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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and A E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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If you're listening to this episode on a cruise ship, you might want to save this one for another time when you're back on dry land. Having said that, there really is a particular kind of peace you only find out on the water. A cruise ship lit up against the dark. A sailboat under a sky full of stars. Nothing but ocean in every direction, and no one who needs anything from you. It feels like the safest kind of escape there is. But that same isolation cuts both ways. Out on the open sea, there's no police station down the block, no cameras on the corner, no neighbors close enough to hear anything. And when someone goes into the water or simply vanishes from a ship full of strangers, there's often no crime scene left to find. The ocean is very good at keeping secrets, and for the people in today's stories, a journey across the water became the place they disappeared. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios Videos. This is the second stop in our summer series Deadly Four Sundays, four kinds of getaways and the real crimes that turned them deadly. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show if you're a Crime House plus member. All four episodes of Deadly Destinations are available right now, completely ad free. If you haven't joined yet, go to crimehouseplus.com or just tap try free on the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes show page on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of this show and the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early. Last week, we stayed on dry land on the beaches and islands of the tropics. This week, we're leaving the shore behind for the open ocean. Three cases, all on the water. First, a former NBA champion who walked away from the game to sail the South Pacific and disappeared off his own boat along with everyone on board. Then, a woman who boarded a cruise to Alaska and was never seen again while the cruise line said nothing at all. And finally, an Australian mother who saved for years for a dream cruise and was dead within a day of stepping on the ship in a case that would change the industry for good. All that and more coming up.
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In the summer of 2002, one of the most beautiful corners of the planet belonged to a man who'd given up almost everything to be there. His name was Bison Deli, and a few years earlier he'd had a different name and a completely different life. He was born Brian Williams in 1969, growing up to become a 6 foot 11 center who spent almost a decade in the NBA and won a championship with the Chicago Bulls in 1997 alongside Michael Jordan. But he seemed to want more out of life. In 1998, he changed his name to Bison Deli to honor his Native American and African heritage. And then in 1999, at just 30 years old, still in his prime, with roughly $36 million left on his contract, he walked away from professional basketball altogether. Not because he was hurt, not because he had to, but because he'd rather see the world. And he did. He ran with the Bulls in Spain. He backpacked across Europe. Eventually he settled in Tahiti, bought himself a 55 foot catamaran and learned to sail it. He named the boat the Hakuna Matata. And in case you've never seen the Lion King, it's the Swahili phrase for no worries. People who knew him from basketball never quite understood his decision. But Bison had never really fit the life that came with the game. He'd bounced from team to team. Orlando, Denver, the LA Clippers, Chicago, Detroit. He was a gifted, relentless player who always seemed to be reaching for something the league couldn't give him. He read constantly. He traveled. He'd changed his own name to reflect who he felt he truly and out on the water, far from arenas and agents and crowds, he finally seemed to have found a version of his life that fit him. By the summer of 2002, that's exactly how his life looked. No worries. Bison was sailing the South Pacific with the woman he loved, his girlfriend, Serena Carlin, who left her real estate career in New York to be with him after the September 11 attacks. He'd hired a French skipper, a 32 year old named Bertrand Saldo, to help run the boat. And then there was the fourth person on board, one who didn't quite fit. That was Bison's older brother, Miles Debord, born Kevin Williams. The two brothers had been estranged for years, and Miles had turned up more or less out of nowhere, asking to reconnect. By most accounts, it didn't go well. They argued constantly. On an earlier leg of the trip, a crew member had actually quit and gotten off the boat because the fighting between the two of them was unbearable to be around. Reportedly, Serena didn't get along with Miles either. And Bison had grown wary of his older brother over the years. He tended to resurface in Bison's life, mainly when he needed something. Money, usually. But they'd reconnected anyway, the way families sometimes do. Miles had first turned up uninvited months earlier, while Bison was sailing around New Zealand. And the two of them grated on each other so badly that Miles eventually left. Then that spring, he came back and joined the crew as the Hakuna Matata made the long crossing up from New Zealand toward Tahiti, where Bison and Serena would meet the boat. But by July, it was just the four of Bison, Serena, Bertrand and Miles. On July 6, 2002, the Hakuna Matata left a harbor in Tahiti's capital and set out across open water, bound eventually for Hawaii. Over the next two days, a few short calls came in from the boat's satellite phone. The last one was on July 8th. And then nothing. No more calls, no arrival. Bison Deli, Serena Karlen and Bertrand Saldo were never heard from again. But the boat came back in the middle of July. A man matching Miles Debord's description sailed the catamaran into a marina on the southeastern shore of Tahiti alone. And the boat didn't look quite like it had when it left. It had been repainted and re registered under a brand new name, Aria Bella, with the old letters stripped off the back. And on the hull were a few patched over holes that investigators would later say lined up with something specific. Bullet holes. A few days after that, Miles boarded a flight to California, still alone. Here's the thing about Bison Deli. He lived off the grid for long stretches. No fixed address, no regular check ins disappearing for weeks at a time and then turning back up. So when he and Serena Carlin and the skipper, Bertrand Saldo, went quiet that summer, no alarm went off. Not for weeks. The people who knew him assumed he was simply out there somewhere, the way he always was. Then came September 5, 2002. A man walked into a coin shop in Phoenix, Arizona and tried to buy about $152,000 worth of gold. He was using the name Brian Williams, Bison's birth name. He had Brian Williams checkbook and Brian Williams passport. But it wasn't Brian Williams. It was Miles debord, trying to spend his missing brother's money while pretending to be him. The transaction set off alarms and the police were called. They detained Miles and questioned him for hours. But here's the problem. At that point, no one had reported Bison missing. The authorities had no body, no crime, and no way to reach Bison to prove the passport wasn't his to use. So they let Miles go. Within days, they realized what they'd had in the room. Because as the story finally started to surface, the silent boat, the renamed Catamaran, the brother who came back alone, Miles Debord told someone what he said had happened out on the water. He told his girlfriend. And this is the only account that exists of that voyage. There were no other survivors. So everything you're about to hear is Miles's version. Secondhand by his account, it was an accident that spiraled. He said he and his brother got into a fight. Serena tried to break it up and was knocked down, hitting her head and died. Miles said that when the skipper, Bertrand, wanted to turn the boat around and report her death, Bison killed him. And he said that when his brother came at him, Miles shot Bison in self defense. Then he said he weighted all three bodies and dropped them into the ocean. Then sailed back to Tahiti alone. That was Miles story. The FBI did not believe it. Agents had examined the boat and the agent who supervised the Case said the forensic evidence simply didn't match that account, that there was, in his words, just no way it could have happened like that. And the questions piled up fast. If three people died the way Debord described, why had he bought a set of weights along the way? Why dump all three bodies in the middle of the Pacific where they'd never be found? Why the patched bullet holes? Why repaint and rename the boat? Why steal his dead brother's identity to cash in on his money? Investigators kept turning up details that didn't fit a tragic accident either. Before Miles brought the boat in, he'd spent close to a week on a nearby island with his girlfriend. And when she asked where Bison and Serena were, he told her that they were off on another island. The papers re registering the catamaran had also been signed with an alias, one that wasn't his name or his brother's. And a witness had watched Miles toss a set of bags into the trash bags investigators would later pull back out. There was the matter of that final phone call, too. On July 8, the boat's satellite phone had connected to a woman Miles had befriended back in New Zealand. Placed, the FBI came to believe, right around the time the three of them died. Whatever was happening on board, Miles said nothing about it. He just talked as if it were any other day at Sea. The FBI's conclusion, working alongside French authorities, was blunt. Bison Deli, Serena Carlin and Bertrand Saldo were most likely murdered, and the evidence suggested it had been planned. But Miles Debord never had to answer a single one of those questions. After his release in Phoenix, he crossed the border into Mexico. And in mid September he was found unconscious on a bench overlooking the beach in Tijuana. He deliberately overdosed on insulin, which he usually used to help with his diabetes. By the time he was found, his brain had gone too long without oxygen. He never Woke up. On September 27, 2002, Miles Debord died in a California hospital. His mother had kept vigil at his bedside, although because he was under arrest, even as he lay in a coma, she wasn't even allowed to hold his hand. Whatever else Miles Debord knew about that voyage died there with him. No bodies were ever recovered. No one was ever charged. The case simply closed. But a closed case is not the same as a finished story. And at the center of this one were three people. Serena Carlin, who fell in love and left her whole life behind to sail the world with the man she loved, Bertrand Saldo, a captain who, by Miles Debord's own telling died because he wanted to do the right thing and report a death. And by Sandelli himself, a man who walked away from fame and fortune because he wanted more than anything to be free. Out on the open water, out on the open ocean, the sea itself swallowed the evidence. Our next traveler stepped onto a ship with 2,000 other people on board, and somehow no one would even admit that she was gone foreign. We've all been there. You look up. Suddenly life has thrown so much at you that your to do list is completely out of control. For me, it was last month when I moved and I needed to install a cabinet in my bathroom and fix a broken light fixture. I knew just where to turn. 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The Echoes of History podcast has set sail to the Caribbean for a special series all about the golden age of piracy. We'll bust myths about Blackbeard and Buried Treasure, we'll chart the remarkable rise of the pirate republic, and we'll parlay with the makers of Assassin's Creed, Black Flag, resynced about how true to history the game really is. Listen to Echoes of History on your podcast platform of choice. No treasure map required.
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Our next destination is a cruise ship bound for Alaska and a disappearance the cruise line seemed determined to ignore. In late August of 2004, a 40 year old woman named Marion Carver boarded a seven day cruise out of Seattle headed up the coast toward Alaska. The ship was called the Mercury, operated by Celebrity Cruises, which is owned by Royal Caribbean. By every description, Marian was a vivid person. A red haired poet, a trained investment banker, the mother of a 13 year old daughter who was staying with her father, Marion's ex husband in England. Marion was the kind of woman people remembered. At 40, she was living life on her own terms, between jobs, supported by her own investments, free to come and go as she pleased. A trip to Alaska on her own was exactly the kind of thing she might do. And before she left on her cruise, she told almost no one she was going. Marion boarded in Seattle alongside 2,000 others on August 27, 2004. Her cabin steward, the crew member who looked after her room, thought she seemed relaxed and easy, looking forward to the trip. Marian didn't feel like going to the dining room that first night, so the steward brought her room service. He did the same the second night, bringing her a couple of sandwiches. That second night, August 28, 2004, was the last time anyone is known to have seen Marion Carver alive. Over the next five days, the Mercury kept to its schedule. Stops in Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan, then across the Canadian border at Prince Rupert. Marion didn't get off at any of them after August 28th. She never used the little onboard card that serves as a passenger's ID and bar tab. She never bought so much as a cup of coffee, at least electronically. Marion Carver had simply stopped existing somewhere after that second night. And the only person who seemed to notice was the man who cleaned her room. The next morning, August 29, the steward let himself into Marion's cabin and noticed her bed hadn't been slept in. Everything she owned was still there. Her clothes, her bag, even her only pair of shoes. But she left behind a generous tip and a sealed envelope. He did exactly what you'd hope someone would do. He reported it. He told his supervisor that the woman in that cabin seemed to have vanished. And then he told him again. By his account, he reported Marion missing every single day for the rest of the cruise. Five days in a row. And every day he was waved off. At one point, his supervisor told the steward, in so many words to just do his job and forget about it. To put her belongings in a bag and store them in the supervisor's locker. Then he'd take care of the rest. So that's what happened. When the Mercury docked in Vancouver, Canada, at the end of the cruise, Marion's things were boxed up. Most of her belongings were Given away to charity. Her purse with her papers and her keys inside was locked away. No report was filed, no call was made to the police, and no one contacted her family, who had no idea that she'd gone on a cruise in the first place. While Marion was traveling, her teenage daughter couldn't reach her, and she got worried. So she told her grandfather, Kendall carver. And on September 7, 2000, four days after the ship had already docked and emptied out, Kendall reported Marion missing. When a detective went through Marion's credit card records, they finally figured out that she'd gone on a cruise to Alaska and hadn't come back. So Kendall did the obvious thing. He called the cruise line. It took them three days just to confirm that Marion had been on board. By the time they did, 26 days had passed since she'd vanished. And what they told him he could barely believe. They acknowledged that Marion had stopped using her cabin after the second night. But they suggested that really wasn't so unusual. People wandered off, People bunked with friends. But the key difference between those cases and Marion's, they usually got off at the end of the cruise. As Kendall later put it, quote, in effect, marion vanished from the earth. End quote. After he found out what had happened, Kendall took matters into his own hands. He hired a private investigator, and all told, spent more than $75,000 of his own money trying to find out what had happened to his daughter. The investigator was allowed onto the ship, but that was about as far as it went. He wasn't allowed to interview the crew, including the steward who'd cared for Marion's room. He was denied access to the ship's security camera system entirely. In his own words. He left with a report that was empty of content and full of questions. It took subpoenas and court ordered depositions before the Carvers finally started to learn the truth. At one point, Kendall went straight over the company's head, sending the depositions directly, directly to its board of directors and its chief executive, laying out in plain terms what was starting to look to him like a cover up. No one on the board wrote back. It was only after that, and after months, that the company finally began turning over its own internal documents, papers its own staff had written about his daughter's case. And it was worse than they'd feared. They learned that the steward had reported Marion missing every day and that his supervisor had told him to drop it. And they learned that once the family started asking hard questions, the cruise line had quietly held an internal hearing and fired that supervisor. And then never mentioned it to them. By the time the FBI wanted to speak with him, he was gone. Off to who knows which ship. The sealed envelope from Marion's cabin and the cash she'd left behind went with him. And then there was the footage. For months, the family had been told the ship's security cameras recorded over themselves every couple of weeks, so there was nothing left to see. But the cruise line's own records told a different story. The cameras actually ran on a 30 day cycle. And that footage had been reviewed on day 26. Which meant that somewhere at some point, there had very likely been video of Marion Carver. And the family had been told it didn't exist. For its part, the cruise line eventually offered an explanation for what happened to her. They said Marion had most likely taken her own own life, gone over the side into the water. They pointed to a difficult period in her past. In the years before the cruise, after a divorce, Marion had been through a dark stretch. And at her lowest, the cruise line said she'd once spoken about ending her life. To them, that was reason enough to believe she might step off the side of a ship in the middle of the night. Her family didn't accept it. They asked the obvious things. Why buy a round trip ticket if you don't plan to come home? Why did the stewards say she seemed perfectly fine? And if that sealed envelope was a goodbye note, why not simply show it to them? The honest answer is that no one knows. Marion Carver has never been found. As of this recording, there's still no answer to what happened to her. Whether it was an accident or something darker or the ending, the cruise line suggested, the case is simply open. But her father refused to let it disappear the way his daughter had. Out of his own grief, Kendall Carver founded an organization called International Cruise Victims, dedicated to families like his. And he took the fight all the way to the United States Congress, which started looking into just how often people go missing at sea and how rarely anyone is held to account when they do. Because that was the thread running underneath it all. As one congressman put it, a cruise ship is basically a small floating town, except this town has no local police. The cameras quietly tape over themselves, and the company that runs everything has every reason to keep things quiet. Put 2,000 strangers on the water together, and you've created a place where a person really can simply vanish. And the numbers were not small. Over just a few years, in the mid-2000s, roughly two dozen passengers vanished from cruise ships. And that was before you counted the accidents or the people who went over the side after having too much to drink. By some estimates, around 10Americans disappear from cruises every single year. The hearings Kendall Carver helped set in motion would eventually push through a federal law, one that finally required cruise lines to report crimes and disappearances, to build their railings higher, and to install technology that could detect a passenger going overboard. Marion Carver's family spent years just trying to get a cruise line to admit she was gone. Our last traveler died within a day of stepping on board in front of dozens of people, and her family would spend nearly a decade fighting for someone, anyone to answer for it.
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Our last stop is one more cruise ship and a death that happened in front of dozens of people, but still took years to answer for. A quick warning before we go on this part of the story involves a drug related death and sexual assault, so please listen with care. Diane Brimble was 42 years old, a divorced mother of three from Brisbane, Australia. She'd saved for two years for the trip she was about to take, a 10 day South Pacific cruise. It was the kind of trip she'd scrimped and planned for the once in a while splurge of a woman who'd always put her family first. And she'd brought her youngest daughter along to share it with her, along with her sister and her niece. On September 23, 2002, Diane and her daughter boarded a P and O cruise ship called the Pacific sky in Sydney. That first evening, there was the usual sail away celebration, music, a few drinks, the ship pulling out of the harbor. After dinner, the rest of her family turned in early, but Diane wasn't ready for the night to end. She stayed out, and at the ship's nightclub, she fell in with a group of men who were traveling together from the city of Adelaide. There were eight of them altogether. A group of mates on a cruise. As the first night stretched on, Diane moved between the ship's bars and its nightclub and at some point made her way down to a cabin on a lower deck, one shared by four of the men. The corridor cameras caught her going in. What happened inside that cabin over the hours that followed would take the better part of a decade to even partly reconstruct. Early the next morning, September 24, 2002, less than 24 hours after she'd stepped on board, Diane Brimble was found dead. She was on the floor of a cabin that belonged to four of those men. At first, the ship's staff were told she'd had a heart attack, but that wasn't what killed her. An autopsy found that Diane had died from a combination of alcohol and a heavy overdose of a drug called gamma hydroxybutyrate, better known as ghb, or fantasy. It's a sedative, and it's been used as a date rape drug. The amount in Diane's system was enormous, around three times what a recreational user would take. A doctor would later compare its effect on her body to a heroin overdose and testify that without medical help, she had almost no chance of surviving it. What the investigation slowly uncovered about that cabin only made it worse. The men had spent the early hours of the cruise propositioning and harassing women on board. And as Diane lay dying on that cabin floor, the men in the room photographed her rather than rushing to get her help. Then, after she was dead, Diane's belongings were moved and the cabin was disturbed before police could ever properly examine it. Even the basics fell apart. After Diane's body was taken from the cabin, the crew posted a guard at the door. And yet the men somehow got back inside. And the scene the police would need was compromised before anyone trained had a chance to work it. This was a Floating crime scene with no real police on board, staffed by a crew with no real training for what had happened. By the time the Pacific sky reached port and detectives could finally step on, crucial hours and crucial evidence were already gone. And then there was the camera. One of the men had handed a memory stick into the ship as lost property. And at first glance, it looked blank, wiped clean. But forensic experts managed to Recover more than 150 deleted photographs from it. Those images may be the closest thing that exists to a record of what really happened to Diane in that cabin. To this day, they have never been made public. And here's where Dianne Brimbles case becomes something more than a tragedy at sea. Because getting anyone to answer for what happened to her took the better part of a decade. The investigation was criticized almost from the start. A formal coronial inquest, that's Australia's process for examining a suspicious death, didn't even open until March of 2006. That's three and a half years after Diane died. The eight men from Adelaide were named as persons of interest. And as the inquest dragged on, it pulled back the curtain on a side of cruising. The industry did not want the public to see a floating party culture where for some passengers almost anything went. By the time the inquest opened, police had been listening to the men's phone calls and had come away convinced the group was covering for one another. Counsel assisting the coroner told the court flatly that the men's accounts could not be believed. And still the inquest ground on adjourning, resuming witness after witness, year after year, with Diane's mother and sister flying down from Brisbane to sit through it and her former husband, Mark Brimble returning again and again to the same courtroom, determined that someone would have to account for how she died. In 2008, prosecutors charged one of the men, Mark Wilhelm, with manslaughter and with supplying a prohibited drug. Two of the other men were charged with trying to obstruct the investigation. Both of those men would later plead guilty to covering up what they knew, and both avoided prison, one with a suspected sentence, the other with a good behavior bond. Meanwhile, Mark Wilhelm went to trial in 2009, and the jury couldn't reach a verdict. But when prosecutors brought the case back the next year, there was a strange, telling moment. Wilhelm offered to plead guilty to having caused Diane to take the drug. And the judge refused to accept it, saying, in effect that he couldn't let a man plead guilty to something the evidence didn't show he had actually done it. Was a glimpse of how thin the case had become. From there, the case came apart. The manslaughter charge against Wilhelm was withdrawn. The judge said there was simply no evidence that he'd known he was putting Diane's life at risk. In the end, Wilhelm pleaded guilty only to supplying the drug, and the judge gave him no penalty at all, saying that the man had already, in his words, suffered enough. The judge went further, warning that public opinion about the case had been colored by prejudice and hysteria. So in a criminal court, no one was ever convicted of causing Diane Brimble's death. But there was one more voice still to be heard, and it landed differently. Later, in 2010, the coroner finally delivered her findings, and she did not hedge. She ruled that Diane Brimble had been, in her words, unknowingly drugged for the sexual gratification of others. She criticized Mark Wilhelm for failing to tell the Cruz's medical staff that Diane had taken the drug, which she said may have cost Diane her best chance of survival. And she criticized the New South Wales police for holding back evidence from the inquest, calling it an impasse that, in her words, had been crippling to the search for the truth. But even though many felt like justice wasn't served in this case, Diane Brimbles name did not disappear. What happened to her forced a reckoning in Australia. Cruise companies tightened security, added cameras, even bringing drug detection dogs to the gangway, and cracked down on the anything goes culture that had made a ship feel like a place beyond the reach of any rules. For a long time, a cruise had felt like international waters in the fullest sense, a world outside the ordinary rules, where what happened at sea could be left there. Dianne Brimble's death was part of what finally ended that P and O eventually settled with her family and her former husband. Mark Brimble channeled his grief into something, something bigger, becoming an advocate for cruise passengers and joining the very same organization that a grieving father named Kendall Carver had founded. An ocean away. So that's where we end. Three journeys out on the water, three families left holding the same impossible silence. On a sailboat in the South Pacific. The ocean itself hid the evidence. Three people gone, and the only man who could explain it took the answers to his grave. On a cruise to Alaska, a company hid the truth. A woman vanished, and the people in charge boxed up her belongings and looked away. And on a cruise out of Sydney, the answers came too late to be justice. A mother drugged without her knowledge, and no one ever held to account for her death. We think of the sea as the ultimate escape. All that space, all that quiet, the rest of the world finally out of reach. But that's exactly the problem out there. When something goes wrong, there's no one on the corner to call, no camera that remembers, no neighbor who heard. There's just the water and the distance. And a silence that the people left behind can spend the rest of their lives trying to fill. Because out on the open ocean, when the worst happens, you are very much on your own. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Be sure to come back next Sunday for the next stop of the On Deadly Destinations Episode three Into the Wild, where we leave the water behind for the deep wilderness, the jungles, the forests and the remote trails where the adventure of a lifetime turned into a nightmare. And you'll still get all our normal episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original power powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House. Plus, you'll get every episode of this show and the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early, plus at least two bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts tap try free at the top of the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes show page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzofsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Nicolette Tavolaro, Kaylee Pine and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.
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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and A and E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast: Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes
Host: Vanessa Richardson
Episode Date: July 19, 2026
Series: “Deadly Destinations” Summer Series (Episode 2 of 4)
In this gripping installment of the “Deadly Destinations” series, host Vanessa Richardson examines a chilling truth: the ocean, a symbol of escape and tranquility, can become the perfect place for secrets, disappearances, and deadly crimes. She unpacks three haunting real-life cases where the open sea’s isolation provided both opportunity and impunity for tragedy and misdeeds, leaving justice struggling to reach survivors and families left behind.
Bison’s Search for Freedom:
Vanessa on Dele’s decision to quit basketball:
“But he seemed to want more out of life...he finally seemed to have found a version of his life that fit him.” (04:40)
Family Tension:
Estrangement and unresolved money conflicts between Bison and Miles escalate amid the isolation of the open sea.
Crucial Quote:
On Miles’s ever-changing stories and failed cover-up:
“If three people died the way Debord described, why had he bought a set of weights along the way? Why dump all three bodies in the middle of the Pacific where they'd never be found? Why the patched bullet holes? Why repaint and rename the boat? Why steal his dead brother's identity to cash in on his money?” (11:25)
Reflection on Ocean Secrecy:
“Out on the open water, out on the open ocean, the sea itself swallowed the evidence.” (15:00)
On Corporate Evasion:
“At one point, his supervisor told the steward, in so many words, to just do his job and forget about it.” (18:34)
Hard-Hitting Quote from the Family:
Kendall Carver:
“In effect, Marion vanished from the earth.” (20:41)
Systemic Failure Highlighted:
“A cruise ship is basically a small floating town, except this town has no local police. The cameras quietly tape over themselves, and the company that runs everything has every reason to keep things quiet.” (25:34)
Lasting Impact:
On Investigative Incompetence:
“Even the basics fell apart. After Diane's body was taken from the cabin, the crew posted a guard at the door. And yet the men somehow got back inside.” (31:14)
Coroner’s Unflinching Finding:
“She ruled that Diane Brimble had been, in her words, unknowingly drugged for the sexual gratification of others.” (37:25)
On Justice and Reform:
Vanessa notes:
“Diane Brimble’s death was part of what finally ended that. P&O eventually settled with her family...what happened to her forced a reckoning in Australia.” (38:59)
The Ocean as Both Sanctuary and Crime Scene
Vanessa concludes:
“We think of the sea as the ultimate escape. All that space, all that quiet, the rest of the world finally out of reach. But that's exactly the problem out there. When something goes wrong, there's no one on the corner to call, no camera that remembers, no neighbor who heard. There's just the water and the distance. And a silence that the people left behind can spend the rest of their lives trying to fill. Because out on the open ocean, when the worst happens, you are very much on your own.” (39:27)
Systemic Vulnerabilities:
Each case reveals how isolation, loose jurisdiction, and insufficient oversight at sea create perfect conditions for cover-ups, mishandled evidence, and missed justice. Families are often left to seek answers—and systemic change—on their own.
This episode of “Deadly Destinations” drives home the reality that for all its romance, the high seas can be a deadly frontier—where the remoteness that promises relaxation and escape can also offer cover for those with darker intentions, and too often, leave those seeking justice adrift.