Episode 3: Occam's Dulling Razor

New evidence and forensic analysis begin challenging the simplest explanations surrounding the Stinky Beach discoveries. As the investigation expands beyond Ocean City, strange patterns, overlooked discoveries, and unsettling possibilities force a deeper question: what if the obvious answer was never the right one? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

The theory of Occram's razor states that the simplest explanation to a question is usually the right one. So, what happens when simple answers no longer seem quite right today on the beach remains? I'm Ricky Conlin.

unknown 1:01

We got a little bit of a crit.

SPEAKER_05 1:03

I like this so far. I like this so far.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

These are the sounds of the twenty twenty-one White Marlin Open. What's the White Marlin Open, you ask? For starters, it's the biggest bill fishing competition in the world by both payout and participation. 400 plus boats compete for a multi-million dollar purse that pays handsomely to those that can land the biggest fish over the five-day event. Ocean City, Maryland, has claimed itself as the White Marlin fishing capital of the world since the 1930s. In the 1970s, they decided to host a fishing tournament. And now, over 50 years later, the likes of Michael Jordan come out to compete for its seven-finger payout.

SPEAKER_08 1:57

Woo.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

In 2021, I was on scene to check out the event. The event takes place in early August, smack dab in the middle of prime tour season. And even those not inclined to compete, it's a giant citywide party, and ground zero is the 14th Street Wayne station, where all contestants and spectators gather to see who nabbed the biggest fish. Is this your first time to the White Marlin Open?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

It is.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

And how would you describe the scene here?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Just vibes. I mean, I have a beer, I got a trucker hat, I feel good.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

And uh are are your friends here? Are you all from uh LA and California as well? No, are you are you from around here? Tourists from far and wide party right alongside the locals, all in the spirit of good summer fun. But more so than the party, the White Marlin Open is one of the biggest, if not the single biggest, economic boons of the year. Drawing Ocean City, Maryland, 20 to 30 million dollars plus of supplemental tourist dollars. Remember what former local Rob Wirtz said about tourism dollars back in episode one.

SPEAKER_05 3:27

As a teenager, early adult, um, I was so much more critical of tourist and of tourist season, even though, admittedly, that was the income or that was the economy for all of us.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

But you don't need to have been raised in a beach town to understand the importance of tourism dollars. If you've seen the movie Jaws, remember when Mayor Larry Vaughn educated Sheriff Quinn on the importance of summer dollars as he considered closing the beach for that pesky shark. Never had that kind of trouble in these waters. Maybe not something you slap on a billboard, but it's a viable marketing message nonetheless. The 2018 Stinky Beach bone finding was on day two of the White Marlin Open. Every contestant passes before Stinky Beach on the way out to the ocean through the inlet, and on the way back in the inlet and back towards the scales. So it makes sense that the 2018 response was taken seriously. Right up to scuba divers in the water and helicopters in surveillance. When I reported my own bone finding via 911 in the fall of 2021, there was similarly a big tourist event in town for the week. But this time it wasn't the Marlin Open.

SPEAKER_05 5:39

The event is known as H T two Oi and has created a headache for the popular beach town.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

The H2Oi Car Rally had convened multiple years in Ocean City, Maryland for their annual end of September event. The H2Oi is an unsanctioned pop-up event coordinated by an underground online community. But this was no small event. In 2020, the year before my dive session, H2Oi overtook Ocean City, shutting down Ocean Highway Route One for multiple hours. Regardless of whether it's for protecting the population or the money they're spending. The hope would be that safety takes full precedence. Friday, September 24th, 2021, the day leading into the anticipated H2OI car rally was the definition of police taking safety seriously. Driving around on that last day of our second dive session with Nir Amanda, supplemental police presence was evident. With more patrol cars on the road and signs alerting special event zone and enhanced fines to all drivers. This is also where we came upon multiple bone findings of our own within the same general area of the stinky beach findings of 2016 and 2018. Hi, yes, this is Rick Harmon. I'm uh I'm from out of town. When I called 911, the police response was immediate, and I was speaking to a Worcester County police officer within 15 minutes. The officer on the scene was thorough. He took inventory of all the notable items we found, including the bones. He took multiple pictures and sent them back to the precinct for second opinion. While we waited for input, the officer interviewed me and annotated a detailed police report. Another five minutes passes, and word comes back from the precinct. Animal bones. False alarm. The officer lets me know the news, thanks me for my cooperation, and is on his way, presumably back to monitoring for H2OI-related incidents. As for me, I gather up my scour hole findings, including the supposed animal bones, and I head back to Annapolis. Near and Amanda head back to their home, and we agree to review the dive drone film from our two days in and around the scour hole. Near agrees to connect in a week after he and Amanda finish the cross-country trek with their gear and mobile command center. The drone dive sessions were valuable. Understanding the current and vacuum effect of the 60-foot deep scour hole gave us a better understanding around how and why bones were finding their way to the shores of Stinky Beach. The scour hole in question was a vacuum sucking in and spewing out years of inlet debris, generating deposits on the beach when a big enough storm provoked it. But we still had much to learn about the bones found in 2016 and 2018. This was especially challenging considering we didn't have the bones slash remains in our possession. The 2016 bone findings are to this day only captured in film by my team. As to date, we have been unable to locate their exact whereabouts. In the week awaiting my follow-up with Nier, I take the pictures of my 2016 finding, along with the pictures I snapped of the bones police deemed animal, and contact multiple local forensic science departments, seeing what they might say. There were plenty of hooks in the water by now. And before I knew it, the week had passed, and it was time to connect with Nier. He had processed the footage from his aerial drone as well as both days of diving footage. He sent the video a day ahead of talking live. By the time we connected, I had reviewed the video 20 times over. And before I knew it, Nir and I were talking live about our crazy dive session from a week before. We reminisced on a tough two days of drone diving, exemplified by a particularly challenging day too.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

Conditions were different. Again, we were in zero, completely zero visibility here, uh trying to poke uh at the ground to get anything.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

But despite these difficulties, including multiple dives that didn't work out, we did manage to accomplish what we came to Stinky Beach to do. We got to the bottom of that scour hole.

SPEAKER_04 12:19

It's I think incredible. We managed to get, I mean it's it's only a few seconds of uh video, but we managed to bring it back from um very deep.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

We reviewed the entirety of the drone footage, highlighting and discussing what we found in our individual analysis. One dive in particular from our first dive day caught both of our attention.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Yeah, it's probably maybe. Um pinpoint what it is.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

The time of the touchdown was brief, and the water at those depths was murky. But the video footage, even amidst the turbulent current, was clear.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Yes, I think that at this point the drone is being dragged uh by the current.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 13:50

Uh at the bottom of this scour hole, and you can see it. Did you see it? You you were able to see the tether, actually.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did see that.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

So at this point, I think we hit the bottom, and and the uh drone is getting carried, uh, was carried by the current, dragged on the ground, which we we got a good good footage of of I would say two different types of of um of ground uh material over there. Uh one of them looks like greyish little little rocks. I can't explain what it is, and the uh the other one is definitely dark, almost black rocks, uh, which is pretty much different than everything else we've seen.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:46

And I think it was specifically to this area when once we went in.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

We took the brief video footage, our best of the two-day session, uh, and evaluated it live together in slow motion to see what we could see. What's strange is there's no sand. I mean, it just looks like it's it looks like a cave. It looks like the an emptied out cave.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

Yeah, it's not definitely not no sand there, and it looks like uh different color um different color of I don't know if it's stones or it looks like a rock. But it looks like a black rock.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

This finding of the scour hole's black rock bottom is consistent with what we heard from Andrew Roach of the Army Corps of Engineers back in episode two. It's certainly a dynamic area, so we got a lot of sediment moving around there. Um the dark sediment and black rock help explain what might have stained the bones slash remains found back in 2018. But black rock and sediment weren't the only things that we saw at the bottom of that scour hole.

SPEAKER_04 15:57

Sadly, um, there there is whatever it is, it's there's multiple um of them, and they are bouncing around, I think hitting the arm of the drone. And uh and they they all kind of like look the same a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

In slow motion, amidst the video footage captured, when our drone touched down on what we believe to be the scour hole's bottom, we spot a cluster of what initially might be described as uniformly light-colored, round-shaped rocks. Even in slow motion, they quickly bounce around the screen like lottery balls. A wash in what we believe to be six plus knots of current.

SPEAKER_04 16:45

Yeah, I think that at this point it's definitely um definitely different. It's wide definitely, yes, it's wide, it looks like little little rocks or I don't know, I would say unusual.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

And there's multiple of them. I mean, it's not just one.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Yeah, there is a lot, and they're all kind of like the same shape.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

We watched this footage over and over, and neither Nier nor I could convince ourselves what specifically we captured on film. I still don't believe what we saw at the bottom of that scour hole were necessarily bones, nor do I think they can just as easily be dismissed as rock. The Beach Remains podcast has posted highlights of our drone footage on our Facebook page. We invite fans of the show and people following this case to view the footage. We're curious to hear what others see in the footage. If the community sees something we didn't, we want to know about it. Overall, we hit bottom. We found animal bones on the shore, and we even got decent film footage of brief time on the bottom of the scour hole. We never did find the potentially lost or mistracked suitcase in 2018. Nor did we see anything convincingly resembling human remains. But the dive day did provide valuable insight into our investigation. Like, to me, the way that they were bouncing around, like that to me kind of demonstrates the churn that's happening at the bottom of the scour hole. Like the current is kind of churning all of the stuff, mixing the stuff up, and then a big storm comes along, and that churn is so big that it just pops, it just pops it out and it comes out on the shore. And it's odd, like literally all three instances that we have documented of you know bone findings or something washing up on shore is within 24 hours of a major storm coming within call it 20 miles of the coast. So it's like it in some ways it we we probably could cherry pick better weather for the scour hole dive, but in some ways we were in some ways, it was better to have done it during like the the before and after storm, just to kind of see the the state of that scour hole directly before and directly after a big storm, because you you can definitely tell that that that current under normal circumstances is churning stuff at the bottom of that 50-foot hole. And as that current is increased in any sort of way, like you can only imagine, like, you know, the first day we couldn't even really get near there because as soon as you dropped it to a certain depth, I mean it just shot it out of there like a cannon. So one full year into our investigation, we'd learned plenty. We uncovered and studied the scour hole. We spoke to multiple eyewitnesses from the 2016 and 2018 finding incidents. We met and interviewed old timers like Fritz Pilart, who had lived in the Stinky Beach area for 50 plus years. We reviewed hundreds of timestamp photos. We read through the 2018 police report. We performed multiple dive sessions, including a full weekend session with a Navy Special Operator. We also managed to get film footage around and for a brief time at the bottom of the scourh. But let's be honest, there were also plenty of things we didn't have. We still didn't have the bones captured in the 2016 picture for Mary Jane Pusey, though we continued looking. Shortly after speaking to Nier, we also heard back from the Maryland office of the chief medical examiner. It turns out their formal evaluation of the 2018 incident in question was the same as what was originally reported. The bones were deemed animal and disposed of. So just like 2016's finding, we also lacked any physical evidence from 2018. No suitcase, no barrel, no bones. Listen, I know what you might be thinking by now, because I was feeling it back then. I had pictures and I had a plausible story. So what? A few more weeks go by, and I consider if this investigation had finally run its course. Then out of the blue, one of my friends aquarium. Professors Dana Coleman and Kelly Elkins were both at the time teaching within Towson University's forensics department. We traded emails about my investigation, and they agreed to tape a live review of my various collected photos.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

So my name is Dana Coleman. I'm an assistant clinical professor at Towson University. My background is in archaeology. My undergrad degree is in archaeology here from Towson. I did archaeology for many years. From there I got interested in forensics. I was a crime scene investigator for 12 years. And at the same time, I was practicing in training in skeletal biology at the Smithsonian. Ultimately, I got my PhD in anthropology with a focus in biological anthropology. Yeah, I'm Kelly Elkins.

SPEAKER_06 23:00

I'm a professor at Towson University where I've been here about 10 years now. And I have been a uh chemist for my entire career. I trained as a biochemist and did uh protein design early in my career and then pivoted to forensic science a little more than 15 years ago and uh have been teaching and doing research in this area ever since. I do forensic materials analysis as well as forensic DNA, biology, and human identification.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Professor Dana Coleman's years' experience as a forensic anthropologist, along with her decade plus as a crime scene investigator, made her the perfect resource for reviewing our pictures and validating what we captured. We started with the pictures we snapped a few weeks earlier when I found and reported my own bone findings. Not surprisingly, they were identified specifically as coming from a large white-tailed deer, consistent with what the police on the scene determined. We then reviewed the 2018 pictures previously provided by photojournalist Megan Raymond. Nothing we had from back then had been pictures that were close enough nor clear enough to determine anything specific. Megan was never that close to the evidence, nor did she get a chance to picture all of it. But it was finally Mary Jane Pusey's picture, the one snapped back in 2016, that caught Dana's attention.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

So when I look at this, a few things jump out to me. First of all, um I don't know how big that foot is.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Size 13.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Oh, yeah. Okay, I was gonna say. So the bone looks small to me in terms of length. Now um that's just something that's jumping out. It does not necessarily mean it's a female versus a male, just making an observation.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

But well, it does, it does look, it does look human to you.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Oh, it's absolutely human in no uncertain terms. This is you're looking at the posterior left femur. So the front side is in the sand, you're looking at the back side of it.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Absolutely human in no uncertain terms.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Um, and it does look small, although that is a a size 13 foot next to it. Regardless, it's just something that jumps out, it looks small.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

On top of the relatively small size, Kelly also notes multiple visual observations, giving us further understanding about the remains and the circumstances that landed them in the shallow waters and on the shores of Sticky Beach.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

The next thing that I notice is that sort of dark discoloration on the posterior surface. You see it on the condyle, or I'm sorry, you see it on the head exactly where the cursor is. You see it going down the shaft. And then even at the distal end, there's that area of white, but yeah, exactly. That's something that um is consistent with coffin wood. Um, coffin wood, just a simple pine box, will impart a stain to the bone, typically the areas of the bone that are in contact with that wood. Now, I don't know if there's a historic cemetery, I would imagine they're all over the place, but that's just something that I'm noticing.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

There's no documented history nor record of nearby cemeteries that may have fed the inlet a dislodged or displaced coffin that I've checked. There are also records of Native American burials within the area. But coffins are not typically part of their burial tradition, at least within historically known tribes. It's also possible that the wood stain may be coming from barrel or antique luggage within long proximity of the remains. Like it may have done sitting buried in underwater sand or at the bottom of a scour hole.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Another thing that is jumping out to me is that sort of triangular patch of white area.

SPEAKER_05 27:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Um yeah, without having the bone in front of me, it's hard to say what it is, but that is something that is consistent with adipacere formation. That is a fatty substance. It's actually, I mean, there's a whole chemistry behind it that Kelly could probably explain better than I can, but um, it's sort of a reconstitution of body fats, and we see that in cold, wet, anaerobic environments, which would be consistent with this having been recovered from the bay.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

This is further physical evidence that at least the 2016 remains remained in the water for some period of time. And as for its age?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, all of that being said, I don't see evidence that this is a thousand years old. Um it's hard to say, is this something that is more recent? Well, the coffinwood tells me no. The that staining would tell me that this is probably historic period, 1900s.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Granted, a 20 to 120-year-old age range is broad, but it at least rules out ancient and early Native American time periods, as well as the possibility that the remains are of this current 21st century.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Another thing that I'm I I'm trying to look, and the more I zoom in, it it becomes more and more out of um focus. But I don't see any evidence of gnawing, meaning that it looks like it was either in the ground and then in the water back to back, meaning it didn't hang out on the ground. When I say in the ground, it was protected from animal predation. And as for the age of the deceased, yeah, in terms of how many, so when we think of age, we can think of age two ways. We can think of temporal age, where does it fit in the spectrum of history, prehistory, and then we can think of chronological age, meaning how many birthdays did the person have. There's not enough information for me to zoom in and without touching the bone, I can't really tell how many birthdays. I can say they were an adult. Everything is fused. Um, I can't really zoom in enough to see any evidence of arthritis. I will say that that the neck on that femur is this is just a a note, it's looks a little long. Yeah, that part is a little long, but that's just an anomaly for that person.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Yeah. Well, most of our conversation focused on our photos, especially on the remains photographed back in 2016. I also wanted to understand about what could be determined if we could somehow recover the 2016 remains. DNA and genetic materials testing expert, Professor Kelly Elkins, outlined multiple possibilities given the current forensic technologies readily available.

SPEAKER_06 30:52

And then from a DNA point of view and an individualization of this, um, we've done some work where we've sampled from long bones like this, um, actually at five different areas of the bone, um, and we're able to uh obtain DNA uh and get full profiles uh from that from modern bones. And um and then we're applying to the same to historic bones. So uh I don't see why you couldn't get a profile that could be helpful, especially if you find other bones from the site.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

So the 2016 finding appeared to be human remains, a femur to be specific. It had been sitting in the water and adjacent to wood for some time. The deceased was a fully matured, pre-arthritic adult, placing them in their 20s or 30s. They were likely of a smaller stature, and while we don't know exactly how long ago they found themselves in the inlet, we know it was very likely in the 1900s. We also know that if we could somehow find the remains, genetic testing capability, even on remains over a hundred years old, would be able to fill in the gaps and provide a fuller genetic profile of the deceased. At minimum, we knew the remains were not ancient. We also knew that the remains were not recent. It narrowed the realm of possibilities. And simple explanations, well, they were getting harder to believe. I resolved to keep trying to find the 2016 remains. I also knew that I had enough information about my 2016 findings to further refine my search for explanations, as I vowed to double down on Ocean City's 20th century cold case history. As for 2018, we know the office of the chief medical examiner disposed of all the bones turned in, but we still had that unresolved issue on the suitcase. Did the witness in 2018 see a suitcase or a barrel? If they did find a barrel back then, the animal bone story makes better sense. If it were a suitcase, well, that's a different story. It took some time and certainly some effort, but I finally tracked down that witness from 2018.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

We were playing in the water, and my niece actually found the suitcase initially. Uh, we were probably, I would guess, 20 feet um from where the water was hitting the beach um in the water, but it was pretty shallow water.

SPEAKER_03 34:01

Chris Manifold and his niece were walking their dog before finding items of interest in the shallow waters of Stinky Beach. Chris eventually called 911. He was more than willing to talk about exactly what he saw in the water that day. Definitely unmistakably not round or circular.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Definitely not round or circular, correct?

SPEAKER_03 34:24

And doesn't appear to be made of anything wooden.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Okay. Next time on the Beach Remains, I'm Ricky Conmarks. The Beach Remains podcast is produced by DreamOak Productions, all rights reserved, the song Gods and Ghosts performed by Koidog. Follow us on the Beach Remains Facebook page for show updates and fan community.

SPEAKER_06 35:00

Now listen to me closely. I have one thing left to say.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

Up ahead on the Beach Remains.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

On a pretty nasty call or you know, and you need assistance, your backup. It could be a good 15-20 minutes away. What do y'all you know the the police are extremely under me? That type of police response, it's something big, something going on.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Um step came from, but I didn't see a barrel and I didn't see wood, it was more of a circuit.