Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Path with Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I want to welcome our
Speaker 2: lovely co host Ashley back with new baby Teddy. So
Speaker 2: tell us everything, Ashley.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, Well, new parenthood is tough, but I'm in
Speaker 3: utter love with our little Teddy Bear. He was six
Speaker 3: pounds and eleven ounces and he's our newest true crime
Speaker 3: fan in the family. So we are so happy. Our
Speaker 3: little girls are obsessed with him equally, so we have
Speaker 3: all these little mamas running around the house helping him
Speaker 3: and take care of him. And I think I might
Speaker 3: have fallen even more in love with Rebel after giving
Speaker 3: birth to our sweet little Miles Theodore. So I am happy.
Speaker 3: I'm tired, but I'm so glad to be back with
Speaker 3: my friends and recording our podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely great to have you back. And I
Speaker 1: saw Teddy for the first time just a few minutes
Speaker 1: before we started recording him. He's only a few weeks
Speaker 1: old at this point. He's so tiny and absolutely adorable.
Speaker 1: And I made an announcement. I know our listeners have
Speaker 1: been following us knowing about your pregnancy, and I announced
Speaker 1: on social media when you gave birth finally, and they
Speaker 1: were all so excited for you. So now I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear that they'll finally get to hear you back
Speaker 1: and talk about what it's like to be a new
Speaker 1: mother again.
Speaker 2: Well, you look amazing, and I'm so happy I got
Speaker 2: the chance, I think a week after actually gave birth
Speaker 2: to get a peek at little Teddy on zoom And
Speaker 2: he's such a perfect little baby, like the cutest little
Speaker 2: hens and feet, and he's so just chubby in the
Speaker 2: right places. He's just everything.
Speaker 3: Now that we've talked about my little Teddy Bear, let's
Speaker 3: dive right in to this week's case.
Speaker 2: October twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, Cape Otway, Australia. After
Speaker 2: leaving on a seemingly routine training flight in a Cessna
Speaker 2: one to eighty two aircraft, twenty year old Frederick Valentage
Speaker 2: vanishes without explanation over the Bass Strait. During a radio transmission,
Speaker 2: Valentage describes seeing an unidentified flying object and his final
Speaker 2: words are, quote, it's hovering and it's not an aircraft.
Speaker 2: When independent eyewitnesses corroborate seeing strange things in the sky
Speaker 2: in the area that night, speculation mounts. The Valentice's disappearance
Speaker 2: might have been the result of an alien encounter.
Speaker 1: After that, The Path Went Chiley. So today we will
Speaker 1: be going down Under to Australia to cover one of
Speaker 1: the most infamous unsolved mysteries of all time, the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight disappearance of Frederick Valentage is The actual release
Speaker 1: date of this episode will be October thirty. First, I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun for us to do a
Speaker 1: Halloween themed episode which involves potential UFO involvement. Now, while
Speaker 1: I personally find UFO stories fascinating, I know that not
Speaker 1: everyone likes them, which is why we've never really covered
Speaker 1: them on The Path Went Chile. But this story is
Speaker 1: different because, regardless of what your stance is on UFOs,
Speaker 1: a man still went missing under mysterious circumstances and has
Speaker 1: not been found to this day. Frederick Valentich was flying
Speaker 1: Assessed Noel one eighty two aircraft over the bas Strait
Speaker 1: in Australia, and under normal circumstances, there wouldn't be much
Speaker 1: to discuss here, as it might seem obvious that Valentage's
Speaker 1: playing crashed into the water. However, what elevates this story
Speaker 1: is the fact that Valentiche made a final radio communication
Speaker 1: in which he describes seeing an unidentified flying object and
Speaker 1: concluded with these cryptic words quote it's hovering and it's
Speaker 1: not an aircraft. And since a number of other eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: reported seeing strange things in the sky that night, this
Speaker 1: opened up speculation that the Lentage may have been abducted
Speaker 1: by a UFO. I should also mention that I have
Speaker 1: a particular interest in this story because it happened to
Speaker 1: take place on the very day I was born. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you type October the twenty first, nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: into Google, this is constantly cited as not only the
Speaker 1: most famous mystery, but the most famous event period to
Speaker 1: have taken place on this particular date. So I guess
Speaker 1: this can only mean that I was predestined to grow
Speaker 1: up having an obsession with unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, you're telling me. If I type in
Speaker 3: October twenty first, nineteen seventy eight, your birth is not
Speaker 3: noted as more important.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of these days, maybe when we do this
Speaker 1: podcast a few more years, it'll be the most historic
Speaker 1: thing to happen on that date, But for now, it's
Speaker 1: a UFO story. How ironic.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting. Okay, So what blows my mind here
Speaker 3: is that I'm like you, I'm interested. It's still is
Speaker 3: always very neat to hear stories of UFOs. It's one
Speaker 3: of those things where I'm like, I don't know. Some
Speaker 3: of the stories make you pretty convinced they exist, and others,
Speaker 3: you know, don't seem as convincing. But this one's really
Speaker 3: bizarre because it's someone who's also in the air, in
Speaker 3: an aircraft, right, who's reporting seeing something hovering near him exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he gives this final cryptic radio communication talking
Speaker 1: about a flying object and then it just suddenly cuts
Speaker 1: off and he's never heard from again, and they've never
Speaker 1: found him or his airplanes. So under the circumstances, you
Speaker 1: can see why even skeptics would fake was he abducted
Speaker 1: by UFO?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very bizarre because he's in air with him.
Speaker 3: I've never heard of that. I've heard of people saying, oh,
Speaker 3: they were taken, you know, from their car, or they
Speaker 3: were taken from a field or from their house or whatever.
Speaker 3: But to have someone who would be like on an
Speaker 3: equal plane field with this this spacecraft or this unidentified
Speaker 3: object really fascinating and very bizarre, Like you said, never
Speaker 3: find any remnants of the airplane, which if he was abducted,
Speaker 3: the airplane would like crash unless they also took his
Speaker 3: airplane with them for information purposes. It's a very very
Speaker 3: interesting bizarre case. No wonder it shows up as the
Speaker 3: most famous event on that date.
Speaker 2: I find this case so interesting, And there's numerous accounts
Speaker 2: of pilots who've seen things that are some type of UFO.
Speaker 2: They aren't another plane. This isn't something that a lot
Speaker 2: of pilots like to come forward and talk about, because
Speaker 2: especially like now, it's more i would say more accepted.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of governments who have come forward talking about
Speaker 2: UFOs and their airspace and confirming this, and a lot
Speaker 2: of people do believe that there are aliens or these
Speaker 2: aircrafts are some kind of UFOs, and anyone who's been
Speaker 2: listening to our podcast for a while knows I personally
Speaker 2: believe in aliens. Our story begins in Australia in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight. Our central figure is twenty year old Frederick Valentiche,
Speaker 2: who hails from an attack family and has numerous siblings.
Speaker 2: Valentich lives in Melbourne and aspires to have a career
Speaker 2: in aviation. He spent three years as a cadet in
Speaker 2: the Royal Australian Air Force Air Training Corps and is
Speaker 2: currently employed by Southern Air Services in the Melbourne suburb
Speaker 2: of Morobin. At this point, Valentich, who has one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty hours of total flight time and a class
Speaker 2: for instrument rating. He has a private pilot's license and
Speaker 2: is studying to obtain a commercial pilot's license so that
Speaker 2: he could become a commercial airline pilot. At six nineteen
Speaker 2: pm on the evening of October twenty first, Valentich climbed
Speaker 2: into a single engine Cessna one eighty two L light
Speaker 2: aircraft and takes off from the Morobin Airport for what
Speaker 2: was supposed to be a two hundred and thirty five
Speaker 2: kilometer training flight. His plan was to travel west alongside
Speaker 2: the Australian coast for about forty minutes before turning south
Speaker 2: at Cape Otway. He would then head across Bath straight
Speaker 2: for about a half hour before arriving at King Island
Speaker 2: on the surface. This seemed to be nothing more than
Speaker 2: a routine, straightforward flight. However, at seven oh six pm
Speaker 2: Vlentiche was flying over baths straight in near Cape Otway
Speaker 2: when Steve Roby, a flight service officer at Melbourne Airport,
Speaker 2: received a radio call from him. Here is a recreation
Speaker 2: of that conversation based on the original transcript, where Robin
Speaker 2: will be Valentage and I will be Roby.
Speaker 1: Is there any known traffic below five thousand feet? No
Speaker 1: known traffic, I am seems to be a large aircraft
Speaker 1: below five thousand.
Speaker 2: What type of aircraft is it?
Speaker 1: I cannot affirm it is for bright It seems to
Speaker 1: me like landing lights. The aircraft has just passed over
Speaker 1: me at at least one thousand feet above.
Speaker 2: Roger, and it's a large aircraft.
Speaker 1: Confirm er unknown due to the speed it's traveling. Is
Speaker 1: there any air Force aircraft in the vicinity?
Speaker 2: No known aircraft in the vicinity.
Speaker 1: It's approaching right now from due east towards me. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that he's playing some sort of game.
Speaker 1: He's flying over me two three times at speeds I
Speaker 1: cannot identify, Roger.
Speaker 2: What's your actual level?
Speaker 1: My level is four and a half thousand four or
Speaker 1: five zero zero?
Speaker 2: And confirm you cannot identify the aircraft. Affirmative standby.
Speaker 1: It is not an aircraft.
Speaker 2: It is Can you describe the aircraft.
Speaker 1: As is flying past? It's a long shape. Cannot identify
Speaker 1: more than that. It has such speed. It is before
Speaker 1: me right now, Melbourne.
Speaker 2: And how large would the object be?
Speaker 1: It seems like it's stationary. What I'm doing right now
Speaker 1: is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top
Speaker 1: of me. Also, it's got a green light and sort
Speaker 1: of metallic like it's all shiny on the outside. It's
Speaker 1: just vanished. Would you know what kind of aircraft I've got?
Speaker 1: Is it military aircraft?
Speaker 2: Confirm the aircraft just vanished? Say again, is the aircraft
Speaker 2: still with you?
Speaker 1: It's now approaching from the south the west. The engine
Speaker 1: is rough idling. I've got it set at twenty three
Speaker 1: twenty four and the thing.
Speaker 2: Is Roger, what are your intentions?
Speaker 1: My intentions are to go to King Island, Melbourne. That's strange.
Speaker 1: Aircraft is hovering on top of me. Again, it is
Speaker 1: hovering and it's not an aircraft.
Speaker 3: So eerie, okay, So literally, this is not something that
Speaker 3: he's just glancing over and seeing. He's having a full blown,
Speaker 3: lengthy conversation with air traffic control and letting them know
Speaker 3: that he has details odd behavior and flying patterns that
Speaker 3: they're like playing a quote sort of game with him,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden they lose contact with him.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, that is correct.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. So this is really really scary because
Speaker 3: he's describing this unknown object, but he's telling them it's
Speaker 3: not an aircraft, it's something hovering around me, playing a
Speaker 3: game with me, and then we never hear from him again.
Speaker 3: I got chills when you were talking because I thought
Speaker 3: it would be a very quick radio conversation. He has
Speaker 3: plenty of time to observe what's happening, and then we
Speaker 3: have no idea what happened to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, this is very iconic, this final radio transmission,
Speaker 1: because it's something you'd expect to find in a movie
Speaker 1: or something where someone says these cryptic final words it
Speaker 1: is hovering and it is not an aircraft, and then
Speaker 1: you never hear from them again. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this, But the actual radio transmission of this
Speaker 1: has never been released publicly. No one has ever heard
Speaker 1: the actual audio, so this is based just entirely on
Speaker 1: the transcripts. But I can only imagine how weird it
Speaker 1: would have been. For Steve Roby just having to have
Speaker 1: heard this and then just suddenly losing contact with Valentage
Speaker 1: and then finding yourself right in the middle of like
Speaker 1: one of the most infamous UFO mysteries of all time.
Speaker 2: I wonder if this UFO had like a cloak of invisibility,
Speaker 2: or if they're like some kind of interdimensional time travelers
Speaker 2: were going through this rip in the fabric of space
Speaker 2: time like a wormhole, and so like they're going in
Speaker 2: and out of visibility.
Speaker 1: I mean, that could be an explanation if he really
Speaker 1: did see an aircraft, and because what he's saying is
Speaker 1: just you can tell that Valanchich immediately thinks this is
Speaker 1: not an earth bound aircraft anything to do with the
Speaker 1: air Force. This is like unlike anything I've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: And theoretically, if aliens were going to come here, they
Speaker 2: would likely have to use something like wormholes, because the
Speaker 2: time that it would take to get from any sort
Speaker 2: of I guess other planet in which there could be
Speaker 2: aliens would take so long that you wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to get to Earth unless there's some type of technology
Speaker 2: or a way that you can get here instantaneously, and
Speaker 2: likely that would be or has been theorized to be
Speaker 2: through the use of wormholes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would make sense because in so many sci
Speaker 1: fi stories, whenever people travel from Earth to faraway planets,
Speaker 1: it takes them years and then they have to go
Speaker 1: into cryo sleep to be able to make that distance
Speaker 1: without going through all their supplies. So I've always wondered
Speaker 1: if aliens did travel from a faraway place to Earth,
Speaker 1: they use a wormhole to get here, so they could
Speaker 1: get here quicker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the time it would take you to get
Speaker 3: through our layers and to an actual place where you're
Speaker 3: able to abduct humans, there'd be so many ways to
Speaker 3: cite you, right, and to see you and to follow you.
Speaker 3: And so that makes sense, Jules, good wormholes.
Speaker 2: It's the wormholes, I'm telling you. So.
Speaker 1: Valentage's transmission ended at seven to twelve PM with what
Speaker 1: sounded like seventeen seconds of metallic, scraping noises. Now, like
Speaker 1: I just said, Even though the transcript of Valentage's final
Speaker 1: conversation is available everywhere, the actual audio of his transmission
Speaker 1: has never been released publicly, though you'll find plenty of
Speaker 1: reenactments of it online. However, audio excerpts of the strange
Speaker 1: metallic scraping noises were played on a TV show called
Speaker 1: The Unexplained Files, which aired several years later. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: radio TRANSMISSI would turn up to be the last time
Speaker 1: anyone ever heard from Frederick Balentage, and quote it's hovering
Speaker 1: and it's not an aircraft would be forever etched as
Speaker 1: one of the most infamous final sentences of all time.
Speaker 1: The Sessna never arrived to King Island and Valentage's final
Speaker 1: radio transmission escalated into a distress situation. Twenty one minutes later,
Speaker 1: a massive air and sea search was performed a bas
Speaker 1: strait between Cape Otway and King Island, but it failed
Speaker 1: to turn up any trace of Valentage or as missing aircraft,
Speaker 1: as there wasn't even any wreckage to be found. The
Speaker 1: search came to an end in on October the twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: four days after Valentage went missing.
Speaker 3: You would think, even though it's nineteen seventy eight, that
Speaker 3: there'd still be ways to track if a plane just
Speaker 3: disappeared or went down, And because they did act so
Speaker 3: quickly it became an emergency within twenty one minutes, you
Speaker 3: would think someone else who was in the air at
Speaker 3: the time. Air traffic control or at least remnants of
Speaker 3: the aircraft would be present in the water or on land,
Speaker 3: and it's not. So it is really really disturbing when
Speaker 3: you think about, how did he have this conversation that
Speaker 3: got cut off off, has these odd metallic scraping noises
Speaker 3: as part of the end of that recording, and then
Speaker 3: he's just vanished, and so has the aircraft. That's the
Speaker 3: part that really blows my mind. If he vanished, it's
Speaker 3: one thing. If the whole aircraft vanishes, that's really difficult
Speaker 3: to explain in any other way because of how quickly
Speaker 3: everyone acted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I first became familiar with this story when they
Speaker 1: featured on Unsolved Mystery sometime during the nineteen nineties, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until years after that where I finally watched
Speaker 1: the Unexplained Files TV show, which was the first time
Speaker 1: they had ever released the actual audio of the metallic
Speaker 1: scraping noises. And that was pretty chilling to hear, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, the radio conversation is always reenactments, but
Speaker 1: you're hearing the real thing, the actual audio, and you're like,
Speaker 1: what is going on here? Is this is aircraft? Is
Speaker 1: this hovering aircraft? Scratching against Valentage's plane and then just
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's silenced. So you're thinking to
Speaker 1: yourself that it actually like beam the aircraft into the ship,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's disappeared.
Speaker 2: I really feel for his family here, because you have
Speaker 2: a missing loved one who's unaccounted for. And I think
Speaker 2: because of this disturbing transmission with such an iconic line
Speaker 2: right before he disappears and then there's no trace of Frederick,
Speaker 2: you have family members who see all of these like
Speaker 2: kind of sci fi elements and alien abduction elements overtake
Speaker 2: the fact that this person that they love hasn't been
Speaker 2: seen since that day, and I think that can be
Speaker 2: a hard thing to grapple with.
Speaker 3: I also think when you consider what the explanations are
Speaker 3: for his disappearance, there'd be a lot of trauma and
Speaker 3: grief complication too, because when people, especially in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: were to say, oh, you think he just disappeared or
Speaker 3: just spanished, that doesn't happen. Oh you think it's a
Speaker 3: UFO though they aren't real. There would just be a
Speaker 3: lot of kind of shame and frustration and embarrassment and
Speaker 3: a difficulty get the support and the kind of advocacy
Speaker 3: you would need for your family member who's just vanished.
Speaker 3: And I think there'd be a lot of ridicule and
Speaker 3: kind of speculation going on about everyone's sanity and kind
Speaker 3: of how grounded this family is when really they're just
Speaker 3: grieving a loved one and going help us find him.
Speaker 3: And one of the explanations is it's possible that that
Speaker 3: aircraft truly was not an aircraft and could have been
Speaker 3: a UFO. I just think about at the time and
Speaker 3: even now, how much backlash there'd be for that kind
Speaker 3: of explanation being parallel with your missing loved one.
Speaker 2: So what could have been the meaning of Alenticche's final
Speaker 2: transmission and what was this hovering object that he was
Speaker 2: referring to? Well, as you probably guessed, UFOs would immediately
Speaker 2: enter the discussion, and reports would come pouring in from
Speaker 2: witnesses who claimed they saw strange objects or lights in
Speaker 2: the sky alongside the Australian coast on the night of
Speaker 2: Alenticche's disappearance. But one eyewitness account really stood out. The
Speaker 2: witness's real name has never been disclosed publicly, but an
Speaker 2: article published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration refers to
Speaker 2: him by the pseudonym Ken Hanson, so that's what we'll
Speaker 2: call him. So that's what we'll call him here. Hanson
Speaker 2: claimed that on the evening of October twenty first, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, he was traveling to his home in Apollo
Speaker 2: Bay after an outing with his wife and two nieces
Speaker 2: when they saw a lime green light flying through the
Speaker 2: sky near Cape Otway. According to Hanson, the light appeared
Speaker 2: to be about one thousand feet above an aircraft and
Speaker 2: seemed to be performing a steep dive at a forty
Speaker 2: five degree angle. The light moved ever so closer to
Speaker 2: the aircraft before they both disappeared from view. While this
Speaker 2: sighting would have taken place around the approximate time as
Speaker 2: Frederick Valentich's final radio transmission, Hansen did not disclose this
Speaker 2: sighting publicly until years after the fact, when he shared
Speaker 2: his story with a policeman who subsequently put him in
Speaker 2: touch with Valentich's father, Udo Valentich.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, one of the things I'd want to know
Speaker 3: is did his wife and his nieces also see something?
Speaker 3: Is there a way that the whole feeling can validate this?
Speaker 3: But when you do hear his story, and you have
Speaker 3: this hovering object and then you have this plane and
Speaker 3: they both disappear at the same time. It just gives
Speaker 3: you chills up your back. If Ken is actually telling
Speaker 3: the truth, and he's not just gathering information from news
Speaker 3: stories or you know, trying to be part of this story,
Speaker 3: then what he's describing is exactly what you guys are
Speaker 3: saying happened. That it's possible a UFO was hovering and
Speaker 3: then literally just vanishes, absorbing this plane and the pilot
Speaker 3: with it, And how you explain that any other way
Speaker 3: is just crazy. If Kin's telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ken Anson is the only one who's ever done interviews,
Speaker 1: even though he has maintained anonymity and never released his
Speaker 1: real name. But as far as I can tell, even
Speaker 1: though his wife and two nieces had never spoken publicly
Speaker 1: about it, they did tell the authorities that we saw
Speaker 1: the exact same thing that he did, so they have
Speaker 1: backed up his story. So when you have foreign independent
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses saying that we saw these lights coming down at
Speaker 1: an angle towards what appeared to be an aircraft, you
Speaker 1: have to think that the story was true. But you
Speaker 1: also wonder does that mean that they saw it a
Speaker 1: UFO abducting fred Ralentage's plane.
Speaker 2: I think in this case it almost adds more credibility
Speaker 2: to the story. The fact that he held this information back.
Speaker 2: He wasn't looking for attention from the media, He wasn't
Speaker 2: looking to go on and do these interviews. He just
Speaker 2: seemed to in passing tell this to a police officer.
Speaker 2: And I think it comes back to exactly what Ashley
Speaker 2: had said earlier about how the family might have been
Speaker 2: feeling in that you would be dealing with as an
Speaker 2: eyewitness who saw pretty much exactly what Frederick said he experienced,
Speaker 2: you might deal with a level of ridicule and scorn
Speaker 2: from the public and the non believers. So to come
Speaker 2: forward and put your face in your name out there
Speaker 2: something that would be really scary. So the fact that
Speaker 2: he held this back and the information seems to be
Speaker 2: corroborated by the other family members makes it a pretty
Speaker 2: strong account for me personally.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely, because some people, once they see UFOs, they
Speaker 1: want to be like at the center of attention with
Speaker 1: the media and see how much money they can make
Speaker 1: and how much attention they can receive. But the fact
Speaker 1: that he has never released his real name to this
Speaker 1: day makes me think that he did not want the
Speaker 1: publicity and only shared this story because he wanted to
Speaker 1: help the Valentich family. So six weeks after Valentich's disappearance,
Speaker 1: there was another interesting development involving a plumber slash amateur
Speaker 1: photographer named Roy Manifold. He was also president at Cape
Speaker 1: Otway on the evening of October the twenty first, and
Speaker 1: took six photographs of the sunset, approximately twenty minutes before
Speaker 1: Valentic's radio transmission well. Manifold claimed that he didn't see
Speaker 1: or hear anything unusual at the time, but when he
Speaker 1: developed the photos, he was surprised to find some strange anomalies.
Speaker 1: The fourth photo appeared to show what looked like a
Speaker 1: dense bla black lump on the water, which gave off
Speaker 1: the impression that something might have been rising from it.
Speaker 1: While the fifth photo looked normal, the sixth photo had
Speaker 1: what appeared to be a strange black mark in the sky.
Speaker 1: According to Manifold, he had taken thousands of photographs throughout
Speaker 1: his life but had never seen anything like this. He
Speaker 1: ordinarily would have attributed it to nothing more than a
Speaker 1: developing air, but when he realized the photos were taken
Speaker 1: on the same night that Frederick the Lentage disappeared at
Speaker 1: approximately the same location. He had the negatives delivered to
Speaker 1: the chief photographer of the newspaper The Australian, who believed
Speaker 1: the anomalies were authentic and not a developing air The
Speaker 1: photo of the black object in the sky wound up
Speaker 1: running on page one of the paper, but the Royal
Speaker 1: Australian Air Force wasted no time at stepping in and
Speaker 1: dismissing the object as nothing more than a cumulus cloud
Speaker 1: in its dying stages. The photo was eventually sent to
Speaker 1: a UFO group in Phoenix called Ground Saucer Watch, who
Speaker 1: performed a computer analysis and determined that the strange mark
Speaker 1: was not actually dirt or damage to the negative, but
Speaker 1: was something which was actually present in the sky well
Speaker 1: the picture was taken. They believe this black mark was
Speaker 1: a solid metallic object located about a mile from the camera.
Speaker 1: It was likely moving through the sky at a speed
Speaker 1: of approximately two hundred miles per hour and was enveloped
Speaker 1: in a cloud of exhaust. However, many years later the
Speaker 1: photograph was given a second analysis and it reached the
Speaker 1: exact opposite conclusion, believing that the mark was nothing more
Speaker 1: than a developer's error. Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when you talk about the military immediately dismissing it,
Speaker 3: I always wonder, you know, like, gosh, they've got such
Speaker 3: cool advancements, and there's so many things in technology and
Speaker 3: aircraft and all kinds of innovations that come out that
Speaker 3: I don't think we are aware of, and if they
Speaker 3: were exposed as possibly being linked to something that occurred
Speaker 3: to someone's detriment, I don't know how quickly the military
Speaker 3: would be to claim, right, oh, yeah, that's our aircraft
Speaker 3: or unknown aircraft we're testing, or something like that. So
Speaker 3: when the Royal Australian Air Force just quickly dismisses the
Speaker 3: object and won't go any further into explanation, I'm always
Speaker 3: dubious of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I always question that because I think you can't admit
Speaker 3: to everything that's coming out as new technology and weaponry
Speaker 3: and things like that. But when you talk about this
Speaker 3: photographer getting these pictures, I bet back when he took
Speaker 3: them he assumed, you know, this is something that's actually
Speaker 3: coming from the water and in the sky. A UFO
Speaker 3: group surely is going to cling to that and go, look,
Speaker 3: there's proof that what we've been arguing is existing. But
Speaker 3: I would assume advances in technology would be able to
Speaker 3: show whether it was a developer's error or items, so
Speaker 3: I in this case, I would probably lean more towards
Speaker 3: it being a developer's error. But I don't think that
Speaker 3: the Royal Australian's Air Force dismissal minimizes my assumption that
Speaker 3: this very well could be a UFO right, So for
Speaker 3: the picture may but denial by the Air Force, I
Speaker 3: don't think that really detracts from the UFO statement whatsoever.
Speaker 2: We've all watched the X Files. We know that the
Speaker 2: government in the military does not like you claim responsibility
Speaker 2: for anything, and even if it comes down to being
Speaker 2: their knowledge of something extraterrestrial, so I too will side
Speaker 2: with I don't really think that them denying it really
Speaker 2: means much. They would deny it whether they knew or
Speaker 2: they didn't, in my opinion. But with regards to the technology,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm split on if the second analysis
Speaker 2: is done many many years later with better technology, or
Speaker 2: if it's just an expert coming to another conclusion, which
Speaker 2: we often see dueling experts looking at any trial to
Speaker 2: give reference to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that second analysis I think took place sometime in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties or early nineteen nineties, and I
Speaker 1: haven't heard anything about a new analysis being performed with
Speaker 1: today technology on the photograph, which could probably determine with
Speaker 1: more conclusiveness if it was a developer's error. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it is kind of surprising that the
Speaker 1: Royal Australian Air Force would have this explanation of a
Speaker 1: cumulus cloud rather than a developer's air the moment that
Speaker 1: they saw it in the paper, because as far as
Speaker 1: I know, they weren't consulted ahead of time before this
Speaker 1: photograph ran. So how could they just look at the
Speaker 1: photograph in the newspaper and just say, oh, that's not
Speaker 1: a flying object, we know exactly what it is without
Speaker 1: getting all the facts, Like they weren't out there that night,
Speaker 1: so how could they be certain that it was just
Speaker 1: a cloud? So I could definitely see how this looks
Speaker 1: like they're just kind of chiming in and trying to
Speaker 1: give off plausible deniability right away even though it might
Speaker 1: not be accurate.
Speaker 2: Like they doth protest too much exactly? Well, what added
Speaker 2: an extra level of intrigue to the whole UFO angle,
Speaker 2: was it. Valentice himself was a major flying saucer enthusiast
Speaker 2: who told people he'd seen a UFO on another occasion
Speaker 2: prior to his disappearance, and even express can about UFOs
Speaker 2: possibly attacking him someday. At one point, Valentage told his
Speaker 2: father that he had seen classified material at a Royal
Speaker 2: Australian Air Force base, which confirmed his belief that UFOs exist.
Speaker 2: Only six days before he went missing, Valentiche had a
Speaker 2: conversation with his girlfriend in which he mentioned the possibility
Speaker 2: of encountering a UFO and told her quote, if a
Speaker 2: UFO landed in front of me right now, I would
Speaker 2: go in it, but never without you. But even without
Speaker 2: the UFO angle, there were still a lot of things
Speaker 2: about Valentich's disappearance which didn't add up, such as why
Speaker 2: he was making his flight to King Island in the
Speaker 2: first place. Valentiche gave two conflicting stories about the purpose
Speaker 2: of his trip, as he told his superiors at Morobin
Speaker 2: Airport that he was picking up passengers at King Island
Speaker 2: and even brought along four life jackets. However, he told
Speaker 2: his family and his girlfriend that he was going to
Speaker 2: pick up some crayfish, even though there was no record
Speaker 2: of him placing any orders and crayfish were not even
Speaker 2: available on King Island on this particular date. Even stranger
Speaker 2: if Alentach never even told anyone at King Island Airport
Speaker 2: about his flight, meaning that there wouldn't have been any
Speaker 2: lights on the airport if the Lentage had actually arrived
Speaker 2: that night. If all this wasn't weird enough, the Lentage
Speaker 2: told his girlfriend that he was going to meet her
Speaker 2: at seven thirty pm that night, but given that his
Speaker 2: plane didn't take off until six nineteen pm, there's no
Speaker 2: possible way that he would have been able to fly
Speaker 2: to King Island him back again by seven thirty.
Speaker 3: Okay, what is going on here? When you hear all
Speaker 3: these conflicting things where he won't tell the real reason
Speaker 3: why he's going, the fact that he brought four life
Speaker 3: jackets along is very bizarre. And then you have him saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: I didn't even contact the airport, and I told my
Speaker 3: girlfriend i'd be home at seven thirty just an hour,
Speaker 3: and you know, ten minutes after I take off. That
Speaker 3: just doesn't add up. So it's almost like he was
Speaker 3: preparing for something. But again, they acted twenty one minutes
Speaker 3: after this call into the air traffic control, so they
Speaker 3: were very quick to respond, and they couldn't find any
Speaker 3: sign of him. They couldn't find any sign of the aircraft.
Speaker 3: It would seem like he didn't have enough time to
Speaker 3: pull off. Even if he had planned something more extravagant
Speaker 3: and try to get away with it, it just doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like twenty one minutes would give him enough time
Speaker 3: to do so. But all these actions seemed like he
Speaker 3: knew something no one else did before he even took
Speaker 3: off that night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you brought up the life jackets. And in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering, they never did find any passengers who were
Speaker 1: able to confirm that, yes, Valentiche was going to show
Speaker 1: up in King Island and pick us up on that night,
Speaker 1: So it seems pretty obvious that this was some sort
Speaker 1: of cover story. We'll talk more about this later on
Speaker 1: in I think part two, but I know that a
Speaker 1: theory that has been pushed forward is that because Valentich
Speaker 1: was such a UFO enthusiast, that he may have taken
Speaker 1: that flight for the express purpose of searching for a
Speaker 1: UFO or something, and by pure chance he could have
Speaker 1: put actually right into one, because like you said, there's
Speaker 1: no way he could have made that route and been
Speaker 1: back again by seven thirty to meet his girlfriend. But
Speaker 1: if he was just going out there in a casual
Speaker 1: flight to look for something, he may have came up
Speaker 1: with these cover stories because he didn't want to tell
Speaker 1: anyone he was searching for a UFO.
Speaker 2: We can't dismiss the possibility that he was in contact
Speaker 2: with aliens and he'd come up with his plan to
Speaker 2: meet them at this time. And when he told his
Speaker 2: girlfriend that he wouldn't go on to a UFO without her,
Speaker 2: maybe he was just trying to make her feel better.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a partner you want to will assure you
Speaker 1: that they won't go into a UFO without you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, true love.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, a coronial inquiry was held into
Speaker 1: Valentitch's disappearance, but since there was no conclusive evidence to
Speaker 1: indicate what happened to him, they were turned an open verdict.
Speaker 1: Valentage was listed as missing and presumed dead, and he
Speaker 1: was eventually declared legally dead on May sixteenth, nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: An eroded engine Calflap was found ashore on Flinders Island,
Speaker 1: which is located in the Straight, approximately three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty kilometers from Cape Otway. The Bureau of Air Safety
Speaker 1: investigation concluded that the flap came from a Cessna one
Speaker 1: to eighty two and it had a number on it
Speaker 1: which matched one of the serial numbers from Valentage's missing aircraft.
Speaker 1: The current in Bass Strait was very strong at the
Speaker 1: time of Lentage's disappearance, so it's not inconceivable that a
Speaker 1: piece of his plane could have floated over three hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers away. However, it's worth noting that the flap washed
Speaker 1: up near the Flinders Island airport, and there were two
Speaker 1: Cessnas which had lost parts during takeoff from the airport
Speaker 1: during the preceding years, so it was possible that the
Speaker 1: flap could have come from there. Valentage's family have wanted
Speaker 1: to perform modern tests on the flap to determine if
Speaker 1: it might have been in the baths Straight salt water
Speaker 1: for five years, but it looks like the flap might
Speaker 1: have either been lost or scrapped since it cannot be
Speaker 1: found today.
Speaker 3: But didn't the serial numbers actually match his aircraft?
Speaker 2: I just wanted to be number.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, okay. It had a number which matched
Speaker 3: the SERIALE, so not as convincing. I was thinking the
Speaker 3: serial numbers match. I was like, well then it's a match.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm with his family. I wish this was one of
Speaker 3: those cases where when an item had washed up on
Speaker 3: shore and you're not sure which aircraft it's from, that
Speaker 3: they had kept that piece of evidence, but clearly it
Speaker 3: got destroyed or has been misplaced because the family can't
Speaker 3: get what they need. It would be fascinating. Now that
Speaker 3: was nineteen seventy eight, and it wasn't until nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: three that this washes up. Now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: it'd be fascinating to know. Could test be performed in there?
Speaker 3: Could you see where this might have originated from before
Speaker 3: it made its way to where it was discovered.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety eight, Valentiche's family erected a memorial plaquet
Speaker 2: k pop Way commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his disappearance,
Speaker 2: and it was unveiled by Flight Services officer Steve Roby,
Speaker 2: the last person to ever speak with him. For his part,
Speaker 2: Roby's always maintained the Valentice founded genuine about what he
Speaker 2: was seeing during their final radio conversation. An interesting PostScript
Speaker 2: to the story, which not many people know, is it
Speaker 2: only five days after Valentage's disappearance, Roby had a similar
Speaker 2: radio conversation with another light aircraft pilot who was flying
Speaker 2: through East Sale. The pilot reported being passed three times
Speaker 2: by a bright light traveling at jet speed, and it
Speaker 2: grazed by him so closely that he decided to lad
Speaker 2: his aircraft. Another interesting development took place in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: For over thirty years, anyone who wanted to delve into
Speaker 2: this case was told that the official three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen page file on Valentage on Vlentage's disappearance had been
Speaker 2: lost or destroyed, But by complete chance, it was discovered
Speaker 2: by a researcher named Keith Fosterfield, who found a digital
Speaker 2: version of the entire file in an online index of
Speaker 2: the National Archives of Australia, so anyone from the public
Speaker 2: can now go to their website in order to view it.
Speaker 1: In spite of what you might think, most people don't
Speaker 1: believe that a deliberate attempt was made to cover up
Speaker 1: the file. In all likelihood, it was the result of
Speaker 1: simple bureaucratic sloppiness, as someone probably just digitized the file
Speaker 1: and transferred it to the website without realizing its significance. Regardless,
Speaker 1: even though the file sun availability reinvigorated interest in the case,
Speaker 1: forty six years have now passed and there's still no
Speaker 1: answers about what actually happened to Frederick Valentich. So I
Speaker 1: guess you could say the path went Chile.
Speaker 3: What's so hard here is that you have a family
Speaker 3: who literally said goodbye to their family member or their
Speaker 3: loved one, sent him off on something he did on
Speaker 3: a routine basis, which is go on a quick flight,
Speaker 3: and he just disappears. And so it has been forty
Speaker 3: six years. But that's forty six years that not only
Speaker 3: we don't have answers, but his family never had answers,
Speaker 3: And it's just confusing. I feel like there's some I
Speaker 3: don't know, some just unanswered questions. When you listen to
Speaker 3: what Frederick had said he was doing that night and
Speaker 3: then his action, how they didn't really line up with
Speaker 3: a plausible story. But then he just simply vanishes and
Speaker 3: most likely we haven't seen any elements of his aircraft
Speaker 3: are covered there's no recovery of his body. How is
Speaker 3: a family you move forward, even with the presumption of
Speaker 3: death from the courts, how you actually move forward as
Speaker 3: a family with no concept of what happened and that
Speaker 3: overwhelming feeling that there could be something that's abnormal, such
Speaker 3: as a UFO involved. It just hits me as something
Speaker 3: that'd be very, very, very complex and very traumatic for
Speaker 3: the family who's grieving Frederick.
Speaker 1: Oh, definitely, because I've never seen any other missing person
Speaker 1: cases like this, like this is one of the only
Speaker 1: ones on record where there is a genuine belief that
Speaker 1: the victim could have been abducted by UFO. And to
Speaker 1: be one thing, if they searched the bas Strait and
Speaker 1: they found some sort of wreckage or any evidence whatsoever
Speaker 1: that suggested that the luggage might have crashed, because then
Speaker 1: they could think, Okay, we may not find his body,
Speaker 1: but at least we'll have a pretty good idea what
Speaker 1: happened to them. But they have found nothing aside from
Speaker 1: that calflap, which was found over three hundred kilometers away
Speaker 1: five years after the fact, and they've still never been
Speaker 1: able to conclusively determine if it belonged to Frederick's plane.
Speaker 1: So it is the worst kind of nightmare because not
Speaker 1: only are you losing a loved one, but you run
Speaker 1: the danger of being mocked by people who think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got kidnapped by aliens, when this is the one
Speaker 1: case where you just cannot write that off completely. And
Speaker 1: if that's what really happened to them, then what can
Speaker 1: you do? What resources do you have to find out
Speaker 1: what happened? So this would be a good time to
Speaker 1: bring an end to part one, So join us next
Speaker 1: week as we present part two of our series about
Speaker 1: the disappearance of Frederick Valantage.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the trailment Cold Patreon.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
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Speaker 1: ten dollar Tier. One of the features we offer is
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Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
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Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy