Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Mike from Locations unknown. Thank you once
Speaker 1: again for tuning in. Just a quick note about tonight's episode.
Speaker 1: You may notice once you start listening that my voice
Speaker 1: sounds terrible. Well, I had just gotten over a pretty
Speaker 1: bad cold for a couple of weeks. I felt fine,
Speaker 1: so we decided to record an episode. But my voice,
Speaker 1: to put it bluntly, is terrible, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling really good now. My voice is probably back
Speaker 1: to ninety nine percent. We actually recorded another episode since
Speaker 1: this one, so we'll be back to normal soon. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy this episode, even with my terrible voice.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of editing to try to make
Speaker 1: it it sound as good as possible, but there's just
Speaker 1: no getting around it. And it is a very interesting episode.
Speaker 1: We did an update on Selene Kremer. We covered the
Speaker 1: original case back in twenty twenty three, so there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of updates. Sunset happens. Hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1: I apologize again for my awful voice, and I just
Speaker 1: let you know that we're going to be back to normal.
Speaker 1: My voice'll be back to normal and see you next time.
Speaker 2: Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness. Join
Speaker 2: us as we dive into the deep end of the
Speaker 2: unexplainable and try to piece together what happened. You are
Speaker 2: listening to Locations Unknown. Oh what's up everybody? And welcome
Speaker 2: back to another episode of Locations Unknown. I'm your co
Speaker 2: host Joey roddal with me as always is a guy
Speaker 2: who always gets his revenge. Mike vander Bogart Ah, Thank.
Speaker 3: You, Joe, and thank you to all of our loyal
Speaker 3: listeners for tuning in. Apologize for my voice, got a
Speaker 3: little bit of a.
Speaker 2: You should apologize for being sick. That's ridiculous. How do
Speaker 2: I sound terrible? Terrible?
Speaker 3: Joe's gonna do a lot of the talking this one, so.
Speaker 2: Nope, nope, We're gonna make it. I'm just gonna make it.
Speaker 2: It's gonna get way worse. So just a few.
Speaker 3: Patreon shout outs before we get going, So thank you
Speaker 3: to Sarah McCoy, Ashley Estrada, Dana Tally. And that's it.
Speaker 3: I thought we had more. If you want to call
Speaker 3: the show, you can call two eight three nine one three.
Speaker 3: We also have some other podcasts on the network you
Speaker 3: can check out off the trails. Who runs this park?
Speaker 3: Crime off the Grid and relish. If you want to
Speaker 3: support the show, you can support us through Patreon, YouTube memberships,
Speaker 3: premium subscriptions, and Apple buy some stuff on our store.
Speaker 3: You can always just like and comment wherever you find
Speaker 3: locations unknown. It helps with the algorithms. Outside of that,
Speaker 3: what's been going on with you?
Speaker 2: Joe just got back from Cozumela on a diving trip.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. I did not get lost in the ocean.
Speaker 2: That's good. Those goods on back and that's why it's
Speaker 2: been taking so long.
Speaker 3: But you didn't didn't drink the water?
Speaker 2: I did not? Well, I did at the resort. We
Speaker 2: had clean water, Okay, so it's perfect. Yeah, So all right, everybody,
Speaker 2: let's gear up and get out to explore locations unknown.
Speaker 2: In August twenty twenty three, we covered the disappearance of
Speaker 2: a thirty one year old Belgian traveler who vanished after
Speaker 2: setting out on a short walk to Philosopher Falls in
Speaker 2: the dense rainforest of northwest Tasmania. What appeared to be
Speaker 2: a brief tourist hike quickly became a mystery shaped by
Speaker 2: harsh winter weather, difficult terrain, and weeks of intense search efforts. Now,
Speaker 2: nearly three years later, new developments have brought investigators and
Speaker 2: her family closer to understanding what may have happened. In
Speaker 2: this update episode, we revisit the case, walk through the
Speaker 2: latest search efforts, examine newly discovered evidence, and look at
Speaker 2: how phone data, volunteer searches, and the unforgiving landscape around
Speaker 2: Philosopher Falls have reshaped in the leading theory in Selene's disappearance.
Speaker 2: Join us this week as we continue the investigation into
Speaker 2: the mysterious disappearance of Selene Kremer.
Speaker 3: So, we've never gotten more comments on our episode like hey,
Speaker 3: you know big updates in the case, were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we did this episode three years ago, Like.
Speaker 2: Oh, like everyone is aware of the updates. Like a
Speaker 2: lot of people, a lot of people are aware of
Speaker 2: this show and they're like, hey, let's go.
Speaker 3: They're like, hey, there's these big updates, and I would
Speaker 3: reply back like, yeah, we know, we did this three
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: So you know what I was wondering just now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wonder how many of those people are listeners who
Speaker 2: knew or they just found out about the case and
Speaker 2: that there's updates, and then they'd like Go Keyboard Warrior,
Speaker 2: all the podcasts like to be important. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm not saying that's a bad thing, Like
Speaker 2: we get to find out either way. But I never
Speaker 2: thought of it that way, except I always assumed it
Speaker 2: was just listeners who remember every episode right and come
Speaker 2: back and like, oh, I knew about this, but I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that maybe just amongst the lost forms, when
Speaker 2: an update goes, everyone just runs to everywhere. It's like
Speaker 2: the town crier.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I think for a while there, the
Speaker 3: case was blowing back up again and we were showing
Speaker 3: up in a lot of the search results.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. They're listening to the like hey,
Speaker 2: this is out of date, and then we come comment
Speaker 2: and it was just kind of funny.
Speaker 3: People are like almost like mad at us, like hey,
Speaker 3: like they're like, yeah, sorry, we did this three years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I wonder what the conversion rate is
Speaker 2: on those people. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we released our original episode in August of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Three, so all right, a few years ago.
Speaker 3: So we're just gonna go through a quick location climate
Speaker 3: profile and then we'll get into timeline love it.
Speaker 2: So Selene disappeared in one of those spots that looks
Speaker 2: like a quick tourist walk on paper, but sits inside
Speaker 2: very serious country once you step off the built path.
Speaker 2: So Philosopher Falls is a short rainforest track about ten
Speaker 2: minutes drive south of the small mining town of Warata
Speaker 2: in northwest tans Mania. Ches. I'm the we had computer
Speaker 2: issues for like an hour and a half. We should
Speaker 2: be done recording right now, and it's thrown me off
Speaker 2: on the fridge in the Tarkien Fringe fringe of the
Speaker 2: Darkian near Savage River National Park. Yeah, this is going
Speaker 2: to be a rough one with your voice and in
Speaker 2: my mental acuity. The drive is a simple sealed then
Speaker 2: unsealed road with a small car park in a clearly
Speaker 2: marked trailhead leading into cool, temperate rainforest. The form walk
Speaker 2: is roughly one point eight miles or three kilometers return,
Speaker 2: with about three hundred and fifty to three hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty feet or one hundred and fifteen meters of elevation gain,
Speaker 2: and is usually graded as an easy to moderate one
Speaker 2: to one and a half hour outing to a fenced
Speaker 2: viewing platform above multi tiered waterfall. So this is a
Speaker 2: very tourist friendly, like kind of paved path that lots
Speaker 2: of people do. It's short, quick and sweet, should be
Speaker 2: so that tourist friendly track sits at about six hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty six fifty meters of elevation in a band
Speaker 2: of forest that gets a regular winter snow, icy rain,
Speaker 2: and sub zero overnight temperatures. I just never think of
Speaker 2: rainforest and snow in ice. I don't. So once you
Speaker 2: leave the form path and the safety railings, the terrain
Speaker 2: changes immediately steep side slopes dropping towards the creek, slick
Speaker 2: roots and mossy rock, tangled her horizontal scrub that forces
Speaker 2: you to push and crawl in a maze of old water,
Speaker 2: raised cuttings, and informal footpads that are not signposted, not maintained,
Speaker 2: and not obvious from above. The broader setting is a
Speaker 2: remote is remote by Tasmanian standards, but still close enough
Speaker 2: to a town to feel deceptively tame. Waratah is only
Speaker 2: about nine to ten kilometers away by road. Yet the
Speaker 2: bush around the falls and the Arthur River seven mile
Speaker 2: creek corridor is dense, dark and slow to move through,
Speaker 2: with limited phone reception and very few obvious landmarks, you're
Speaker 2: off Once you're off track, you're off track. Yeah. That
Speaker 2: combination a short Instagram hike quote unquote at the edge
Speaker 2: of serious rainforest winter conditions and a maze of unmarked
Speaker 2: features defines the location where Slen parked her car, walked in,
Speaker 2: left the trail, and ultimately vanished. So a little bit
Speaker 2: about the climate where she met missing is classic West
Speaker 2: Coast Tasmania, cool, wet, voltle with winter conditions that can
Speaker 2: turn deadly fast if you're lightly Equippedall sits at the
Speaker 2: Takana rainforest belt of northwest Tasmania, a region with a cool,
Speaker 2: temperate maritime climate, mild by Australian standards, but very wet,
Speaker 2: especially on the western slopes. Statewide, summers are comfortable, with
Speaker 2: winters cold and windy, with average highs in winter around
Speaker 2: eleven to thirteen celsius that's the low fifties on the coast,
Speaker 2: and colder again inland at an elevation the broader islands,
Speaker 2: winter maximums typically run about three to eleven degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: The Stanley and Tarkaine region, which covers Wartaw and the
Speaker 2: surrounding rainforest, gets up to two four hundred millimeters of
Speaker 2: rainy year, making it one of the wettest parts of
Speaker 2: Tasmania and keeping the rainforest lush, but trails frequently met wet,
Speaker 2: muddy and slippery. Up in the rainforest where the Philosopher
Speaker 2: Falls track runs at roughly six hundred to six hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty meters of elevation. That maritime pattern translates into
Speaker 2: frequent low cloud, regular rain and drizzle, and a lot
Speaker 2: of cold, damp days even outside midwinter. In winter and
Speaker 2: early spring, it's common to see snowfalls, icy winds, and
Speaker 2: overnight frosts on the higher ground, with daytime highs sometimes
Speaker 2: only just above freezing and the wind chill pushing perceived
Speaker 2: temperatures lower. Walker's trip reports talk about raining and the
Speaker 2: forest dripping as a normal experience, and locals warn that
Speaker 2: weather can pivot quickly from clear to sleet or hail,
Speaker 2: especially around fronts, exactly the pattern that was in place
Speaker 2: during the June July twenty twenty three season, when freezing temperatures,
Speaker 2: snow and rain triggered a bush walker's a weather alert
Speaker 2: for the Warataw area. I'm gonna look up what that
Speaker 2: is when you're talking, Okay, A bushwalker's weather alert that
Speaker 2: mix cold air, high rainfall, frequent wind, and rapid weather
Speaker 2: changes over rugged shaded terrain creates high hypothermia risks for
Speaker 2: anyone caught out without proper insulation, waterproofs, and shelter partiarticularly
Speaker 2: in June when the wet season is ramping up and
Speaker 2: days are short. Tell us about Selene Kremer.
Speaker 3: Mike, Yeah, so real quick here. Her name was Selene Kremer.
Speaker 3: She was born June thirteenth of nineteen ninety two. Her
Speaker 3: last confirmed sighting was June seventeenth, twenty twenty three, when
Speaker 3: she was reported missing. June twenty sixth of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Like Joe said, she was thirty one at the time
Speaker 3: of her disappearance. She was approximately five foot five to
Speaker 3: five foot seven. We don't have a reported weight, but
Speaker 3: she was described as average build. She had brown hair,
Speaker 3: brown eyes, no other widely reported distinguishing marks like tattoos
Speaker 3: or scars. Okay, clothing and gears she was last seen in,
Speaker 3: so she was believed to being dressed for a short
Speaker 3: light day hike, not an overnight or multi day trip.
Speaker 3: Reports and later Fine suggests she wore layered clothing, including
Speaker 3: a thermal top and a polar fleece jacket with additional
Speaker 3: basic Graham protection improvised from a garbage bag, and she
Speaker 3: carried a small pack with limited food and water and
Speaker 3: her phone. Personality wise, she was portrayed by family and
Speaker 3: friends as very adventurous and curious and optimistic, someone who
Speaker 3: loved nature and travel and who had saved and planned
Speaker 3: for a long Australian trip for years. And you know,
Speaker 3: she was very comfortable with independent and solo travel to
Speaker 3: remote areas, and this is backed up by a lot
Speaker 3: of her social media posts and photos. Far as medical issues,
Speaker 3: there was nothing publicly indicated that I have any significance,
Speaker 3: you know, pre existing conditions such as seizures or cardiac
Speaker 3: issues or any mobility issues and pretty much just a
Speaker 3: healthy adult. There really wasn't anything to go on for
Speaker 3: that occupation hobby. Back in Belgium, Selene worked in roles
Speaker 3: that allowed her to save and then take it extended
Speaker 3: travel time. Sources sometimes describe her as having an ordinary
Speaker 3: job rather than a professional guiding her outdoor career and
Speaker 3: her hobbies were travel, hiking, photography. She was actively exploring
Speaker 3: Tasmania at this time. Sounds like a fun, fun trip
Speaker 3: Joe's got some pictures over her that he's showing on
Speaker 3: the screen here.
Speaker 2: Not yet. I always do that, yep, experience in the wilderness.
Speaker 3: So Selene had enough outdoor experience to really be comfortable
Speaker 3: during solo hikes on mark trails and foreign countries. She
Speaker 3: had spent months traveling around the island visiting popular natural
Speaker 3: sites and appeared very confident on maintain trails. At the
Speaker 3: same time, though, there is no sign she was a
Speaker 3: specialist pushwalker as they call him out there, and evidence
Speaker 3: suggests she treated Philosopher Falls as a short tourist walk,
Speaker 3: not a serious backcountry trip. So, like we said, light clothing,
Speaker 3: no overnight gear, stuff like that. So her experience level
Speaker 3: for what she intended to do is pretty normal. I mean,
Speaker 3: the trail she was taking was well maintained quick, it
Speaker 3: was going to be in and out, so you know, nothing,
Speaker 3: no red flags there. So we'll jump right into timeline
Speaker 3: here and I will cover the timeline kind of leading
Speaker 3: up to our original episode, and then we'll go into
Speaker 3: the new theory or the new developments, and then at
Speaker 3: the end we're going to play our old theories. I
Speaker 3: love it, and then we will discuss the new theories
Speaker 3: that have come about since the New Discoveries. Our timeline
Speaker 3: starts early twenty twenty three, so Sleen had been living
Speaker 3: in Tasmania for about six months, using Hobart as a
Speaker 3: loose base while she explored the island. She spent that
Speaker 3: time hiking and sight seeing, and on February twenty second
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three, she posted a photo from the
Speaker 3: top of Mount Wellington with the caption a Little Devil
Speaker 3: in Tasmania, which was a snapshot of how much she
Speaker 3: had fallen in love with landscape. Her family would later
Speaker 3: go on to say that she had already booked her
Speaker 3: next step, a fairy trip on the Spirit of Tasmania
Speaker 3: to Victoria on June twenty first. Unfortunately, this was a
Speaker 3: booking she never made. In the months before winter, she
Speaker 3: became especially drawn to the temperate rainforests and old mining
Speaker 3: country in the northwest around Warta and the Philosopher Falls.
Speaker 3: She's been all over the island. It's mid June two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, twenty twenty three. In the days leading
Speaker 3: up to her disappearance, Sleen stayed in interminute touch with
Speaker 3: friends and family back in Belgium. Early media reports put
Speaker 3: her last contact somewhere between the twelfth and sixteenth of June,
Speaker 3: reflecting that no one initially knew the exact day she
Speaker 3: stopped replying. Police later summarized that she had not been
Speaker 3: in contact since the twelfth, but they were clear that
Speaker 3: the last confirmed sighting came a little later. By Saturday,
Speaker 3: June seventeenth, she had traveled to Warataw, a small historic
Speaker 3: mining town about nine kilometers from Flaster Falls trailhead. Multiple
Speaker 3: police briefings and news stories now agree that this is
Speaker 3: the last time anyone definitively remembered seeing her, with Inspector
Speaker 3: Andrew Hansen later calling it the last confirmed sighting and
Speaker 3: describing her as alone driving a white Honda CRV, and
Speaker 3: at some point in that day she drove the short
Speaker 3: unsealed road from town out to Flaster Falls car Park.
Speaker 3: The main track from there is a graded signposted one
Speaker 3: point six mile out and back walk through dense rainforest
Speaker 3: to a waterfall viewing platform. But beyond that built path,
Speaker 3: like Shoe described, the country becomes very remote, steep and
Speaker 3: tangled with vegetation. Easy hike if you stay on, very
Speaker 3: difficult if you go off trail at all. So on
Speaker 3: June seventeenth, Selene left her Honda at the car park.
Speaker 3: From all intents and purposes, was a short day hike
Speaker 3: to the falls and back. She was, like I said earlier,
Speaker 3: only equipped for a light outing, no overnight gear, no
Speaker 3: heavy cold weather layers, which police emphasized this early on
Speaker 3: in the search, so it was very important for them
Speaker 3: to mention that it was going to be a very
Speaker 3: light walk. For and for many months, the only solid
Speaker 3: framework for her movements that day came from police statements
Speaker 3: that her phone was believed to have lost signal around
Speaker 3: the twentieth of June, and that she likely left the
Speaker 3: car sometime in that window for a day walk. Later,
Speaker 3: privately commissioned analysis of tower hits and at base GPS
Speaker 3: lugs added more granularity to her movements, placing her leaving
Speaker 3: the car park in mid afternoon, following the track to
Speaker 3: the falls, and then continuing beyond the platform into scrubby
Speaker 3: steep ground above the waterfall. But they treated those details
Speaker 3: as tentative because they didn't come from the initial police record.
Speaker 3: So in those reconstructions, her phone's GPS shows positions along
Speaker 3: a water race line and up to and up onto
Speaker 3: a ridge, with a final recorded point around four eighteen pm,
Speaker 3: as she appears to turn back off track into the rain.
Speaker 3: Police themselves stayed in their statements to the public very broad.
Speaker 3: They said they believe she left the mark trail, became
Speaker 3: lost and confused and very dense brush, and never made
Speaker 3: it back to the car before dark. What everyone could
Speaker 3: agree on at this time was that after late afternoon
Speaker 3: on the seventeenth, no one saw her return to the
Speaker 3: car park, no further calls or messages went out, and
Speaker 3: the Honda remained locked and unattended. So between June eighteenth
Speaker 3: and twenty fifth, other walkers continued to use Lost or
Speaker 3: Falls track. When the missing person's investigation got rolling, police
Speaker 3: later said they heard from several hikers who had been
Speaker 3: in the area between the seventeenth and the end of
Speaker 3: the month, with memories of cars in the car park
Speaker 3: and people on the trail. One specific appeal went out
Speaker 3: for a person on the trail around two thirty pm Sunday,
Speaker 3: June eighteenth. Officers stressed this was not a suspect, just
Speaker 3: someone who might help fill in the timeline. The walker
Speaker 3: was eventually identified and interviewed, but didn't have any anything
Speaker 3: that definitively pinned down Selene's movements, so then June twenty
Speaker 3: first came and went without her boarding the Spirit of
Speaker 3: Tasmania to Victoria. That missed fairy was a huge red
Speaker 3: flag for her family and friends, who had been expecting
Speaker 3: to hear from her as she crossed to the mainland.
Speaker 3: As days passed with no messages and no sign of
Speaker 3: her on the ferry manifest they escalated their concern to
Speaker 3: the Tasmanian authorities. It's now June twenty sixth. It's a
Speaker 3: Monday of twenty twenty three. Tasmanian Police receive a formal
Speaker 3: concern for welfare report from Selene's friends and family. Publicly,
Speaker 3: they described a Belgian woman traveling the state in a
Speaker 3: white Honda CRV, last seen in Hobart and believed to
Speaker 3: be headed toward the West coast, and asked anyone who
Speaker 3: had seen her or her vehicle since June twelfth to
Speaker 3: contact them. The next day, June twenty seventh, officers checking
Speaker 3: likely west coast locations right away found her SUV parked
Speaker 3: at the car park. The vehicle was locked and unattended.
Speaker 3: There was no trace of Selene in the immediate area.
Speaker 3: Search and Rescue teams supported by a police drone then
Speaker 3: immediately began searching around the car park and along the
Speaker 3: walking track, and police closed the whole area to the
Speaker 3: public so they could work without any interference. And it
Speaker 3: looks like Joe is showing some pictures.
Speaker 2: Of the yes search, look at all that is? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is gnarly.
Speaker 3: That is some thick jungle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the bush, the bush? Right, I had a search
Speaker 2: and the bush.
Speaker 3: Then, Mike, I had a guy the other day delivered
Speaker 3: door dash to our house that sounded like the Crocodile Hunter.
Speaker 2: It was pretty funny bringing in some doll dash. I
Speaker 2: Mike I almost like.
Speaker 3: Asked him, like, could you record a few lines from me?
Speaker 2: Like some dar dash lines in Australia show? Yeah, did
Speaker 2: you know why?
Speaker 3: I don't know?
Speaker 2: Do it? Next time? I will order from the same guy.
Speaker 2: I have to figure out who who is? You should
Speaker 2: be able to look up your driver. Yeah, I don't remember,
Speaker 2: like you know, go on your app and learn history.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, of course? Do you remember what
Speaker 2: you ate? What do you deliver? I was shrimp on
Speaker 2: a ball eight right? Where was I playing? Knife? Spoony?
Speaker 3: Knife, spooney, that's not a knife.
Speaker 2: So you played naifey spoony before.
Speaker 1: Okay, so sorry, I'm just gonna swap my section out
Speaker 1: with like an Australian guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crocking. My threat's been hurt. Got a bit ill
Speaker 2: the other day from the little lads running around.
Speaker 3: All right, It's now Wednesday, June twenty eighth. Ground teams
Speaker 3: and drone and the drone unit continued to grid the
Speaker 3: Philosopher Falls area with a police helicopter on standby. There
Speaker 3: was a cold front rolling over Tasmania's west, which meant
Speaker 3: conditions were already deteriorating. There was light snowfalling, a bushwalker's
Speaker 3: weather alert was active, and nighttime temperatures were dropping below freezing.
Speaker 3: By June twenty ninth, Inspector Anthea Maingey was blunt about
Speaker 3: the seriousness of the situation. She laid out what had
Speaker 3: been done ground cruise drones, planned helicopter sorties, and underline
Speaker 3: that no sign of Sleen had turned up since the
Speaker 3: car was found. She warned that the combination of freezing temperatures,
Speaker 3: snow and rain had created conditions not survivable for the
Speaker 3: length of time that celine is thought to have been
Speaker 3: exposed in the wilderness, and this was a conclusion obviously
Speaker 3: backed by medical advice and based on what she was
Speaker 3: wearing and packed with her she was not prepared for
Speaker 3: conditions below freezing with snow and wind and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So at this stage police believed her car had been
Speaker 3: sitting in the car park since at least June twentieth,
Speaker 3: and later refinements to this suggested it might have been
Speaker 3: there since as early as June seventeenth, based on witness
Speaker 3: reports and phone activity analysis. But throughout they hammered the
Speaker 3: point that she had only packed for a light day
Speaker 3: when she left.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Bushwicker's Weather ALERTE was a specific weather alert
Speaker 2: advised by meteorological agencies in Australia, warning hikers and campers
Speaker 2: of forecast conditions at post severe risk outdoor safety. That
Speaker 2: like the triggers are what you'd expect, high heat, high winds, cold, wet,
Speaker 2: stuff like that. Yeah, but best practices are saying if
Speaker 2: they issue a Bushwalker's Weather Alert, like you're supposed to postpone,
Speaker 2: cancel or completely re route your trip to avoid the
Speaker 2: affected areas. They're not saying like be careful or dress appropriately.
Speaker 2: They're just saying like, just don't just don't do it.
Speaker 2: So they must only do that if it's very hazardous,
Speaker 2: and if we have some listeners from down on that
Speaker 2: you can let us know if that's true.
Speaker 3: I wonder in the US what that would be, like
Speaker 3: a severe like a winter storm warning if they yes, but.
Speaker 2: They don't ever like say, hey, I guess, yeah, I guess,
Speaker 2: Like there's probably somewhere written like if we issue this,
Speaker 2: this is the record.
Speaker 3: Probably like yeah, like if they issue one for like Yoseboy,
Speaker 3: maybe they add some language like change your plans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like when you were there and it was
Speaker 2: on fire. Yeah, and like, hey, maybe you don't camp here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's on fire.
Speaker 3: There's literally ash falling from the sky.
Speaker 2: Maybe. Yeah, you see how everyone's leaving their homes. Yes,
Speaker 2: don't go into the woods either. Yeah. Okay, I guess
Speaker 2: I could have guessed that, but I wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure it was correct. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's now Friday, June thirtieth, and the search now
Speaker 3: is focusing more on the waterfall and gorge itself. Search
Speaker 3: and rescue specialists repelled from the viewing platform down towards
Speaker 3: the base of Philosopher Falls, checking ledges, cliff faces, and
Speaker 3: thick vegetation along the watercourse or any signs of a fall,
Speaker 3: maybe a shelter or drop gear. Walking tracks stayed close
Speaker 3: again to the public while they worked. It's now July first.
Speaker 3: This is when Tasmanian SES teams brought in ATVs to
Speaker 3: work forestry and access roads around the falls. They extend,
Speaker 3: you know, extending the search net outwards. While detectives got
Speaker 3: piecing together her movements between the seventeenth and when she
Speaker 3: was reported missing, people who'd walk there in the period
Speaker 3: continued to forward with what they'd seen. On Sunday, July second,
Speaker 3: Search and Rescue and SES personnel ran a track offset
Speaker 3: search along Butler's Road in the morning. In the afternoon,
Speaker 3: the weather finally cooperated enough for the Westpac Rescue helicopter
Speaker 3: to fly, giving them an aerial view of the Philosopher
Speaker 3: Falls region that hadn't been possible in the earlier low
Speaker 3: cloud and snow. All Right, so we're getting into the
Speaker 3: final update of our previous episode. So it is July
Speaker 3: ninth and tenth of twenty twenty three. So after almost
Speaker 3: two straight weeks of operations in this crazy statement snow
Speaker 3: affected rainforest, Tasmanian police did a full review of the search.
Speaker 3: By Sunday, July ninth, they were already signaling a wind down.
Speaker 3: On Monday, July tenth, Commander Stuart Wilkinson formally announced that
Speaker 3: the major ground and air search around Warsaw and the
Speaker 3: Philosopher Falls area was being suspended. He walked through just
Speaker 3: how much had been thrown at the case, police and
Speaker 3: SES ground crews, specialist swift water teams, ATVs, drones, and
Speaker 3: repeated helicopter missions, and acknowledged that considerable search efforts have
Speaker 3: been undertaken in difficult terrain and treacherous weather conditions, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately Sleen has not been located. He also made it
Speaker 3: clear that, based on medical advice, she could not have
Speaker 3: survived the duration and severity of the conditions she likely
Speaker 3: experienced since going missing, and at the same time he
Speaker 3: emphasized that the missing person investigation itself stayed active. The
Speaker 3: message was boots were coming off the ground for now,
Speaker 3: but the file was not being closed. So that's where
Speaker 3: our old episode left off. We are now going to
Speaker 3: pick up the new developments in the case since our
Speaker 3: last episode. It's now late July twenty twenty three, so
Speaker 3: new pieces of information later that month, which was primarily
Speaker 3: refined phone activity analysis and possible earlier sightings over Honda
Speaker 3: the car park were enough to justify one more targeted push.
Speaker 3: On Friday July twenty eighth, Tasmanian Police called in a
Speaker 3: new South Wales Police could have her dog team to
Speaker 3: search a fresh area of interest around Philosopher Falls and
Speaker 3: Ward Zone. Inspector Mangay said this updated phone data had
Speaker 3: given them the tighter focus area and that police and
Speaker 3: SES crews had already been through it on foot that
Speaker 3: week without finding anything.
Speaker 2: The dog team worked through.
Speaker 3: The weekend, but by Monday, July thirty, First Commander Wilkinson
Speaker 3: had to announce that this renewed effort also ended with
Speaker 3: no sign of Selene. He repeated the line that when
Speaker 3: a person remains missing, the case never closes, and this
Speaker 3: is something that we've see all the time in cases
Speaker 3: we cover, so now it's when it starts getting interesting.
Speaker 3: Two twenty four is Selene's family retained Australian private guest
Speaker 3: investigator can Gamble to re examine the case, believing that
Speaker 3: further analysis of digital data and on the ground searching
Speaker 3: might reveal what the twenty twenty three operations missed. With
Speaker 3: the family's permission, Gamble obtained access to her phone and
Speaker 3: Google account data, reconstructing app based GPS lugs and tower
Speaker 3: connections from the day she disappeared. His analysis suggested that
Speaker 3: after leaving the march trail near the falls, Selene had
Speaker 3: pushed into the section of horizontal scrub and possibly followed
Speaker 3: a water race alignment away from the track before her
Speaker 3: phone's GPS activity ceased in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: What do you got here? So, I'm I was looking
Speaker 2: at what horizontal scrub was? Yeah? Is that something that
Speaker 2: I don't think we have here? And it's a tree
Speaker 2: that girls? Let me pull up the I'm trying to
Speaker 2: find like a video of it. Yeah, I just went
Speaker 2: to like full screen some very ob naxious like legitimately
Speaker 2: don't know how to get out of this. Facebook. There
Speaker 2: we go, Facebook, you dummy. I'm gonna read exactly what
Speaker 2: it says on here. Give me an ai. It sounds
Speaker 2: like you're asking about the vory is horizontal scrub found
Speaker 2: in Tasmania. It gets his name because its slender trunks
Speaker 2: grow vertically, topple over and fall down horizontal, creating an
Speaker 2: almost impenetrable tangled mess of vegetation. That bushwalkers must traverse
Speaker 2: sounds awful. Yeah, because it's so incredibly solid and dense,
Speaker 2: Walkers often have to literally tread or walk on top
Speaker 2: of this elevated layer of scrub, which can sometimes sit
Speaker 2: several meters above the actual forest floor. Wow, so you're
Speaker 2: like walking in the canopy ish type of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: just walking high up, navigating through or falling through. The
Speaker 2: tangled mess is a major hazard in Tasmania's wilderness and
Speaker 2: is the cause of significant injury, getting disoriented and being
Speaker 2: severely delayed on the trail. Here's what you need to
Speaker 2: know about the infamous horizontal scrub. So basically like walking
Speaker 2: on top of plants that can just give way, and
Speaker 2: they said they'll get covered with moss because it's the rainforest.
Speaker 2: So it's not only are you walking on these branches
Speaker 2: that have gone other sideways. Yeah, you now have moss
Speaker 2: on it, so it like blankets it. So if there
Speaker 2: is like a hole or like a small twig that
Speaker 2: you'd like crack through, it's like you're just stepping into
Speaker 2: a hole. Sounds dangerous and sounds super dangerous. Hike. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's gnarly. I'm glad we don't have that yeah.
Speaker 3: So Campbell concluded that she had left the main path,
Speaker 3: tried to cut back towards the car park or refuge,
Speaker 3: and became very badly lost in extremely dense bush as
Speaker 3: the winter rains set in, with no evidence of another
Speaker 3: person's involvement. So also Tasmanian filmmaker and YouTuber Rob Parsons
Speaker 3: became interested in the case. Around the same time, he
Speaker 3: began producing a multi part series, The Search for Selene Kramer,
Speaker 3: and his name came up a lot in comments on
Speaker 3: our episode. Everyone's like, you need to check out this
Speaker 3: guy Rob Parson who is doing a like a search
Speaker 3: and recording it. I mean, I'm very familiar with his name.
Speaker 3: So he called it the Search for Selene Kremer, and
Speaker 3: he combined on location explorations, interviews, and reconstructions of a
Speaker 3: route based on Gamble's data. His videos, hosted on YouTube
Speaker 3: and heavily shared via Facebook and Instagram, reached a global
Speaker 3: audience and gradually recruited an informal army of local hikers
Speaker 3: and bushmen willing to volunteer in the private search efforts
Speaker 3: in the Philosopher Falls area. Throughout twenty twenty four, small
Speaker 3: groups associated with this effort returned to the bush near
Speaker 3: the area, scouting ridges, gullies and the Arthur River corridor
Speaker 3: for any sign of gear or remains. Unfortunately, none of
Speaker 3: these early trips produced breakthrough, so between twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: and twenty five mid twenty twenty five, it was really
Speaker 3: just kind of slow progress. So by June of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, exactly a year after he disappearance, commentaris in
Speaker 3: outlets like The Tasmanian Times observed that Sleen's whereabouts were
Speaker 3: no closer to closure than they were a year earlier.
Speaker 3: They noted that Tasmania Police and SES had effectively drawn
Speaker 3: a blank and were unlikely to launch further official ground
Speaker 3: searches without new information, leaving most on the groundwork to
Speaker 3: family backed and volunteer efforts. During autumn of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: police did quietly recommence a targeted search in the area
Speaker 3: northwest of Philosopher Falls, based on updated phone paying information
Speaker 3: forwarded from the private investigation reports that Jess Gamble was
Speaker 3: present or consulted during that operation. Even with this insider assistance,
Speaker 3: the searchers did not locate any conclusive evidence, no clothing, bones,
Speaker 3: or gear, so by mid twenty twenty five, Ken Gamble
Speaker 3: to me that he had letter anticipated nearly a dozen
Speaker 3: separate searches in the area, and most of them documented
Speaker 3: in some way by Parsons videos or referenced in Reddit
Speaker 3: discussions of people following the case.
Speaker 2: So, okay, those are the people that came and let
Speaker 2: let us know we need update. Yes, probably, so real quick,
Speaker 2: real quick. Here's that a good video of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you see how like, yeah, far down the forest
Speaker 2: floor is.
Speaker 3: Think how slowly you'd boom moved through that?
Speaker 2: So like look at this, you got to walk on that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so if you slip and fall there, you can bust
Speaker 2: your leg with a heavy pack on. Yeah, you're like,
Speaker 2: it's like the second floor of the forest. Yeah, that's gnarly.
Speaker 2: That's so wild that there's just people like hiking on
Speaker 2: different levels. Yeah, that's weird, the next level of hiking.
Speaker 2: Yeah nice, all right, all right, all right that training
Speaker 2: video for like steakhouse. Yeah, do you watch a game yesterday?
Speaker 2: All right, it's like training people how to talk in
Speaker 2: the buffet line that it's like for like harassment. It
Speaker 2: is it still hot out there? All right?
Speaker 3: All right, go ahead, all right, So it is December
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five, we have a major shift in
Speaker 3: the case. At this time, Selene's friends and family, coordinated
Speaker 3: with Gamble and Parsons, organized a renewed five day search
Speaker 3: operation Your Philosopher False, drawing about thirty volunteers, including several
Speaker 3: of her Belgian friends who flew out.
Speaker 2: Specifically to help.
Speaker 3: This privately organized search was not led by police, but
Speaker 3: police were aware of it and offered support. On December thirteenth,
Speaker 3: on the hours into operation, the team made their first
Speaker 3: concrete discovery since twenty twenty three. In dense scrub at
Speaker 3: a location variously described as roughly sixty meters from our
Speaker 3: last known GPS coordinates and around three meters off the
Speaker 3: walking path. A volunteer at the back of the line,
Speaker 3: identified by the media's Tony Hage, spotted a purple Samsung phone.
Speaker 3: So Celia's friends immediately recognized it as her phone.
Speaker 2: So they found her phone.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that's luck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's because like just looking at these search photos,
Speaker 2: we'll hear I mean, this is like a little more open.
Speaker 2: But that's if she walked exactly here, exactly there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the police quickly confirmed that the device plunged to
Speaker 3: Selene and issued a media release stating that the phone
Speaker 3: would undergo forensic examination. They also announced that in light
Speaker 3: of this find, the police resources would formally join the
Speaker 3: independent search effort, with trained search and rescue officers and
Speaker 3: SEES volunteers to be on the ground whenever weather allowed.
Speaker 3: In the days that followed, the same volunteer group located
Speaker 3: additional items in the vicinity. They located a water bottle,
Speaker 3: a plastic garbage bag that appeared to have been fashioned
Speaker 3: into a makeshift poncho. Gamble described these finds in interviews,
Speaker 3: cautioning that it was not yet certain that the water
Speaker 3: bottle was Sleens, but acknowledging it is a significant clue
Speaker 3: in an area otherwise devoid of human debris. So police
Speaker 3: collected these items for DNA and trace analysis. In some
Speaker 3: media posts and Reddit threads tracking the search shared rough coordinates,
Speaker 3: photos of the dense horizontal scrub wall where the phone lay,
Speaker 3: and screenshots of ABC coverage. One Reddit user summarized that
Speaker 3: the phone had been located roughly, like I said, sixty
Speaker 3: meters from her last known position, about five hundred meters
Speaker 3: from the waterfall and trail. The weather, unfortunately would take
Speaker 3: another turn during this search, so there was heavy rain, hail,
Speaker 3: possible snow both days, which forced the group and police
Speaker 3: to pause operations for several days while forensic work on
Speaker 3: the phone and items begin. It is now January twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six, so only a few months ago. As summer
Speaker 3: progressed and river level's fluctuated, volunteers continued to scour new ground,
Speaker 3: informed by phone day to reconstruction. One of them, a
Speaker 3: Bernie local, Jared Boys, had become deeply involved after watching
Speaker 3: Parsons videos in following the case online. Motivated by a
Speaker 3: desire to finally bring answers to Selene's family, he planned
Speaker 3: his own solo search along the Arthur River, downstream from
Speaker 3: the waterfall. On Wednesday, January twenty eighth of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: while traversing tough country several several kilometers northeast of the
Speaker 3: main falls area, Boys came across two bones he thought
Speaker 3: could be human. He noted their location about three kilometers
Speaker 3: northeast of a water race alignment where Selene was believed
Speaker 3: to have walked, and immediately contacted police. Inspector Andrew Hansen
Speaker 3: later told media that a pathologist had reviewed images of
Speaker 3: the bones and confirmed they were human. He stressed that
Speaker 3: though at these early stages there was nothing else at
Speaker 3: the site, no clothing, no personal items to directly indicate identity,
Speaker 3: but acknowledged that the proximity to where Selene went missing
Speaker 3: made it as strong possibility the remains were hers. As
Speaker 3: he put it at the press conference, police had to
Speaker 3: treat the remains as a separate investigation until formal identification
Speaker 3: could be made, but there really was no doubt that
Speaker 3: the proximity of those bones is close enough to the
Speaker 3: area where she went missing that it was very strongly
Speaker 3: considered to be hers. News of this discovery spread quickly
Speaker 3: via ABC and social media, and all across the Reddit sphere.
Speaker 3: People were talking about retisphere. Okay, it's now late January.
Speaker 3: Early February twenty twenty six. With discovery of the bones
Speaker 3: near Arthur River, police launched a fresh, tightly focused operation.
Speaker 3: On the twenty ninth and thirtieth, they winched a team
Speaker 3: of six specialist search and rescue officers into an isolated
Speaker 3: section of the Arthur River Corridor downstream from the initial
Speaker 3: fine site. The team conducted a line search along a
Speaker 3: three hund and fifty to five hundred meters stretch of river,
Speaker 3: moving upstream and downstream, checking banks, snags, and the riverbed
Speaker 3: itself for further remains and items. During this search, police
Speaker 3: located additional bones and pieces of clothing, including a polar
Speaker 3: fleece jacket believed to be Selenes. Commander Nathan Johnson noted
Speaker 3: that many of these items were found under debris or
Speaker 3: lodged in the riverbed.
Speaker 2: Wow, so they were like thorough, Yeah, that's so difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Once they had like you find a couple bones,
Speaker 3: like you and you like, ye pick up every rock
Speaker 3: and sure.
Speaker 2: Still like the odds, Yeah, like finding bone in a
Speaker 2: river that's like got rocks and moving water.
Speaker 3: And just yeah yeah, it said, you know it was
Speaker 3: found under debris and lodged in the riverbed. It underscored
Speaker 3: how easily the evidence was missed earlier in the searches,
Speaker 3: and at this time the train and weather remained punishing,
Speaker 3: so at one point the Star team had to camp
Speaker 3: overnight in the bush because weather prevented the helicopter from
Speaker 3: extracting them. And after two days without further significant discoveries,
Speaker 3: police announced the search. We paused while forensic analysis of
Speaker 3: the newly recovered remains and clothing proceeded. It is now
Speaker 3: February tenth, twenty twenty six, so on Sunday and Mondays.
Speaker 3: Shortly after that pause, police resumed a very targeted search
Speaker 3: of the same Arthur River section, again inserting personal personnel
Speaker 3: by helicopter as conditions permitted. This two day operation produced
Speaker 3: perhaps the most conclusive non DNA evidence. They found five
Speaker 3: more bones, two teeth, and a Honda KHARKI.
Speaker 2: So, five more bones, how's that non DNA? Can you
Speaker 2: not get DNA from a bone? From a bone?
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't think so. After it's been let's
Speaker 3: see what mmmm.
Speaker 2: They were in the river? Yeah, yes, you can extract
Speaker 2: DNA from the bone found the river. Because the hard
Speaker 2: mineralized structure of the bone shields genetic material. DNA could
Speaker 2: survive water submersion for months or even years, though the
Speaker 2: river environment accelerates degradation. So I bet it probably was
Speaker 2: getting beaten and worn down on box and stuff that
Speaker 2: they couldn't get any But I.
Speaker 3: Mean, so they found teeth. You might be able to
Speaker 3: match down a records with teeth. Yeah, and they found
Speaker 3: a Honda cry So pretty conclusive.
Speaker 2: But as to say, if you can determine their human bones.
Speaker 2: Then you find stuff that's very clearly hers. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: is seemingly more conclusive. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Andrew Johnston told media that the car key had
Speaker 3: been formally verified as belonging to Sleen by using its
Speaker 3: unlocker white Hanta CRV.
Speaker 2: Very scientific. Yeah, I know right, yeah, Yeah, it's the
Speaker 2: one yeah.
Speaker 3: Which remained in police custody. He described the search along
Speaker 3: the three hundred and fifty meter river section as comprehensive
Speaker 3: and systematic, with many items found buried or wedged under
Speaker 3: a debris you know. The media and social media really
Speaker 3: picked up on this, and Reddit threads summarized developments. People
Speaker 3: are noting other items of clothing found, including a bra,
Speaker 3: thermal top, polar fleece jacket had been found alongside skeletal remains.
Speaker 3: Private investigator Ken Gamble publicly reflected with the phone remains
Speaker 3: and key now located, investigtors could make a fairly good
Speaker 3: determination of what had happened.
Speaker 2: I did just ask to like close the sloop. The
Speaker 2: odds of the key fob unlocking a similar car. Newer
Speaker 2: models practically zero, roughly one in several billion. Older models
Speaker 2: can be anywhere from one in a million to one
Speaker 2: in several thousands, so it's pretty definitive that that's Hers.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is the longest shop I wanted to actually,
Speaker 2: I just never thought of that though, Yeah, what are
Speaker 2: the odds because of the rolling codes.
Speaker 3: So it's now late February. Over the following weeks, the
Speaker 3: recovered bones and teeth went through a multi step forensic process,
Speaker 3: examination by pathologists, anthropologists, tenel comparisons against records obtained from Belgium,
Speaker 3: and DNA analysis by Forensic Science Services of Tasmania. On
Speaker 3: February twenty seventh, Tasmania Police announced that, with Selene's family's permission,
Speaker 3: they were able to say that the remains found near
Speaker 3: Philosopher Falls and along Arthur River had been provisionally identified
Speaker 3: at Hers. Commander Johnson explained that expert reports that provided
Speaker 3: compelling evidence that the remains belonged to Slean, though the
Speaker 3: former legal identification would still come via Corners report. He
Speaker 3: added that in the light of this, there would be
Speaker 3: no further planned searches of the Arthur Rivers. Adjusting investigators
Speaker 3: considered the recovery phase effectively complete, so.
Speaker 2: They did a really good job getting all the stuff.
Speaker 2: That's pretty gnarly.
Speaker 3: So if you can, and I can added out the
Speaker 3: dead space in between this, but find our old episode
Speaker 3: and maybe play a few minutes of our theories.
Speaker 2: Okay, finally back in a time when you like, right here,
Speaker 2: my voice worked. Yes, let's see how close I am
Speaker 2: like to getting it? Show the screen. It's cool that
Speaker 2: they have the video on Spotify too, just so everyone knows.
Speaker 2: You can watch the video of us from Where is
Speaker 2: this from this Spotify web player episode eighty eight? This
Speaker 2: must be from Patreon? Nope, it is, Yes, subscriber is Oh, okay.
Speaker 2: There's things that don't make sense when you when you
Speaker 2: have a search like that. If you're not prepared and
Speaker 2: it's cold, you're not going to be going crazy off trail.
Speaker 2: And even if she did, that's where you have that dog.
Speaker 2: Let's say it said the best one was recorded again
Speaker 2: in miles twelve miles away of sensing a cadaver. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this trail is less than a mile at one point
Speaker 2: six miles or whatever. Yeah, so if you have a
Speaker 2: dog on that trail, let's let's benefit the doubt. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe it's half as good. Yeah, should be able to
Speaker 2: pick up a cent six miles away? Maybe maybe only
Speaker 2: two miles away. That's a pretty big radius around that
Speaker 2: trail that if you're not prepared at that's thick as
Speaker 2: all get out. Yeah, Like I would look at that
Speaker 2: and say, she is not there. Yeah, So if she's
Speaker 2: not there in the car, is that means somebody removed
Speaker 2: her or she got in another car with somebody else,
Speaker 2: or something is going on. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there was no indication of her car like
Speaker 1: broke down and she tried to you know, hitchhike back.
Speaker 2: So yeah, very puzzling.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm leaning towards Obviously, not having the required
Speaker 1: gear for those conditions is a big probability of why
Speaker 1: she's missing. But and the thickness of the location is
Speaker 1: why searchers may have not a founder. Like we said,
Speaker 1: she may have gotten hypothermia and then was making poor decisions.
Speaker 1: And one interesting theory too is because she's from the
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere and she's hiking in the Southern Hemisphere, she
Speaker 1: may have gotten if she's got hypothermia, now was getting confused.
Speaker 1: She may have gotten mixed up directionally because you're your
Speaker 1: directions are going to be different if you're hiking in
Speaker 1: the Southern hemisphere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, like, how so explain this? It
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 3: So maybe this this is really because.
Speaker 2: The seasons are opposite. But north is still north, South
Speaker 2: is still south.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know. I was just trying to
Speaker 1: think of another theory and why maybe she directionally got confused.
Speaker 1: I mean the sun.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's all. I don't know. I'm just thinking out
Speaker 2: loud here. Yeah, no, no, that's fine, but I don't think. Well, no,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna question. I think you we have.
Speaker 3: The audio from the computer plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why you could hear it in your ears?
Speaker 2: Could you not hear it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I could? Okay, Yeah, that's funny. You hit like the
Speaker 2: nail on the head. Like obviously they don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what happened, but you're but you said, oh, this arch
Speaker 2: just might not have found anything, and that's true. Well
Speaker 2: I was way off, Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Hey one of us has Hey, you get to go, Hollywood.
Speaker 1: This is the most likely scenario. Now, this is the
Speaker 1: theory that police and the private investigators believe happens lost
Speaker 1: off trail death by exposure and or drowning.
Speaker 3: So not like super shocking. So the you know, like
Speaker 3: I said, this is the working theory, so what happened
Speaker 3: was and this is what they believe happened. Through phone data,
Speaker 3: reconstructions and on the groundwork shows that Selene went beyond
Speaker 3: the end of the maintained philosopher false She followed an
Speaker 3: old water race and climbed onto a ridge above the
Speaker 3: falls instead of simply turning back on the form trail.
Speaker 3: Later analysis suggests she checked Google Maps, saw her car
Speaker 3: directly south and either chose to inadvertently follow a shortcut
Speaker 3: line rather than staying on the mark path. That line
Speaker 3: pushed her into dense horizontal scrub and steep untracked slopes,
Speaker 3: which we showed is terrible place to be in late
Speaker 3: afternoon in the winter down there, and her phone data
Speaker 3: does show like a shelter attempt, So the last GPS
Speaker 3: points and the December twenty twenty five discoveries the phone
Speaker 3: the makeshift pacho from a garbage bag branded water bottle
Speaker 3: suggests she dropped or lost the phone while forcing herself
Speaker 3: through the scrub, then attempted to shelter at a natural
Speaker 3: wind break as the rain and cold set in. From
Speaker 3: that off track position, both the private and skaters and
Speaker 3: the police reconstruction argues she likely moved downslope drawn by
Speaker 3: the sound, and trained towards the water race and then
Speaker 3: the Arthur River seven mile Creeks system. Then the remains
Speaker 3: the clothing and carcaying were recovered along that three hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty meters stretch of the river, plus the way
Speaker 3: the bones and fabric were lodged in the riverbed fit
Speaker 3: a scenario where she either succumbed to hypothermia near the
Speaker 3: water and was later scattered by flow, or she fell
Speaker 3: or was swept into the river and drowned while trying
Speaker 3: to cross it at the time. So the reason why
Speaker 3: they think this is the top theory is that it
Speaker 3: matches her known route, the GPS trail, the location of
Speaker 3: her phone, improvised gear, and the eventual location of her remains.
Speaker 3: It's consistent with expert medical advice from the time that
Speaker 3: they were warning that there's no way she's going to
Speaker 3: survive this with the gear she had, and again police
Speaker 3: and the private investigators explicitly said there was no evidence
Speaker 3: of foul play and that misadventure really was the cause
Speaker 3: of her death. Some side theories this is a variant
Speaker 3: just an injury hypothermia near the river. I mean, we
Speaker 3: don't need to really go into that much. That's kind
Speaker 3: of the same theory. These are other minority theories.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, I feel like they hit the
Speaker 2: nail right up. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: So one of the minority theories is a fall near
Speaker 3: the waterfall. Some early reddit and forum comments floated the
Speaker 3: idea that she might have slipped well observing the falls
Speaker 3: fallen from the viewing areas.
Speaker 2: Is this before they recover this up? But they're saying
Speaker 2: that she slipped and the falls swept her down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what like early theories were saying that. So
Speaker 3: they thought she maybe had fallen. So our teams repelled
Speaker 3: below the viewing platform and searched the waterfowl area intensely.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, her phone and all her gear
Speaker 3: and remains were eventually found well beyond and downstream of
Speaker 3: the falls. So not right under Northern hemisphere internal compass theory.
Speaker 3: This is what I was trying to get at before.
Speaker 3: So a popular discussion thread idea was that being from
Speaker 3: the Northern Hemisphere, Sleen may have misjudged the Sun's path
Speaker 3: and internal compass leading her ahead the wrong way when
Speaker 3: she was trying to shortcut back to her car. And
Speaker 3: there is a small kernel of truth here in the
Speaker 3: sense that she likely tried to take a straight line
Speaker 3: shortcut south based on her phone map and got badly
Speaker 3: off route. But the Northern Hemisphere compass explanation is more
Speaker 3: of a metaphor than a concrete cause.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, but that's what I
Speaker 1: was trying to get at in the original theory. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I was just giving you a crap No, I mean, rightly. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like Straddle.
Speaker 2: Months, people text me when they hear that they listen
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 1: It's like it's hilarious, Cat's unknown bingo, Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: smart your card and then finally foul play. They've basically
Speaker 1: completely removed that other than kind of the fringe missing
Speaker 1: four on one crowd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my guess. That was way off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what do you think I think? I mean,
Speaker 3: your theory at the time was a decent theory because
Speaker 3: there was no gear and her car was still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it makes sense because we had no
Speaker 2: data or information, and then as soon as you get
Speaker 2: access to all the information, you start seeing everything that's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it becomes pretty straightforward, I guess. So, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm happy for the family. I'm I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: make myself feel better.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh hey, one of these times, your Hollywood
Speaker 1: theory will be what happens?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's it's good that they got closure. That's
Speaker 2: a great way to put it. Because the people that
Speaker 2: we've talked to, so we do have a lot of opinions,
Speaker 2: and we don't know what goes on every case, but
Speaker 2: we all so I have had the opportunity to meet
Speaker 2: the real family members of some of the cases we've
Speaker 2: done with, and all of them say the same thing.
Speaker 2: All of them say if they're of the group that
Speaker 2: have found the remains. Eventually, they're very, you know, somber
Speaker 2: happy that they can close the door, and everyone who
Speaker 2: doesn't just is hoping that something will turn up one day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they'll know they want the closure. So it is
Speaker 2: really great for her family that they can get that closure.
Speaker 2: Very sad obviously because it's going to reopen old wounds,
Speaker 2: but it's always a good thing when you can get
Speaker 2: the closure. And yeah, what happened. So there you go.
Speaker 2: So I think they're right. I mean, yeah, the Devil's
Speaker 2: and the details and now they have the details. So yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks for tuning into our show. We appreciate all of
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Speaker 2: to buy some Sweet Sweet swag, and you can subscribe
Speaker 2: to your Patron account and YouTube as well as Apple
Speaker 2: to have access to special events, additional shows for paid
Speaker 2: customers only, and you can watch a video on Spotify
Speaker 2: if you're a Patron member. Yeah. Lastly, when enjoying the
Speaker 2: beauty of nature, whether backpacking, camping, or simply taking a walk,
Speaker 2: always remember to leave no trace. Thanks and we will
Speaker 2: see you all next time.