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Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
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Dish Network Advertiser
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Robert Smigel
some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
- [00:53]
Ryder Strong and Will Friedle
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [00:56]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Dr. Maya Shankar
Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.
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Ryder Strong and Will Friedle
I wish that I hadn't resisted for
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Dr. Maya Shankar
so long the need to change.
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Richard McLean Smith
We have to be willing to live
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Ryder Strong and Will Friedle
with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.
- [01:26]
Richard McLean Smith
You can have opinions, you can have like a strong hands.
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Podcast Announcer
And then there's your body having its own program.
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Dr. Maya Shankar
Listen to A Slight Change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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TikTok Advertiser
Craving something specific, from global flavors to viral snacks, TikTok has it all. If you can dream it, you can make it right at home. Find your next favorite dish on TikTok.
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Richard McLean Smith
Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here to let you know that I now have a Substack page. If you enjoy Unexplained and want to go deeper into the world of the show, I've created a new space for all the bits that don't quite fit into the podcast, including the unexplained addendum, a weekly companion piece to each new episode. Expect essays that lean more academic and analytical explorations of folklore, psychology, and the shadowy corners of history that have shaped the stories you hear on the show. But it's also a home for something more personal my fiction, my strange amusings, and the odd fragments that don't belong anywhere else. Search for Richard McLean Smith on Substack or go to richardmclaimsmith.substack.com to find out more and subscribe. If you'd like a little bit more of me and unexplained in your week, join me on Substack and let's keep exploring the unknown together. New Writing Most Tuesdays, It was a glorious autumn day in Sydney, Australia. As Narsi Hyang lent on the rail overlooking the indoor saltwater swimming pool near Coogee Beach. Young worked at the Sydney Morning Herald, but On Anzac Day, April 25, 1935, he was taking some time out to enjoy the busy public holiday. Earlier, the pool had been bustling with visitors, although no one was there to swim themselves. Now, as late afternoon sunshine slanted across the water, Young was one of only a few visitors left staring at the reason why. A 14 and a half foot long tiger shark. There'd been eight shark attacks around Sydney in the past 12 months, six of them fatal. In one case, 17 year old Frank Reilly had his leg torn off at the hip by a shark that, as onlookers described, had shaken him back and forth like a dog shaking a rabbit. A beach inspector eventually managed to pull the horrifically injured Riley to shore while fellow bathers beat the water to keep the shark at bay. But it was too late. The young man bled to death at the surf clubhouse while a horrified public watched the shark cruising up and down the shallows in the bloodied water. Sydney's slaughterhouses and sewage system had been dumping their waste directly into the ocean, which seemed to be attracting tiger sharks as well as bull sharks and great whites. Close to the city's most popular swimming beaches of manly Bondi and Cudgee, the public were equally terrified and fascinated, with many becoming increasingly eager to catch a glimpse of the so called man eating monsters. And so, with business being slow at Cudgee's indoor swimming pool, its owner, Charlie Hobson, hatched a cunning plan to try and catch one and enlisted his brother Bert, an expert angler, to help. A week before Anzac Day, Bert and his son Ron put out baiting lines at Maroubra Point, a well known shark hotspot just south of Coogee. The following morning they found the head of a six foot shark clenched onto one of the hooks. Tangled up alongside it was a much bigger tiger shark, which had evidently eaten most of the smaller shark, but had itself been caught in the process. It was exactly what they were looking for. With the help of ropes and several other men, the shark offered no resistance as the Hobsons hauled it out of the water along the beach and finally lifted it into the swimming pool. After its 45 minute ordeal, the shark was barely alive. It remained that way for most of the day until a pump was brought in to aerate the water, at which point it seemed to perk up a little. But on top of the shock of being pulled out of the sea and placed in the swimming pool, something clearly wasn't right with it. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. A week after its capture, there'd been little improvement in the tiger shark's health. It was still despondent and barely eating, but it had certainly brought in the tourists. For Herald journalist Narcisse Young, however, there was little to enjoy. Watching the thing edge listlessly from one side of the pool to the other. After watching it for 15 minutes, it was just about to leave when the shark suddenly began to swim, frantically bumping into the sides and thrashing its tail. After beating the water into a foam, the shark then suddenly swam around in a tight circle before sinking to the bottom of the pool. Young stared on, enwrapped, as a cloudy plume of brown sludge rose up from the depths. Then a terrible stench hit his nostrils. Emerging from out of the sludge, Young could see all manner of strange putrid things. Half a rat, chunks of fish, feathers even. But the strangest thing of all was the long, pale piece of meat that rose up in the centre of it all. A human arm. Sometimes called the trashcans of the sea. Tiger sharks have one of the most varied diets of all shark species. As well as eating a wide variety of marine creatures, thanks to the endless waste we produce, they've even been known to consume our rubbish. Thankfully, tiger sharks have a nifty way of dealing with anything their stomach doesn't quite agree with. By pushing it out of its mouth to eject its contents. In a feat known as gastric aversion, the stomachs of tiger sharks have on occasion been found to contain some very strange items. You might remember the scene in Jaws where a tiger shark is autopsied by a marine biologist, played by Richard Dreyfus. He finds a Louisiana state vehicle license plate in its stomach. The scene is much closer to fact than fiction. Along with license plates, objects found in the stomach of tiger sharks have also included entire dogs with collars and leads still attached, fur coats and even an entire suit of armor, including the helmet, according to one 16th century report. And, of course, human body parts, too, have been found, much like the arm that appeared at the Cudjee swimming pool on that strange day in April 1935. It had been a quiet Anzac Day for detectives at the police station on the hill above Cugi beach when the phone rang late in the afternoon on being told what had just happened at the swimming pool, two officers were promptly dispatched to investigate. Arriving at the pool, they found Bert and Charlie Hobson attempting to clean up some of the stinking debris. With their help, the officers fished the arm out of the water. There were several striking things about. Was deemed to have belonged to a male and was in a remarkably good state of preservation considering where it had come from. So good that the fingerprints were still clearly visible. It also bore a striking tattoo just below the forearm. Two boxes facing each other, outlined in blue and wearing red boxing shorts. There was one other curious feature. A length of rope had been tied around the wrist. Once the detectives established unequivocally that the arm had come out of the shark and hadn't just been thrown into the tank at some other time, an officer was sent for from the fingerprint branch. He delicately cut the skin from the fingertips and took it away for identification. The following day, at the morgue down at Sydney's circular quay, the arm was examined in greater detail. A pungent blend of formaldehyde fumes and rotting flesh hung heavily in the air, Oblivious or perhaps accustomed to the unpleasant odours. Dr. Arthur Palmer, an experienced government medical officer, along with a shark bite specialist, bent over the severed arm and peered closely at its broken and mangled skin. It had been assumed that the unfortunate owner of the arm had fallen victim to yet another shark attack. There were numerous small puncture wounds which had likely been made by the tiger shark when it ate the arm. But as Palmer and the bite expert pored over the wound where the arm had been torn from the body, both agreed there were none of the ragged tears or bite marks you'd expect to find from a shark shark attack. What they found instead was the arm had been sliced off cleanly with a single bladed implement, meaning it had been removed before it ended up as chum. It was later speculated that the arm had likely been eaten first by the smaller shark that the Hobson brothers caught before that, and its stomach contents were in turn eaten by the larger tiger shark. To help identify the man to whom the arm had once belonged, police put out a description of the distinctive tattoo in the press and ran the prints through their database. It didn't take long to get a result.
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Robert Smigel
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
- [12:19]
Ryder Strong and Will Friedle
Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.
- [12:22]
Robert Smigel
Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ryder Strong and Will Friedle
Hey, everyone, it's Ryder Strong and Will Friedle from Pod World. And now the Pod meets Twirled podcast, where two men who were completely clueless to reality TV who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, Traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So, yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of Survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just gonna remind you, I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like yeah, just because we. Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion of the 50th season. From the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists to a bunch of ha oo ha ha ooh ha oo. Again, we are experts, so make sure to tune into Pod meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to Pod Meets Twirl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Podcast Announcer
Agency the ability to know that we're the experts in our own body on the podcast.
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Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax
Cultivating her space. Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax create a space where black women can show up fully and be heard.
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Podcast Announcer
I wholeheartedly think, you know, you hit 30, you shouldn't have to share a room with anybody.
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Mental Health Advocate
From navigating friendships and healing to setting boundaries and prioritizing your mental health, these are real, honest conversations we don't always get to have out loud.
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Podcast Announcer
Totally unreasonable with different parts of life, right? Like, oh, have all three meals and make sure you're mindful during all of them. Absolutely not. During one meal, I'm standing realistic. I'm standing and handing my children food.
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Mental Health Advocate
Because healing, empowerment and resilience aren't just ideas, they're practices. And this Mental Health Awareness Month, there's no better time to pour back into yourself.
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Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax
Listen to Cultivating her space on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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AT&T Business Advertiser
Before we had AT&T business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route a 14 point turn. An influencer even livestreamed the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business Wireless routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though at&t business Wireless connecting changes everything.
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Richard McLean Smith
In a modest cottage in a suburb in Northern Sydney, a Mrs. Malloy recognized the description of the tattoo as one that her son in law also had. She rushed to tell her daughter Gladys, whose husband had been missing for three weeks. He had supposedly gone to Cronulla, 15 miles south of Sydney on a fishing trip with a friend, but had so far failed to return. At first Gladys was in denial. Then her brother in law came to call. He had already spoken to the investigators who'd shown him a photograph of the tattoo. He was adamant it was his brother. His and Gladys worst fears were confirmed when the fingerprint check came back with a positive match too, because the arm's owner had a police record. His name was James Smith, a 45 year old from the suburb of Gladesville, Known to his family and acquaintances as Jim or Jimmy, the man had been a builder and a keen amateur boxer. More recently he tried to invest in property but had fallen on hard times. He had been fingerprinted three years earlier after being charged with a minor offence. Those records also contained a description of the tattoo on his left arm. Two boxers outlined in blue, wearing red boxing shorts. But this was no simple case of a man falling overboard while fishing, then being attacked and partly eaten by a shark. The events that had led to the arm being in the shark's stomach had begun many months earlier, in the early predawn light one April morning the previous year, a mile offshore from Terrigal, a small fishing town on the central coast of New South Wales, a man glanced around the beautiful yacht he was aboard. He took in the Pathfinder's fine lines, polished walnut interiors and bespoke furniture for one last time. Then, as the yacht bobbed gently in the water, he went below decks with a hammer and smashed the toilet's water pipes. A little while later, the Pathfinder was low in the water and listing heavily to one side. Wishing that the yacht would sink a little faster, the man climbed into the dinghy he'd prepared when out of the dawn gloom, a ship loomed. It was a coal transporter bound for Sydney. When its skipper spotted the stricken yacht, he drew his ship closer and called out to the man in the small dinghy who seemed to be rowing away from it towards shore. He asked if he needed any help, but the man just kept rowing, didn't row. Reply. Perplexed, the coal ship's captain continued on to Sydney where later that day he reported the incident to the police. As he tried to get away, the man in the dinghy cursed his bad luck. Being seen leaving the yacht was not part of his plan. As he rode, his muscles flexed, rippling the skin which on his left arm bore a singular tattoo. Two boxers facing each other, outlined in blue and wearing red boxing shorts. The man was of course, James Smith. Jim had fallen in with a shady Sydney based boat builder and speedboat racer called Reginald Holmes. He had become involved in criminal activities including using boats to coordinate drug drops off the coast of Sydney. The plan for this latest venture that he'd undertaken for Holmes was to sink the Pathfinder, then claim it was an accident in order to collect the insurance money for it. But things were not going to plan. As Smith continued to row, a strong wind from the south east picked up and with it came a heavy swell. It took all of Jim's strength and four exhausting hours to make it to shore. Staggering into Terrigal police station to report his concocted story of how the Pathfinder had sunk, Smith made a serious error. Perhaps because he was so tired. Instead of concealing the name of the yacht's owner, he asked a policeman to dial the owner's number for him, then immediately called him Mr. Holmes. When he picked up a short time later, the police were alerted to the report made by the coal ship captain, along with an inquiry from a shipping insurance company about the suspicious sinking of a yacht. They'd just received a claim on joining the dots. The police called Reginald Holmes and his business partner Albert Stanart, who also had a boat building business on Sydney Harbour, in for questioning. Jim Smith was questioned too. Charges of attempting to defraud the insurance company were eventually dropped, but Smith's relationship with Holmes had soured. Determined to push on with his criminal activities, Smith turned to the man who seemed to be his one remaining friend, Patrick Paddy Brady, who he described to his wife as Australia's cleverest forgery. Brady invited Smith to join him on his next criminal venture, a convoluted scheme that involved using the Pathfinder sinking scam to blackmail money from Reginald Holmes. Brady would forge checks that appeared to have been issued by Holmes and Holmes felt that he had no choice but allow them to be cashed. Terrified that the investigation into his insurance scam would be reopened if he didn't go comply. But Brady got greedy. As well. As confronting Holmes directly to extort more money from him, Paddy Brady brought a third small time crook into the mix, a man named Stanley Watson. Watson was soon caught and identified in a police line up as the person cashing the forged checks. Watson soon came to suspect with good reason that he'd been shopped. As it turned out, in exchange for immunity from prosecution in the scuttling of the Pathfinder, James Smith had become a police informant. The next few months were a dangerous time for Smith when Watson was convicted of forgery and sentenced to three years hard labour. News of the botched police Pathfinder job along with rumours that Smyth might now be a police informant spread through Sydney's criminal underworld. One night Smith came home drunk, bleeding from a head wound that was bad enough to need stitches. His wife Gladys asked what had happened only for Smyth to claim that he'd fallen and cut himself on a broken bottle. But Gladys wasn't convinced. A few days later on April 7th, 1935, James Smith walked his wife down the street to where she caught the tram to work. He told her he was going to Cronulla in South Sydney for a week to stay at a cottage that Paddy Brady had rented for them both. They planned to go fishing, he said. Then he and Gladys said their goodbyes and waved to each other as Gladys tram trundled away. It was the last time that Gladys would ever see her husband. Later that afternoon Paddy and Jim were seen drinking in the bar at Cronulla Cecil Hotel. The next day a taxi driver was hailed by a dishevelled looking man who seemed to be strangely on edge. The man asked the driver to wait for him outside a second hand furniture store before emerging a few minutes later with a large metal trunk and a mattress. The driver was then instructed to deliver the man to the cottage where he was staying. A day or so later the landlord of the cottage that Paddy Brady had rented for himself and James came to inspect the property and get it ready for his next set of guests. Weirdly he found that the mattress had been replaced and the walls scrubbed scrupulously clean. When James Smith's arm was found, Paddy Brady was immediately brought in for questioning. Under police interrogation Paddy Brady wove an elaborate story which implicated Reginald Holmes in Smith's disappearance. Brady claimed that after dealings between the two men had turned sour, Holmes decided to do away with Smith. But having by then identified Brady as the man who Smyth had stayed with in Cronulla and who had also taken the taxi to buy the replacement mattress, the police surmised that he had murdered Smith in the rental property and had been forced to replace the bed to cover his tracks. On May 19, despite no sign of Smith's body save for his arm, Paddy Brady was charged with his murder. But the police still wanted to speak to Reginald Holmes. Early the following day, a dense fog hung over Sydney Harbour. Around 7am Reginald Holmes, dressed in an overcoat, went down to Stannard's Wharf and borrowed a small speedboat from a man named Hans. Haas. Could tell that Holmes was drunk but was happy to let him take the boat. With that, Holmes gunned the engines and sped off into the harbour before coming to a standstill just offshore from a place called Piper Point. As the fog slowly lifted with curls of it drifting across the water, Holmes cut the engine then pulled a half empty bottle of brandy from his overcoat bottle pocket and gulped down its remaining contents. Then he took a revolver out of another pocket, pointed it at his forehead and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the gunshot resounded through the mist followed by a loud splash as Holmes tumbled over the side. For a moment there was nothing but an eerie silence. Then frantic splashing sounds came from beside the speedboat as Holmes thrashing arms, then his head breached the water's surface. He had survived his suicide attempt. The gun had been loaded with cheap nickel based bullets and the shot hadn't been strong enough to penetrate bone. Instead the bullet had become embedded in Holmes forehead. Immersion in the freezing water had brought the stunned man back to consciousness. After hauling himself back into the boat, Reginald Holmes sat dazed, sopping wet and cold with a terrible headache. His acquaintance Hart, who happened to be out in one of his work boats, noticed the speedboat bobbing on the water in the distance. Drawing closer, it was shocked to see Holmes hunched over the wheel, bleeding profusely from a head wound and only semi conscious. Taking the speedboat in tow, Haas returned to the wharf where he jumped out and hurried to the local water police to get help. Holmes had remained throughout, slumped at the wheel of the speedboat. But when he saw the police approaching he sprung into action and took off across the harbour at speed. The water police followed in hot pursuit. For four hours the police chased Holmes around Sydney Harbour. Onlookers watched amazed as the fugitive crouched over the wheel with blood streaming from his head, twisted and turned his speedboat in and out of bays and coves, dodging buoys and jetties. Several times he made sharp U turns and sped toward the police at full throttle as if about to ram them. Seemingly convinced that he could evade them with his superior skills and Perhaps he might have, had he not run out of fuel. When he was finally apprehended, Holmes was interrogated for three hours with the bullet still lodged in his head. His account of events over the previous weeks were very different to Paddy Brady's. According to Holmes, during that time that Brady had relentlessly blackmailed and threatened him. On the morning of April 9, Holmes alleged that Brady turned up at his office with a canvas bag and told him to look inside it. When he did, he saw that it contained James Smith's severed arm. Claiming that he'd killed Smith, Brady made it fairly obvious that if Holmes was not careful, he might end up the same way. This seemed to explain to the police why Holmes had tried to kill himself to avoid the misery of being tortured to death by Brady. Weighing the evidence, the police decided that Brady was the murderer and Holmes was released on the condition that he would testify at the inquest into Smith's death and Brady's subsequent murder trial. But Reginald Holmes would never see the inside of the courtroom. On the afternoon of June 11th, Reginald Holmes visited his bank, where he withdrew £500 in cash, roughly 50,000 Australian dollars in today's money. That evening, he went out in his car. The next morning, the same day he was due to testify at the inquest, he was found dead in his car from a gunshot to the head fired at close range. Was it suicide? Or had someone done the job for him? His withdrawal of the cash, along with forensic evidence, led the police to conclude that it was murder. But with Paddy Brady in custody, who else had wanted Holmes dead? Brady was now firmly in the frame for murder. But before he could go to trial, there was the inquest on the cause of James Smith's death. It was over in less than two days. The evidence against Brady was all circumstantial, and his defence lawyer, quoting historical precedents, successfully made the case that for someone to be charged with murder, there had to be a body, not just an arm. And so the inquest was quashed. Brady was tried for the murder in September that year. But with no body and only circumstantial evidence to go on, he was acquitted. Then, in November, based on fresh evidence, two new suspects were put on trial for Smith's murder. One of them was Albert Stanart, the longtime business associate of Reginald Holmes. Like Holmes, he too was a wealthy boat builder, rumoured to be involved in insurance fraud and drug smuggling. He was charged with the murder alongside John Patrick Strong, a docker who worked for him, but again, with little but circumstantial evidence and still no body. They were also acquitted. To this day, no conclusive evidence about who killed James Smith or Reginald Holmes has ever been found. They remain two of Australia's most intriguing and longest unsolved cases. And both they and and exactly how James Smith's tattooed, severed arm ended up in the stomach of a shark seemed destined to remain forever unexplained. This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard Maclean Smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me, Richard McLean Smith. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplainedpodcast.com and reach us online through X&BLUESKY@ unexplainedpod and facebook@facebook.com unexplainedpodcast. Sa. Sa.
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Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.