Cold Open And The Big Question

Speaker 3 0:02

Somewhere beyond the buffet, the pool deck, and the promise of paradise, something's gone terribly wrong. On Cruise Chip Killer, host Kathy and Geoff break down the latest cruise ship news. They dive into the remarkable cases from today and the past, separate what's known, what's disputed, and what remains unexplained. Through it all, they entertain one highly unofficial question. What if there is a cruise ship killer? The stories are real, the theory is not.

Rapid-Fire Cruise News And Mysteries

Speaker 0:50

Hi, Geoff

Speaker 4 0:51

Hey, if you do not have anything to drink, you need to fill whatever you have now. I'll pause. It's definitely a full beer show because we've got a lot on the agenda. All right, so Kath, let's go. I want to hear the latest news from your end.

Speaker 1:08

The cruise news, the last news.

Speaker 4 1:10

Yeah, like what's happening? Because we all know that's like non-stop action out there.

Speaker 1:14

Yeah. So I want you to know that before I would just keep track of, oh, this happened, this one thing happened one week, this other thing. I'm literally have a pad of paper now out every day. Every day. Oh, this happened today, next day, this happened. Sometimes there's two things in one day. And so by the time the two weeks goes by, I'm having to even cut some cruise news stories. There's so many of them.

Speaker 4 1:41

And you know what I do. I have uh an AI that's scheduled tasks to run and scour the web looking for news.

Speaker 1:47

Yes.

Speaker 4 1:48

And it came back this week and basically said, there's just too much to report.

Speaker 1:51

My mind is blown.

Speaker 4 1:53

I can't handle it all. I'm like, what do you mean you can't handle it all?

Speaker 1:56

Get back to work, AI.

Speaker 4 1:58

Yeah, come on, get back to work.

Speaker 1:59

All right. The first one I have is um about the Minnesota pastor who was on the Sun Princess to celebrate his son's wedding, and he had some kind of accident um in the pool, which caused a spinal cord injury, and he was found face down in the swimming pool. And I wanted to know, well, you know, the pools are full of people. Like, did anybody see it? How do you get a spinal cord injury falling into the pool? I don't know what happened. There's just so many questions.

Speaker 4 2:33

But this is Princess.

Speaker 2:34

Sun Princess.

Speaker 4 2:35

And we know what happens after 10 o'clock on a princess cruise.

Speaker 2:38

What?

Speaker 4 2:38

It's a ghost town.

Speaker 2:39

Yes. Oh, that's true. What if it was at night? I don't know what time of day it was, but it's not public record on if there were witnesses or what actually happened. And it was a Rome to Athens cruise, and this happened on day two of the cruise.

Speaker 4 2:59

Okay, take that back. A Rome to Athens cruise. I can't fathom it's empty at after ten.

Speaker 3:04

Probably not.

Speaker 4 3:05

No, right.

Speaker 3:06

So he they had to evacuate him off to Naples hospital and he had to have spinal surgery, and then he got taken to the U.S. but he died probably four days after that. Oh, so it's sad because you they were all on there to celebrate their son's wedding.

Speaker 4 3:23

But they don't know what caused the caused the injury?

Speaker 3:27

No.

Speaker 4 3:28

That's a mystery.

Speaker 3:29

So I want to follow that one in case there has to be an investigation. I just don't understand how you fall into a pool and get a spinal injury and and the reason why it won't say if there's witnesses. There's people everywhere by the pools.

Speaker 4 3:41

Clearly, CSK was not pushing hard enough.

Speaker 3:45

You think this is CSK?

Speaker 4 3:46

I don't know. That's that's the theme of this show, so who knows? Who knows, right? We don't know. We don't know. We don't know.

Speaker 3:52

We don't know what happened. We don't know, but attacking a pastor?

Speaker 4 3:56

Yeah, condolences to the family for sure. That's horrible.

Speaker 3:59

Yeah. So the second story: Alaska had a new $80 million cruise ship pier that just got destroyed in a fire on September 14th. That fire is under investigation. The Norwegian Jade was alongside when this started. So they kind of backed up a little and then were trying to help assist putting the fire out. They had, I think they have water guns up on the top levels, and they were spraying water down on the fire.

Speaker 2 4:30

Oh, cool.

Speaker 4:30

But got too intense, and so they had to back away out to, you know, see and just kind of look from afar. But the whole pier was destroyed. I mean, it's brand spanking new. So I don't know.

Speaker 4 4:44

No idea how it started?

Speaker 4:46

No, that's under investigation.

Speaker 4 4:48

Under investigation.

Speaker 4:49

Yeah.

Speaker 4 4:51

Hard to figure out like what the heck would start a fire on a pier.

Speaker 4:55

An arsonist?

Speaker 4 4:56

Yeah, right, exactly. A movie set?

Speaker 4:59

A movie set. Then yesterday we have another overboard on the Carnival Panorama. That ship was going from Puerto Vallarta to Long Beach. It was on its way back to Long Beach, the end of the cruise. And I guess some family members were looking for their family member and couldn't find him. So at 10:30, the cruise ship starts paging the person to come, you know, call. 10:30 at night? No. Oh, morning, okay. Come call, you know, don't hear from him. And two o'clock, the ship turns around and goes back because now there's surveillance footage showing the man jumped overboard at some point. So I think we talked about that. Like clearly it's a suicide, I believe. And we talked about people who go on cruises to with the intention of committing suicide that most people wait until the end of the cruise and jump.

Speaker 4 6:05

That seems to be the trend. Yeah.

Speaker 6:08

Because you were saying, well, you paid for it, so you don't want to jump on the first day.

Speaker 4 6:13

That's what I would say. I mean, right?

Speaker 6:16

Right.

Speaker 4 6:17

I mean, I don't know. Who would do that? I don't know.

Speaker 6:21

I'm actually wondering too if some of these maybe they weren't planned.

Speaker 4 6:25

Maybe again, I'm going back to CSK, you don't know.

unknown 6:29

Yeah.

Speaker 4 6:30

I mean, do the cameras point in the direction of like this person goes overboard. Is it just looking along the sight line of the rail and you see the thing going over? I think so. So you can't see if there's somebody behind the person?

Speaker 6:42

With a broom or something poking them in the back? Right. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 6:46

Or a strong breeze? I don't know.

Speaker 6:48

I don't know. But later I'm going to talk about the ban overboard systems that could have helped with this. Because for all we know, this guy could have jumped uh Friday night and Saturday morning. They can't find him. They're not turning the ship around till two. So and then my last cruise story is the Carnival Freedom. The Carnival ships have whale tail fins on the top of them. That's their little icons. And the Carnival Freedom in May of 2022, their whale tail got destroyed in a fire on the ship while they were docked in Grand Turk. Then in March of 2024, they they had had a modified funnel put on and a fire again on the same ship from a lightning strike sailing through the Bahamas. So taken out, taken out again.

Speaker 1 7:49

Wow.

Speaker 7:50

So the fins, they look cool, but I'm thinking now that they are unlucky. Maybe we need a new design that represents carnival instead of the whale fin, like some boxing gloves, some drink shakers, some poop emojis on top, and forget about the whale fin.

Speaker 4 8:13

It's actually not a bad idea. I mean, why not why not embrace your image already? Yeah, exactly. Why not just embrace it? Yeah.

Anna Kepner Case Update

Speaker 4 8:21

It's like a huge margarita glass. All right, I have an update on the Anna Keppner case. Okay. So for those that aren't familiar with this case, this is uh going back. This is a carnival ship that uh Anna Keptner. Yeah, right. Carnival Horizon. This was back in November uh of 2025, early November of 2025. Uh Anna Keppner's 18. She was found dead in her room. Uh her, I think it's his stepbrother, right? Stepbrother is now been accused of uh murdering her because she was found underneath one of the beds, surrounded by um life uh preservers, right? So clearly concealed. And so the case is now hitting the courts, and there's been so there's been an update on the case. Now, since some people haven't heard of this story, this is really what was happening. So they were she was traveling with her family on this ship, and um ends up going into her room at about 7.35, and um and her stepbrother, this guy Timothy Hudson, was in the room at the same time, and she was not seen leaving the cabin after that, but he was seen, the the younger brother actually entered the room at 7.51, and he had reported seeing her alive at that time, but she was in the room then for about three hours with the other, the accused. At about 10:13 p.m. He comes out of the room, looks both directions down the hallway, and um, and then later that night, the younger brother comes back and um comes back to the room at about 12 in the morning. So we got the the accused leaving at 10, younger brother comes back at 12 in the morning, and the other brother had apparently been still in the room or had come back to the room and denied the younger brother entrance. Um so something was going on. And then the following morning, the um she was essentially discovered, right? I mean that there was the the father, you know, they can't find her the whole nine yards, and then they end up they end up discovering her. Um so and it was actually attendants that you know room cabin attendants that actually discovered the body. So the FBI gets involved immediately. This is in International Waters, and under the Cruise Ship Security Act, that's what they do, right? They ship has to notify that this happened. And they did, and so the FBI jumped right into it, and the the case got solved. I mean, the case got underway very, very quickly. Like when things happen on cruise ships historically, they just don't, they go as slow as these ships, right? So, so this case actually went a lot faster. So they figured out the whodunit, got this young guy, and he was 16 at the time. So as a juvenile, but now he's somehow his defense is okay with him being prosecuted as an adult. So he's prosecuted for first-degree murder and aggravated sexual assault. He's pleading not guilty. And um, and so the the trial was set to start on September 8th, and that's why it's kind of fresh news. Well, his family's been going through, his family's got a whirlwind of stuff going on around him, custody battles, this, that, and the other thing. All sorts of stuff is kind of running interference here. And so the defense has kind of basically made the case that, hey, there's a lot of stuff going on here. We need to kick the can. So they did, they kicked the can and had until um basically it's scheduled for a two-week period, trial period starting November 2nd. So that's the update on the Anna Kepner case is that that's um that's gonna that trial's gonna kick off in November.

Speaker 12:30

I'm amazed at how many people are the case is pretty um well against them, and yet you hear this not guilty plea, which sounds insane to me, but right.

Speaker 4 12:45

And they're the defense, I know part of the delays was that they needed to get more time into his background. So you can I think you can kind of get an idea of where they're going with this, right? They're gonna claim that something's wrong with them.

Speaker 12:58

Insanity. Right, right.

Speaker 4 12:59

Something something is but they also but they also released information that they had secured Anna's Snapchat record and stuff, and they the prosecution has made that available to the defense. So there's clearly something on that that's gonna be made available during the uh trial. So anyway, so we'll keep tabs on it. I took a look at the last story where we had the gentleman fall off of what they believe was deck 13, landed on deck seven or eight, the promenade deck, and he ended up dying. Right. And that one, there still is no new information. It's this is still a big mystery. But I don't understand why it's not getting the attention that I'm giving it. I'm giving it a heck of a lot of attention because I'm like, wait a minute.

Speaker 13:50

Yeah, you know, we're pretty sure he got pushed.

Speaker 4 13:53

Something's not right, right? You know, something is definitely not right. Anyway, so um, so we have we each have our stories to talk about today. But before we jump in, do you want to talk about something before I run through my facts? Because I was intrigued by these facts.

Speaker 14:10

I just want to mention two of the things we talked about last podcast.

Lifeguards And Ship Smoking Rules

Speaker 14:14

We were befuddled with. That's that's a new word, befuddled.

Speaker 4 14:19

But it's not the word.

Speaker 14:20

It's not the word of the day

Speaker 4 14:22

Do we have to pause for the word?

Speaker 14:23

In a minute.

Speaker 4 14:23

Okay.

Speaker 14:24

So we talked about lifeguards, how we've never seen lifeguards on a ship. I've never seen a lifeguard on a ship. So I looked that up, and I found Disney has lifeguards um on at all their family pools on the ships. I've never been on Disney, so that would explain why I haven't seen a lifeguard. Norwegian has lifeguards on their larger ships only. Carnival and Celebrity have no lifeguards, so you'll see those little signs that says swim at your own risk. Right. We're not saving you.

Speaker 2 15:01

Okay.

Speaker 15:02

And then Royal Caribbean has lifeguards at all pools, and on the Icon of the Seas, which is their new large ship, they have 36 lifeguards on that ship.

Speaker 2 15:13

Wow.

Speaker 15:14

They're covering like the water parks on there, the pools. The other one was the smoking. We were like, I've never seen anybody smoking on a ship. And are you allowed to smoke on a ship? And yes, all the major cruise lines have designated outdoor smoking areas. They're different on different cruise lines on where those are. Then they have the cigar lounge that you mentioned. You and Joe have been in the cigar lounge.

Speaker 4 15:45

I have been in the cigar lounge. Yep.

Speaker 15:49

Other ships allow them to smoke in the casino if you're playing. And after my story last week, where the whole ship went up in flames, I am a no on letting anybody ship or smoke anywhere inside the ship. I am like, are you crazy? Because the whole ship could go up.

Speaker 4 16:09

Well, we know that you can't smoke in your room. And if you're accused, you you you could easily be get fined 500 bucks for just being accused and no with no evidence.

Speaker 16:21

Right. I've never seen anybody smoking, and but yeah, I just think it's crazy to allow smoking anywhere inside the ship. That's just another disaster waiting to happen.

Speaker 4 16:33

But yeah, that's true. Possible.

Speaker 16:37

So now we're gonna pause.

Word Of The Day And Setup

Speaker 16:39

Oh, for the word of the day from Kris before you go into your um I can have a sip and I don't even know what the word is, so your stories.

Speaker 4 16:51

My facts.

Speaker 3 16:54

The word of the day is vanished.

Speaker 4 17:01

Alright, so that's the word of the day.

Speaker 17:02

Whatever it was. Yeah, we don't know.

Speaker 4 17:05

Alright, so you want to go first, or you want me to go first? You go first. Oh

The Marion Carver Disappearance

Speaker 4 17:09

my gosh. Okay, so you're familiar you're familiar with the Amy Bradley story. Everybody else is probably familiar with the Amy Bradley story, which is she went missing, believed that there's like sex trafficking, she walked off the ship in, I think it was Aruba, right? Believe that if I remember correctly. It was it was a Caribbean adventure, but it was years ago, and um still there's evidence that she might actually still be out there, be alive, so there's still kind of hope. The family has hope. There's another case that was in 2004, Merrian Carver, who went missing. And what's interesting to me is that it just didn't get as much play as the Amy Bradley. And I think because there was suspicion that that they had evidence that Amy left, but we just don't know where she went. This one, we know she came on the boat or ship, but we just don't know what happened after that.

Speaker 18:08

So this was after Amy Brad.

Speaker 4 18:09

So we got so yeah, Amy Bradley, I think they, I believe if I remember correctly, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that they actually got image, an image of her leaving, at least at one port. Am I right?

Speaker 18:22

Amy Bradley?

Speaker 4 18:23

Mm-hmm. I I they had any any any photos, any any image of her at least leaving the ship?

Speaker 18:33

No, there was an image of her on a beach later, years later on a Caribbean.

Speaker 4 18:38

Which led them to believe that she got off. Right. Okay. This one, the image that they have, the last image that they have of Merrian is her getting on.

Speaker 18:48

Getting on.

Speaker 4 18:49

On. Leaving. You know, the moment that she got on. That's it. That's all they have. So let me back up. So it's 2004. She's 40-year-old, divorced mom, 13-year-old daughter. She books this um seven-day Alaskan cruise, leaving out of out of um Seattle, ending up on uh in Vancouver.

Speaker 19:16

With the daughter or without no, she's solo.

Speaker 4 19:19

Solo. She's going solo. All right. And she uh so they leave on uh the 27th of August and they're to return to Vancouver on September the 3rd. This is a Royal Caribbean uh ship um called the um Mercury. So um so she gets on, and um the last confirmed sighting of her was actually her getting on. Now during the whole cruise, the ship the the her uh uh room attendant, cabin steward, notices that her luggage is not changing. Like like nothing in the room is changing.

Speaker 20:13

It's not on the balcony though, is it?

Speaker 4 20:15

No, I don't know. No, I well I don't I don't know that to be honest with you, right? But but but but nonetheless, it's clear that he's like, no one's been in this room. So he notifies the boss, his boss, and says, Hey, I haven't seen her. So this is on day two. I haven't seen her, right? So throughout the entire cruise, this is seven days, right? He's reporting to the boss. I don't know where she is. He's like, Don't worry about it. I'll actually, and let me read the quote. Yeah, this gets very interesting. He says, and and by the way, I'll give you a background on on just how they you actually got this quote. You'll be shocked about how long it took to get this quote. But he says, Um, you find it here in my notes. Is he he says, um uh missing daily? Um I'm looking for it, hold on.

Speaker 21:18

Uh while you're while you're looking for it, is he thinking maybe you know she she's incognito on, but she's really in someone else's cabin the whole time? Like there's a tryst thing going on and she's just not in her room?

Speaker 4 21:36

No. All right. I don't think so.

Speaker 21:39

I watched too many of those mysteries. Okay.

Speaker 4 21:41

So now this is this is the the the father reporting what the this cabin steward said, and this is months and months this is a long time. I'll talk about how they discovered her missing because it's scary. And we're all going to be thankful for this 2010 Cruise Ship Security Act. Anyway, because this is 2004. So, anyway, so the attendant says that he was reporting to the boss, you know, um, you know, Merrian's things are in the room where they'd been for five days. And he asked his boss, should we report this? The boss says, No. He says, I'll take care of it. Just put all our belongings in a bag, put them in my locker, and I'll take care of it.

Speaker 22:27

I think he killed her!

Speaker 4 22:29

Okay, well, that's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. Okay, so let me back up. So just now that we know what the attendant said, which took months to find out. So here's what happened. So how did they discover that she went missing? No one knew she went on a cruise.

unknown 22:47

What?

Speaker 4 22:48

No one knew she went on a cruise. So she she boards this ship. Um, her daughter was with her dad, who's in England. They were divorced, remember, right? So the daughter's name is that. And the daughter had been phoning up her mom and couldn't get to her mom. So she calls up her grandparents and says, I have you heard from I can't get to, I can't get in touch with mom. So I can't remember off the top of my head how many days have lapsed here, but it's well after the cruise is over that the family is now wondering, where the heck is she? They don't even know she's on a cruise, first off, right? So they're now hunting. So the parents file a missing persons report. Like, okay, find her. So the police start investigating. Now, Merrian's out of Boston. She lives in Cambridge. And she's actually kind of fun, she's financially well off in the sense that she's an investment banker, you know, that you know, she was she was able to take trips like this. This is not anything that would be surprising to anybody that she would be able to just do this kind of thing. She's 40 years old, right? So, so anyway, so that they file a missing persons report. The um the police start investigating. So what what do you what would what would the what's the first thing you would do if you're the police and and you've got this this 40-year-old woman who's gone missing? What are you gonna start looking at?

Speaker 24:15

Video, right?

Speaker 4 24:17

Well, they don't even well, nope, they don't even know she's gone on the ship yet. So what do you think they're doing? They're looking at her financial transactions. What the heck? You know, that's the only trail, right? Did this woman have to buy food somewhere? Could she be somewhere? Did a card get used? Did she get kidnapped? Did somebody steal her card? Or or you know what I mean? So they immediately did that. And what do they discover? Oh, she bought a cruise ticket and a flight.

Speaker 24:43

Oh, this is before they knew she was on the cruise.

Speaker 4 24:45

They had no idea. She they had no idea where she went. She didn't tell anybody.

Speaker 24:48

Okay.

Speaker 4 24:49

So she buys this cruise ticket and she buys it little I I don't want to say at the last minute, but this seemed to be a knee-jerk kind of move. So, you know, there wasn't much time from the purchase date to the to the uh you know departure date. So anyway, so now they know that, hey, our daughter was on this cruise. So they obviously turned to the cruise line. Hello? The cruise line's like, we don't know. Lord. We don't the only thing that the cruise line could provide was this grainy picture of her getting on. They had no record of her getting off. They they could not confirm that she got off at any port. They have no idea.

Speaker 25:41

They're not using the badge in and out like we have now.

Speaker 4 25:44

And there well, this is 2004. Okay, so I can't I don't know the answer to that. But what I do know is that the family's now asking a lot of questions of Royal, and Royal's clamming up because I honestly I think they don't know. Right, they have no idea, and so the family obviously gets frustrated. I I want to say um how many months had elapsed, but um the by the time they discover that she had taken this cruise, it was at least three to four weeks after that cruise had gotten back. So think about that, right? Everyone is long since gone. So the family's now has got lots of questions, and they start asking questions like, hey, did anybody see her? You know, da da da and then the ship is the cruise line is gone going quiet. So the family, the father, hires a um uh a private eye, a really well-known private eye firm, and they go investigating. And with every question that they asked, it just drummed up more and more questions because they couldn't get any answers from anybody. So they were getting stonewall here and there, and they just it it was quite frustrating. So obviously, they file suit, right? Because when the investigators were asking and the parents were asking, hey, the you know, the ship steward is reporting, or we're hearing that, you know, that he had seen luggage, you know, can we talk to him? No. No. So they were thinking, oh, the cruise line is actually really like literally trying to cover up something. Right. And of course, Royal comes out and says, no. But probably the most shocking thing to me was that so you got this family that's investigating, right? Um, and uh they they they finally start getting information out, and um they've information from filing suit, right? So they're getting subpoenas. Now they're getting they get 2,000 passenger records because their hope was, hey, this is she's she's from Boston, from Cambridge. Um, hey, maybe there are other people that either knew her on that ship that's also from Boston or whatever. So having that information, so they give they get subpoenaed for the passenger list, they get 2,000 names with no contact information. It's like a useless, useless piece of information, nothing to follow up on. But what's really bizarre is that the the cruise line actually came out with a well, she must have committed suicide. There is not one itty-bitty ounce of evidence that she did. Now, the parents said, well, it's possible. Well, anything's possible. You get hit by a meteor, that's possible too. So, of course, they said that, or, or even if they had alluded to the fact that, well, you know, anyone could, we we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. But Royal Caribbean actually released a press release that stated that appears to have committed suicide on our ship. Where without presenting any evidence whatsoever, now this is 2004. Now, they asked for security footage. Back then, it was really common for cruise ships to erase that data after three like after just weeks, just wipe it clean. So her case there is there is nothing that's changed. There is no no body, there is nothing. This lady literally has vanished off the face of the planet.

Speaker 29:41

You know, it almost it it almost sounds to me that an option could also be she wanted to disappear, so she planned a disappearance and she got on and then maybe put on different clothes and made herself look different and then got off the ship.

Speaker 4 29:59

That's a theory because what's interesting is the I and that's kind of where investigators were going. It's like, well, she did book this at the last minute. That's possible. Then why did you book a return flight home? If you were planning on taking yourself out, first off, it was day two that she suddenly is MIA. The cabin steward is like, I don't I don't know where this person is. I they look they haven't touched a thing. Right? So she that you wouldn't do that on your day, right? We've talked about this. Statistically, people do it at the very end of the cruise, not at the beginning. No, but and you wouldn't book your return flight, would you?

Speaker 30:40

You would if you like Brit box like we do and watch all the British crime shows, that's just on there to throw people off even more while you start your new life somewhere.

Speaker 4 30:50

Well, one of the producers just threw the word embezzlement at me. I mean, I guess there's a lot of reasons that someone might be in trouble, you know. But but nonetheless, I mean it's this is I put myself in the father's shoes in this one because I have a daughter, and I'm thinking to myself, wow, he spent 75,000 bucks having to private eyes dig into this and dive in. I would do the same thing. Who wouldn't?

Speaker 1 31:11

Right.

Speaker 4 31:11

Right? You're you're dying to know. But you know, your heart goes out to him when you run into an organization that you would think would at least be able to give you some kind of ounce of information. And what's really frustrating, what I can't believe, is that when you turn to them and say, hey, you don't know where she is, clearly, you know, and then you dig out, you have to actually wait for months to dig out real facts, like talk to the cabin steward who says, Yeah, I was telling everybody. And oh, by the way, the boss that he told ended up getting fired. So a lot of stuff happened on the Royal side and and and made this family just absolutely suffer in in this kind of darkness.

Lawsuits And The 2010 Safety Act

Speaker 4 32:00

They did the so the father got really really uh vocal and did testimony on Capitol Hill and was really one of the reasons why that um cruise ship security act of 2010 went through. And uh so you get so you know, It was the last Amy Bradley story we talked about, I was saying um, you know, that case and that situation certainly helped motivate that legislation, but clearly this was also one that was very significant. Actually, uh a congressperson from Connecticut heard this story and was like beside himself, was like, no, this is nuts. You know, this industry is just giving too much, too much leash. This is nuts, you know, and um and he and he's right. I mean, come on, really? You know, and the dad's like, you mean to tell me you don't know when 2,000 people leave and enter your right?

Speaker 32:58

Right. Yeah, it's one of the better mysteries I've heard, but the fact that she didn't tell her family when you have a 13-year-old daughter that you're not going on a cruise, yeah, there's something up with her. I just feel like she wanted to disappear, and that's what but yeah, what you're saying about the cruise ship not having any info of who's on and who's off, that just adds to it.

Speaker 4 33:26

And it it they do no favors in saying, you know, it looks like it could be a suicide.

Speaker 33:32

Well right.

Speaker 4 33:37

You don't know that , you don't have no evidence whatsoever.

Speaker 33:43

She was on her balcony and a whale jumped up and ate her and took off. I don't know.

Speaker 4 33:47

It's just it's irresponsible.

Speaker 33:50

Right.

Speaker 4 33:51

They really have to come out and say we have no clue. And if they say we have no clue, then obviously everyone in the world is gonna be like, well, then you need to get a clue, figure out a way to get a clue. And that legislation certainly was part of pushing them to get a clue, which is no, you have yeah, you have to track people, you have to do this, you know, you have to have cameras, you have you can't erase footage, you know, you have to report incidents.

Speaker 34:13

I was gonna say 2004, I don't know how archaic that was, but I hope it wasn't a sign-in sheet. Sign in here and then sign out when you leave, and then sign in when you get back on.

Speaker 4 34:24

I think that the thing that's the most alarming to me is so you even with this act in place, right, we're still reliant upon people following these rules. And here's a situation where you would think these two particular I'll fault the boss, not necessarily the cabin steward, but the cabin steward after the second time telling the boss, this is weird. Should have just circumvented that guy and told everyone else that he could run into or she ran into to say, you're not something's up here, something's not right here. This like smells horrible because you know what I mean? I it's clear there was some hierarchical structure that was scaring the heck out of that person from rationally thinking through this.

Speaker 35:06

But well, the fact that he's just saying that um that don't worry about it. And the guy's like, Oh no, I haven't seen her all week, don't worry about it.

Speaker 4 35:17

Yeah, well, you and here's the imagine this is a parent. So, because I'll ask the question that you're not asking me, I'll ask it for you. What did they do with her luggage?

Speaker 35:30

They sold it at that store we talked about.

Speaker 4 35:33

You're not I'm you're you're actually you're close. It would be actually probably better if they sold it, but they gave it to charity and they took her purse and they locked it up.

Speaker 1 35:43

Oh goodness.

Speaker 4 35:45

So the family had nothing. They had no evidence, nothing. So that even that information was hard to get. That's nuts.

Speaker 35:57

Well, now someone's gonna be using her debit card.

Speaker 4 36:00

That's nuts. That's nuts. She did then, and they they I'll say this, I can confirm it, but there were comments that had said she did pack unusually light for a seven-day cruise. Now I don't know what that means. Because, you know, when I travel, I can travel with a backpack for seven days, and people are like, You got everything in there. I'm just like, I just need underwear. You know what I mean? I mean, who, you know, you can't pass judgment on my seven-day packing.

Speaker 36:28

If you're gonna get kidnapped you need clean underwear.

Speaker 4 36:32

It's not really fair, right? It's like, I love my Katie's pub shirt. I'll wear it day in and day out. Oh, that's you. But anyway, I'll wear it day in and day out. Just make sure I change it.

Speaker 36:42

I'm gonna be very easy to spot because who else wears their Katie's pub shirt? Exactly.

Speaker 4 36:47

Yes. If you go overboard, they're gonna be like, who's that? I'm like, that's Kathy, because she's wearing her Katie's pub shirt. I can recognize it from a mile away.

Speaker 1 36:53

That's right.

Speaker 4 36:56

All right, all right, enough of my story. So that has CSK written all over it. It does. I just don't, and my heart goes out to the family, I have to say that.

Man Overboard Tech And Why It Matters

Speaker 37:07

So I have a little section here to talk about that kind of maybe affects your story if she had gone overboard and and the man yesterday, but these man overboard systems that some of the ships have and some of the ships don't have. I was looking at those. And the majority of cruise lines have not installed the man overboard systems yet, which is required by that cruise vessel act of 2010. And the the cruise lines are citing like historical lack of uh of certified reliable tech and high false positive rates as reasons that they're going very slowly to install these. And if if they had to put these on board, they are state-of-the-art motion detection video, and they have infrared tech and radar so that they can detect when someone goes overboard and where they're going in the water because of the infrared. And it it tracks people at night in the water. So I was looking up, well, who has these? There's no public information on which ships have it, but Disney has said all of their ships in the fleet have it installed on every Disney ship. And if you remember that story in June of this year where the little girl fell through the porthole and then the dad jumped in right after her. This was kind of instrumental in them getting rescued so quickly. Now, the the caveat of it was when the little girl fell in, the detection system did not go off because it's a child and it's somehow not recognizing a kid. But as soon as her dad jumped in, the detection system went off. And so he went into the water at 11:29, 11:30, the man overboard alarm went off, and by 11:49 within 10 minutes, they were rescued and pulled out of the sea, both of them.

Speaker 1 39:16

Wow.

Speaker 39:17

So I really feel like they need to get on board with the man overboard systems, and you know, they're like, oh, in the scheme of all these people cruising all the time, there's really not that many people overboard, but heck, if I'm one of the people overboard, I would like the alarm to go off like right away to improve my chances of getting rescued.

Speaker 2 39:40

Yeah.

Speaker 39:41

So I'm not sure how they've been allowed to get away with slowly we'll get to it type thing. And the guy that fell off yesterday, he he could have been gone all night before they discovered he he jumped.

Speaker 2 39:57

Right.

Speaker 39:58

Whereas if the ship had that on there, it would have sounded an alarm right away that someone went overboard.

Speaker 4 40:03

So is it required by law, the legislation. I don't know, and we'll have to look up, which is yeah, what's the grace period? How long do you have to implement?

Speaker 40:14

I think we talked about this on a previous podcast where the law part of it was, well, the the minimum you have to do is install cameras. Right? Oh, okay. And so here's this guy yesterday. Well, let's review the camera footage. Oh yeah, he jumped five hours ago. That's really not enough help if someone goes off the ship.

Speaker 4 40:35

So they have these the sensor systems. Do they have like uh for for lack of a better term, like firemen who are kind of at the ready? These things blare off, and these guys have you know small boats that they can just they just jump out of the, they just deploy right off the ship and go out and and and find these people, which is most of what happened been happening on that Disney. It was because there's no you can't you can't turn that we know yeah, we know you can't turn these ships around on a dime. So you have to deploy something faster.

Speaker 41:06

That is what they do. And so I feel like they should rush them to get these on every ship out there.

Speaker 4 41:14

Every ship must have a fire crew. They must have a fire department.

Speaker 41:20

That's a good question.

Speaker 4 41:21

They must have an emergency response team, which could be fire, medical, or whatever. I would I would guess that they're like paramedics. They're trained to do just about everything, right? Mm-hmm. So the every ship must have that. And you would think that's the crew that also is the kind that the like Marines that yeah, hit the water too. Right.

Speaker 41:39

Get the get in the little boat, lifeboat, and go get them. Yeah.

Speaker 4 41:43

It seems like a no-brainer.

Speaker 41:45

Yes.

Speaker 4 41:46

It seems like a no-brainer.

Speaker 41:48

Yeah, and they can say, oh, it, you know, there's not that many people, but if you're one of the people that fall over, well, and here's what's really interesting.

Speaker 4 41:56

So that legislation was out in 2010, and we know our unlimited drink package marketing strategy that these ships suddenly embraced and still do, was 2012. Interesting timing, right? Yeah. So you would think that they would all have that.

Speaker 42:16

Yes.

Speaker 4 42:18

Wow. So the producers tell me that they do not have separate city fire department kind of thing. They they have to have to have emergency responsibility. They do have a dedicated firefighting team on board. You know, made up trained people, but they you you would think that there's definitely a team that can respond to exactly these kinds of things. An overboard incident.

Speaker 42:42

I think there's an emergency response team, like you said.

Speaker 4 42:46

So even if you didn't have these things detected on the side, there has to be a team that's ready to go.

Speaker 42:52

Right.

Speaker 4 42:52

Right?

Speaker 42:53

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 42:53

But then again, we were on the we talked about the Costa Concordia. Hey, the captain even jumped on the one of those boats. So I'm not, I don't know if I'm gonna trust all the if there's the a good team. We can't guarantee there's a good team. Well the good team could actually just get on the first boat off.

Speaker 43:11

Right.

unknown 43:12

Right.

Speaker 4 43:13

And I can just boat there because it is a small craft.

Speaker 43:16

You can. Yes.

Speaker 4 43:19

That's crazy. That is crazy. So yeah, you're right. I mean, you it does relate to my story because of the no one knows what happened to this person.

Speaker 43:28

Yeah, quite a few that we've talked about where no one's noticed someone's gone until the next morning. Okay. And then it's too late.

Speaker 4 43:36

So all right.

Sign-Off Jokes And Listener Invite

Speaker 4 43:38

So wrap it up for today?

Speaker 43:40

Sure.

Speaker 4 43:40

All right, cool. That's good. All right, everybody.

Speaker 43:43

I don't know what the word is. I think I'm on beer number three, so I don't care what the word is. I just have my beer, whether I hear what the word or not.

Speaker 4 43:52

So do I say anchors away or man overboard and we deploy the crew to get you?

Speaker 43:58

Oh, yeah. Let's do man overboard this week. Let's mix it up and be crazy.

Speaker 4 44:03

Man overboard. All right, thanks everybody. Okay. Till next time. Man overboard.

Speaker 3 44:13

I just want to invite anyone and everyone out there who listens to our podcast to please come to our page. It's Cruise Ship Killer Podcast on Facebook and give us some good ideas. Kathy and Geoff can banter about. But also, if you have any stories, or if you even maybe you just want to call in because you have something of interest or you can touch base on something we've already discussed, please feel free to reach out to us. Again, it's Cruise Ship Killer Podcast on Facebook.

Speaker 4 44:45

That's it for this episode of Cruise Ship Killer. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, rate, and review, or don't. But statistically, the people who disappear never do either. Research by our Cruise Line Incident Researcher Page, Logline , additional editing on sound design by Cal Deckland. Sources for today's episode are linked in the show notes because shockingly we did not make all of this up.

Speaker 3 45:14

This is a Katie's pub production.