Snapshot · Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder
On the morning of November 12, 2009, Tom Mahood's teammate Les Walker radioed in at 8:43 AM to report bones at the base of a north-facing cliff — solving a 13-year-old cold case.
Where this was said
At 48:50 · chapter starts 48:00
On November 11th, 2009, Mahood and RMRU teammate Les Walker entered the backcountry with personal locator beacons, a satellite tracker reporting to a public webpage in near real-time, and a pack weighing nearly 65 pounds. They visited the van site and pushed south toward an alluvial fan Mahood had mapped as the likely search area. Day 2 began at 7 AM, the pair moving several hundred yards apart and communicating by radio. At 8:43 AM, Walker called: a 2-liter wine bottle with a label fragment still visible. A few minutes later: weathered pages from a German daily planner, printed text still legible after 13 years. Then: 'Tom, we have some bones here.' Mahood reached Walker at 9:14 AM at the base of a north-facing cliff — one of the only shaded spots for miles. Scattered across roughly 150 meters of desert were the things a family carries: a passport, a bank ID card with a photograph still readable after 13 years in the sun, a toothbrush, a child's shoe, and a wallet. Every ID card inside bore one name: Cornelia Meyer. Two sets of adult bones lay nearby, bleached white by years of direct sun. Egbert and Cornelia had walked 8 to 9 miles from the van, in street shoes, in July.
On day 2 of Mahood's expedition, teammate Les Walker radioed at 8:43 AM: first a wine bottle, then pages from a German daily planner, then bones. At the base of a north-facing cliff — one of the only shaded spots for miles — lay scattered remains, a wallet, a passport, and a photograph still legible after 13 years.
Tom Mahood discovered adult remains and personal effects 8 to 9 miles south of the abandoned van, confirming the family had walked that distance in street shoes through July desert heat.
Before Uber, Kalanick built a peer-to-peer file-sharing system and was sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 major media companies.
CIA operative Edwin Wilson, part of the illegal arms network used by Oliver North, was sentenced to 52 years for supplying Libya with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4.
US prosecutors sought a 186-year prison sentence for Kim Dotcom, largely because of his financial support for WikiLeaks.
Mario Tabraue, a central figure in Monsters of God linked to drug trafficking and murder, was sentenced to over 100 years in prison but served only 12 years.
Zelig Williams disappeared on October 3rd, 2024 after leaving his mother's home in Columbia, South Carolina and has not been seen since.
Dateline: Missing in America Season 5 features six new unsolved missing-persons mysteries, hoping a listener may hold a crucial clue.
At a high school party, Strickland broke one victim's nose, jaw, and knocked out teeth requiring multiple reconstructive surgeries, resulting in two felony GBI charges.
Joyce LePage's murder has remained unsolved for 55 years despite active investigation from the start.
Joyce's own letter revealed that Mark Wadley had once stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people — a detail investigators apparently never followed up on.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.