too vague. can be interpreted to the government's liking and utilized to hide misconduct. When journalists try to conduct independent investigations They keep running up against this law bars them from accessing further information about the scientists' jobs because many of them were involved in sensitive or classified work Thus The official Secrets Act is invoked and reporters are shut down So it seems s kind of impossible to dig up connections when you are legally banned from looking for connections And since our knowledge on what these guys all did for work is pretty limited People are going to assume there could be more links we just don't know about Journalist Tony Collins points out that Britain is a world leader in underwater research It's a big reason why he suggests those first two deaths could be related Both men worked on underwater technology We can't confirm how many of these scientists were actually working on projects for Star Wars, or the Strategic Defense Initiative The US promised one and a half billion pounds worth of defense contracts to Britain in exchange for Prime Minister Thatcher's approval of the program That's a lot of money up for grabs Some allege that the government and the contractors involved do not want this bad press They don't want it to look like they have a security issue because that could jeopardize the work and the money So they don't entertain the idea that there's some nefarious actor killing all their employees. To be clear, nobody's suggesting Marconi or any of the other defense companies are to blame for foul play. Side note, yet another theory points out that Marconi and its parent company had been under a federal fraud investigation for a couple of years when the death started. No links were found between those who had died and the fraud allegations At most, the companies are only responsible for not going out of their way to help the investigations or to find answers for grieving families Wh is supposedly responsible then If these aren't really suicides, of murders who has the motive Well, as one U. S. congressman suggests The answer to that question won't come from digging deeper into the British cases Instead It might be found in casting a wider net because a similar string of unfortunate events has been unfolding over in Germany This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm not worth it, okay? Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. Gott a Sam's caafe pizz order up M You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage? I voted for this topping. Yeah, just another perk of being a member. Come join us. Sand' Club Okay, let's backtrack a bit and talk about the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as the SDI or Star Wars. On march twenty third, nineteen eighty three President Ronald Reagan addresses the American public He says for years now, the Soviets have been developing bigger, faster and more powerful weapons, planes, tanks, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs capable of delivering nuclear payloads across long distances Meanwhile, the U. S. arsenal has lagged behind That he says is where the SDI will come in The strategic defense initiative would theoretically shield the United States from nuclear attack build multiple lines of defense on the ground and in space capable of intercepting missiles. Some of the projects SDI wants to develop include satellites and Space lasers Hence the nickname Star Wars Yes, that name is meant to be tongue in cheek Be the program faces criticism thirty billion dollars, it's expensive And while the technology sounds nice to have, a lot of people question if it's really feasible As long as we're throwing sci fi weapons onto the old wishlist, we might as well add some lightsabers and speeder bikes while we're at it. Then there's the concern that Star Wars will only bring us closer to the brink of nuclear war It'll only stoke the flames. Nevertheless, the SDI gets its funding and moves forward That's why when defense scientists are dying in Britain a couple of years later People want to know if these guys were working on Star Wars projects If they were It's not a huge stretch to think that KGB could be involved Why them? It's a simple case of Ocham's razor The Soviets are the most likely culprits because they have the most to gain by interfering not be that straightforward In july nineteen eighty seven A Republican congressman named Jim Corter speaks to his fellow representatives This is right as the Marconi mystery is heating up And he presents a recent article from the National Review that details, in his view, a troubling pattern in Europe pattern being Scientists involved in Star Wars work happen to be dying left and right He mentions the deaths of Imal, Ashad, and David as well as Peter People the researcher whose carbon monoxide deaths stumped investigators. It's only the half of it. The article he reads lays out another string of deaths and bombings going on in Germany There's Carl Heinz Beckerts, director of research at a contractor we know worked with Star Wars. He and his driver were killed by a car bomb in july nineteen eighty six in Munich weeks before VMal died. His company tried to deny Carl Heines was personally involved with the Star Wars program sounds familiar An LA. Times investigation found that was not true He had even personally met with U. S. officials a year earlier to strategize how his company could work with them Here we have a senior advisor in the defense industry working with Reagan's SDI project who also died a violent death Sounds like it could all be related, right? is just one admittedly giant, difference between the case of Carl Hinz and what's happening over in Britain. Somebody took credit for killing him A note was left behind by the German far left militant group, the Red Army Faction otherwise known as the RAF or the Beter Meinhof gang. And If you haven't heard of them before, well you might start hearing about them everywhere you go. The anti capapitalist anti Eestablishment RAF claimed responsibility for assassinating Carl Heinz. They even spelled out their motive killed him strictly because of his involvement in those SDI talks, which they called secret negotiations. They also owned up to shooting a German foreign ministry official a few months later in October over in Italy A different militant group was at work and another director general in the deffense ministry is dead He was shot in the street by the Union of communist combatants the RAF, They left a note behind, explaining they targeted the director genereral quote exclusively for his responsibility exercised following the Italian adhesion to the Star Wars proroject There were multiple office bombings as well. Seven of them between July and November of nineteen eighty six. across Germany, France and Denmark. all of which targeted companies that had or were believed to have had SDI contracts including one working on a high energy laser Notably, no one took responsibility for the office bombings, only the assassinations And there's a difference between openly shooting someone in the street versus making a death look like a possible suicide. But there are at least two militant groups at work simultaneously and they're not oy about their motives If we're looking for patterns It seems worth considering that all of these defense industry deaths across Europe could be orchestrated by one group It's never proven that the KGB is behind any of this. not directly or via funding or Intel. All we can really say is that they pushed anti Star Wars propaganda In the end, we know who's to blame for the assassinations in Germany and Italy But we never get clear answers on the string of deaths in Britain According to the article, shared by Congressman Corcher, All of the fear and uncertainty surrounding these violent attacks might be yet another reason why the truth gets obscured. In light of the attacks in continental Europe The British government and its defense contractors, like Marconi, wouldn't want to discuss Star Wars That could invite unwanted attention from dangerous organizations which might explain why they downplay bizarre details, connections, and the victims involvement in classified projects Until the Marconi mystery fizzles out by the end of the nineteen eighties. After the Soviet Union falls in nineteen ninety one The US has less and less need for the SDI. A few projects live on, but for the most part, the Star Wars saga fades to black before its lofty goals can be achieved No weaponized space lasers. Pponents of Ronald Reagan and his program credit it with helping to bankrupt the Soviets But it might have also motivated violent organizations to action. When Vimal Dajiba's body was ree examined Corner paid special attention to that puncture wound on his left buttock The one with an undetermined cause It had been described as small almost Nele sized If you recall, there were two cups discovered in his car. hinting that he wasn't alone in his final moments beside the suspension bridge Could he have been injected with something to impair his judgment or render him unconscious Well, the second autopsy found that the puncture came from a bone fracture Pimal suffered such a long fall, It's a logical conclusion. One we probably wouldn't be talking about today Except perhaps when you look at it alongside, extreme electrocutions car accidents that make no sense and apparent suicides that detectives said could not have been pulled off by one person acting alone. In december nineteen eighty eight The AID reports that Marconi's parent company, GEC hired an outside firm and they would be conducting an impartial investigation But then two months later Marconi is back in the news with a new problem. Remember that fraud investigation I mentioned It led to the arrests of four current and former Marconi executives They were hit with twenty charges of theft. False accounting and deception. After that, it's difficult to track down what became of the investigation into the deaths If there were findings, they didn't seem to make headline news I think squash is an old scandal like a news scandal There are Some troubling parallels between what happened in the UK in the eighties going on now in the US The public has suggested links between a dozen or so dead and missing scientists I can only hope that this time The official investigation is more interested in providing answers than deflecting questions. Thank you for listening to. consonspiracy theories We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts Our sources for today's episode include Death at Marconi, Fact and Fiction by John Sweeney for the Age Grave Secrets, reported by Stone Phills for twenty twenty and additional reporting by the LA. Times, Eing Telegraph, the Sun, the Chicago Tribune, and News Day Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story And the official story isn't always the truth This episode was written and researched by Micki Taylor Eedited by Justin Sales, fact checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video edited and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy