Episode 512: Nutty Putty Cave Incident

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey Weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna.

And this is morbid.

This is morbid. And what a fucking day it has been, you guys, we have had a day. It started off awesome, yeah, started off with, like, fucking yummy ass food, fucking delicious coffee.

Like, just awesome coffees, yum, you know, we got friendships, camaraderie, friendship and camaraderie. Wow, listen to her.

And then a bird flew in my house and I think, like, tell me if I'm wrong, I know you will.

I think that's supposed to be a bad omen and then I looked it up and it was like, in some places, it's a good omen. So I think it's just whatever the fuck you feel. Well, when you said that, I was like, OK, well, I'm choosing to look at it as a good omen. I think that's like, you know, that's, that's it.

I'm going to take it as a good omen and let the record show that me and Mikey saved the bird. It's true they did. They got it out of the house safely and soundly.

But that happened, so that was weird and it kind of interrupted the flow of the day. But we were kind of laughing about it being like, Oh my god, that could have been so bad. I'm so glad we found it.

And then all of a sudden we're in the middle of doing our recording thing. And all of the alarms in my house start going off. And they're just going and they're going, fire, fire. So we go running out of the room. Just, you know, John is holding my youngest and like, and panicked, and it's like, let's get out of the house.

And we go and look into my in-laws side of the house. And John. I couldn't see it at first, but John looks out in there and says, Oh my God. And I was like, And in my head, I'm like, Oh my God, there's flames, like half of our house is about to burn down. I was like I was about to panic.

And I fully thought we were about to be like, pushed back. I was like, Oh my God, and he was like, So I look. And there is water pouring from the ceiling ceiling fan, and the smoke detector, like pouring is an understatement, like a waterfall.

Like it was in tight up, like it was raining, like downpour, monsoon, raining in that room. Legit? And so he was like, just get everybody out of here, I don't know what's going on.

So he went running upstairs to see if something was setting this off. Like, what the hell is going on? We still don't know what's happening. We have a plumber here, but even the plumber was like, even the plumber is like, what the fuck is going on? But I figured it out.

Yeah, I figured it out, yeah. So this is a real warning, it's a real lesson that we can all learn about manifesting things properly. Always be detailed.

I told you, didn't I tell you? I can get Willy Nilly? A little bit about my manifestations, and this was one of them. So I love Guillermo Del Toro.

I just do, I promise this connects. I'm not just saying this out of the blue, although sometimes maybe I will just say that. And I love Guillermo Del Toro, I love Guillermo Del Toro.

But he famously has a rain room that he writes in it, like, inspires him, the sound of rain. And you've been talking about this for like, a year, forever, and I've been talking about how, oh my goodness, I would love a rain room.

Just someday, I want my writing room to have, like, rain, you know, like it would be so inspiring because I love the rain and I love, like, gloomy weather. I've been saying I want a rain room for a long time, and I wasn't specific. I didn't say I want Guillermo del Toro's exact rain room. No, I just said a rain room.

And you know what a rain room I got. So I, although this sucks and I don't know what's going on here. I can't be mad because I think I did this, and I can't be mad. Because after all of that, she goes, Oh, I need a taco, it's true.

And I said, Does that mean I can get a baja baja blast? She literally said that, and here I am sipping on my baja baja blast. You little bitch. That's exactly what happened. Fucking love a baja blast.

As I'm watching the rain, water just pour down through the ceiling, let the rain fall down and take my dreams. As Hilary Duff sauntered in with her hands in her front pockets. Hey guys and just.

As that happened, I said, You know what, give me a taco, who? who needs this? tacos we got?

We got the little soft shell, but you know what, we're here now, and that's what the day has been, and our bellies are full of taco and baja.

And now we're here to have a blast to talk about a truly tragic and truly uncomfortable story. So I apologize ahead of time. Trigger warning We're talking about spelunking.

So claustrophobia, claustrophobia, you don't like it. This is going to be tough for you, you should go. We're going to be talking about Nutty Putty Cave and the death of John Edward Jones.

This story is horrific, horrific and such a freak accident. You told me about this for the first time. I think this past year. Yeah, I hadn't heard of it before.

Wow, it's horrifying, so, but we're going to get into it, we're going to talk a little bit about. Obviously, we're going to talk about this particular tragic death, but we're also going to talk about some rescues that happened.

That ended with the people coming out alive just so you can see.

How treacherous this kind of thing is, and this cave in particular, is a very challenging cave. Is it closed now? it is closed off now? But this happens more often than not. That this particular thing, like, you know, this is horrific, but people get caught a lot and have to be rescued.

And it's in there and a lot of people are inches from it becoming a tragedy. Spelunking is not for me, so if you are a spelunker, just please be safe, be careful. I don't want you to get hurt.

No, this stressed me out so much. And I'm like, I don't know any Spelunkers, but if you're a listener and a Spelunker, just fucking be careful. I'm worried, I'm worried about you.

But I want you to have your experience, just be safe. OK, yeah, that's all I can ask.

So discovered in Utah County in 1960, Nutty Putty Cave quickly became one of the most popular destinations for cavers. Is what we can also call them amateur and professional. So this is definitely what we'll get into soon is that this is a cave that is very much for professionals. But amateurs come a lot and they tend to be the ones that need to be rescued.

Oh, it actually became kind of a bucket list cave of great difficulty, like people. There was a time when it was like, if you don't hit nutty putty cave, like, are you even a caver slash spelunker? But despite its popularity, beginning in the late 1980s, the cave became notorious for a number of explorers becoming trapped and requiring emergency assistance to escape. Very twisty, very narrow and poorly mapped passageways. Oh, no.

So when Salt Lake City resident Dale Green discovered what is now known as Nutty Putty Cave, he had no idea that he and his friends had stumbled upon what would become one of Utah's most famous and notorious cave systems. According to Green, a local rancher had actually noticed some irregularities and he had noticed some warm vapors coming out of the ground on his property. And this is, he discovered this, and then he knew that Green was an amateur caver, so he let him know that this could be an unknown cave.

The warm vapors are what tipped him off. He was like something could be happening under there. That's cool, you might want to check this out, Green told a reporter in 2009,.

Everybody who goes through that cave comes out covered with clay. When we went in, there was no sign whatsoever that anyone had been in there. So, throughout the second half of the 20th century, Western Utah became a very popular destination for amateur and professional spelunkers and speleologists. Speleologists. That's fun to say, and a speleologist is just a scientist, a scientist who studies caves and going into caves.

It's all revolving around going into caves, and so this is so, you know. Western Utah had become this very popular destination for them due to the large number of extensive cave systems there. Cave systems freak me out. Yeah, same. It's so mysterious to me.

And it's so like, mystical, and I'm so fascinated by it, but I'm, yeah, I'm like, respectfully terrified by it. It's kind of like the ocean. I was literally just going to say, like, the ocean, there's too much unknown.

I respect it. Yeah, I'm terrified of it. Correct? Caves respect them.

Terrified of them? But like many of the caves across the American West, Nutty Putty Cave is a solution cave. What's that now? A solution cave is created when weakly acidic rainwater seeps through the soils and percolates through fractures in the bedrock and dissolves the rock. But in the case of Nutty Putty Cave, the limestone was eroded from the bottom up, slowly eaten away by boiling water forced upwards from deep within the earth.

The fuck? Creating what is known as a hypogenic cave. So it's really fascinating, I was going to say, we're in science class right now, it's really, really fascinating.

Like, thinking about water that has been boiled by deep within the earth. Yeah, something about that is just like, whoa, like, that's just like.

That's just the planet, just being badass. It's giving Sunnydale, it is giving Sunnydale, isn't it? Yeah.

It just feels like it really does feel like supernatural in some way, even though it's like the most scientific based in reality shit I've ever heard. It's like it has this wild, supernatural feel to it. Earth is cuckoo nuts, it feels mystical, it is mystical.

It all feels very.

Caves are mystical as fuck, and they're misty, so there you go.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, now it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Now, in the process of its creation, the viscous clay within the cave wall gets heated, and the process transforms from hard sedimentary rock into a squishy, elastic substance. Kind of similar to what we all know as silly putty, like that toy. I see where we're going with this now. When they first emerged from the caves, Green, the guy we were talking about before, Green and his friends, began referring to this cave as silly putty cave. Because of that substance seeping out of the walls.

But eventually they started talking about it and saying it was called Nutty Putty Cave because they thought it sounded better. Okay, which I kind of, I agree. Nutty putty cave sounds. Yeah, nutty putty's better than silly putty.

Just got a good feel to it. As word about the cave made its way around the caving community, the name stuck, and it's been known as Nutty Putty Cave ever since. Now. Interestingly enough, Green and his fellow cave friends were not really impressed by this new cave at first, he said. Quote It didn't really have anything pretty in it. And there aren't a lot of places where you can stand up, so you're just pretty much crawling around all the time and you get all muddy.

That sounds fucking terrible, sounds like a fucking nightmare to me, like, that's, that's my health, I don't. There are two things I don't want to do. I'll do them if I have to, but I don't want to run and I don't want to crawl.

I don't want to do either of those things. I learned how to walk and I'm cool with that. Yeah, right, if I can't stand up for long periods of time like, I, no, that's an issue.

Even thinking about it is giving me the willies. I just I'm like, I'm getting stressed. Strangely enough, despite all of this, it, like I said before, it became pretty popular with locals and cavers. And Green later recalled. I called it a date cave. The kids from BYU take dates out there.

No, no, no, no, hold on. Because if a motherfucker ever approached me and was like, Hey, girly, do you want to go spelunking on our date? I'd be like, Uh, respectfully, go fuck yourself, respectfully. No, sir.

No, no, it's a date cave, or it was a date cave. Stop it, yeah.

Stop it. There is nothing romantic about that, not for me, but for some people, I guess it's, Oh, the danger is romantic. No, I this whole thing has really given me....

Yeah, claustrophobia doesn't get me going. No, it does not get me going as well. But to each his own, we're not here to shame. So you know, whatever gets you going, date cave or not? Wow.

So, located just outside Salt Lake City, on the western side of Utah Lake, the entrance to Nutty Putty Cave sits on Blowhole Hill in Utah County.

I mean, it sounds terrifying to me, but I don't. Do. Tight spaces. You enter through a six foot wide opening and then you must climb down a 15 foot drop. That opens into a chamber with branches to the right and left. That together make up nearly 1400 feet of tunnels at a depth of 145 feet below the Earth's surface. Oh so, you're just like, inside of Earth, I was in the earth, No.

Yeah, you're all up, and that's what caves are. No, I'll be on the earth. yeah, I'm going to stand on the earth, yeah.

Now, will you go left or will you go right? is the question. I'm actually not there and I never will be. If you ever were, though, would you go to the left or would you go to the right? Instinctually? I don't know, because I just wouldn't be there.

Mikey, what about you? would you go left? you go right? okay right. Well, that's the big slide.

This is a fairly large chamber that leads down into a much tighter section of the cave, known as the birth Canal. You chose wrong, which leads to even tighter sections. Somehow that are referred to as the aorta, crawl and vein alley, they're named for their resemblance of the circulatory system. That's interesting, though, that the Earth, just like, created that.

You know, isn't that wild? That is cool? And then if you go left. Well, now you're going to a series of wider and easier to explore sections of the cave, referred to as the Maze, the Big Room and the Crack. I'm just not there.

I'm not there either. Like, you're kind of doing a goosebumps. Choose your own adventure here. Kind of thing it is.

I'm not reading Splunker. Beware, you choose. The scare is what this is. I like that.

That was clever, but either way, you go. The paths lead to a dead end, and the only way in and out are through the opening on Blowhole Hill. Hate that there's one way in, one way out. Oh, I don't like that at all.

Now, according to Brandon Koalas, who was one of the speleologists who surveyed Nutty Putty in 2003. The cave system gained popularity in the later decades of the 20th century because it was relatively easy to access. And the fact that it kind of offered a challenge once you got in there to more experienced cavers. That was really what the draw was, that you could access it very easily. But it was a challenge once you were in there, that makes sense, Koalas said. Quote The majority of it is not something you're going to get stuck in. But there are some spots, some nooks and crannies where people might try to challenge themselves by trying to squeeze through.

No, now. By the early 2000s, officials at the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, who own and manage the cave and the surrounding land. They began getting nervous about the numbers of people that were traveling to Utah specifically to go into Nutty Putty Cave, thousands of people every year were coming for it specifically. Wow, and there were some who came that had very little experience, and this is a way too challenging cave for that.

Right? In response, the trust turned over management of the cave system to the Timpanogos Grotto, a local chapter of the National Speleological Society. This group organizes expeditions, but they organize them with experienced professionals to guide you. Oh, okay, that was a good way to do it.

By handing off the management to the grotto, the Land Trust was hoping to avoid any accidents involving cavers. Who were just not experienced enough to traverse the nutty, putty cave without a guide. So a grotto volunteer named John said in 2006. We were hoping that by limiting access to those with the proper gear, proper leadership preparations and the appropriate skills, we could make sure that only the most prepared people were going into that cave. But there were still a rising number of incidents that were occurring every year, and a source had to admit even with everything that has been put in place to help guide people into proper preparation, going into the cave can still be dangerous. Yeah, of course.

So the tragic case of John Edward Jones in 2009, which we will get to, was a nationally shared story. But it was not the first of its kind to involve emergency rescue attempts. For cavers in Utah in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of incidents would cause Utah officials to very much reconsider the state's approach to caving and spelunking. Enthusiasts, really, and how they were going to keep them safe. On July 27th, 1999, Chris Marrow and Chris Hale, both 17 years old, spent the evening camped along the edge of Utah Lake. And then the next morning they woke up and a little after 9 a...m.

They made their way to Nutty Putty Cave now, according to a spokesperson for the Utah County Sheriff's Department, both boys were well-prepared. They had done these things before, not Nutty Putty Cave, but they had caved before similar caving experiences, and they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into when they entered the cave.

Okay, now, they had made it through the initial drop and the big slide without any trouble. So when you say the initial drop is that like, you just slide down. I think you have to use gear to drop yourselves inside. Oh, wow.

Okay, all right, I think it's that kind of drop. And then you, that's the other thing. I encourage you to look into caving and spelunking.

It's interesting, the fact that people just do this is really fascinating to me. I'm like, man, you are like a superhero to me, like super brave because I couldn't do it.

I do not have the bravado to do it, the courage, and I don't have the skills or the strength for that matter. I am way too thick, I am way too thickums McGee to go spelunking thickums, Mcgee. I just couldn't.

I don't have the mental strength, you would probably be great at it. I do not have the mental strength for that. And I think you need to be physically so strong and like....

You're so strong. Have you seen your biceps? Oh my God, Thank you, thank you. Yeah, the people on Scream saw them once.

Oh shit, saw the biceps, you have crazy biceps. But I just got mentally, I could not do this, I don't have the mental capacity to.

No courage here for this. Like, I'm in, I stand in awe. So it's one of those things where it's almost like, you're kind of like, going down the side of a mountain. Where they, like, have to, yeah, they literally have, I think, lower themselves down with, like a pulley and everything like that.

And then you have to, like, pull yourself back up at the end, that's so scary. Yeah, it's like, a lot, it's like, and that's the thing.

It takes real physical strength to do this, and, like I would think, agility of your mind, absolutely, you know, to know where to put certain gear and....

Oh yeah, it's a skill set that I can't even fathom. It's really, like, fascinating. But they made that initial drop, the big slide. They went down with no trouble, and then they reached the birth canal around 1030 a.m. According to the sheriff's spokesperson. They were just too big for the area they tried to go through.

Oh, no. And both boys quickly found themselves stuck in the small opening, about 120 feet underground. No shut up, the spokesperson said. The birth canal is a narrow part of the cave that leads to all kinds of interesting areas. But the area is so tight, hikers have to suck in their stomach and chest to get through.

If you don't do it right, you get stuck. I just had to take a deep breath. Yeah, same, so. Rescue workers responded to the call for help that morning and spent nearly 12 hours slowly wiggling each boy forward and chipping away small pieces of limestone to pull them through 12 hours.

Oh my God. By around 1030 p.m. rescue workers had freed Chris Hale from the cave, and Mara was pulled out a few hours later. So they both survived, they survived, and physically they suffered only minor injuries and some abrasions. But really, it was just the fact that they spent 12 hours in a really stressful, scary and uncomfortable situation.

That was the real bummer here. And it was wild. Because after the rescues were successful and it was clear that the boys were safe and relatively unharmed. Yeah, the rescue workers kind of had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I guess you kind of have to after all that.

Yeah, I guess so, one said. I suggested we tie a rope around their ankles and pull them out with a four-wheeler, or they could just perform a cesarean section on the birth canal.

I was like, I like that, they were really set up for that there. It's kind of funny. I wonder if they ever went spelunking again, right?

Like, I would love to know, I know, I feel like that. I feel like people who are brave enough to do it in the first place. Always end up doing it again. Because I think they like people who are brave and skilled enough to do it in the first place. Know what mistakes they made, so they're determined to do it again and not make those mistakes.

That's true, but who knows? Now, a few years later, in the summer of 2004, there was a situation that didn't really inspire any lighthearted sighs of relief afterwards. 16-year-old Brock Clark, who did live through this. But it wasn't, as it wasn't as like the first one, was treacherous.

It was scary, it took a long time. Obviously, I myself could not lay in any position for 12 hours and being stuck between rocks, so that was a horrific rescue as well. But this one, was, like, had a slightly different edge to it.

Okay, so 16-year-old Brock Clark, who had been spelunking with friends in Nutty Putty, got stuck in an upside-down position. Oh my God. In roughly the same part of the cave that pinned Kale and Mero, in place only a few years earlier.

It was Friday night when he and his friends had gone into the cave. It was late in August, they were planning to spend the afternoon in the cave and then just return home a few hours later. When they reached the entrance to the birth canal, Brock entered headfirst into the opening and was trying to lead his friends into the next chamber. Because, like we said before, the birth canal leads into the really cool parts of the cave, yeah.

So you have to go through that to get to the cool ones. But it was dark in that part of the cave. And because of this, Clark had been taken off course and ended up finding himself wedged into a small crevasse at a very downward angle. And it was not the birth canal, it was like the wrong one.

And he realized he had made a mistake. And in a panic, he tried to twist and wriggle his way out of the space. But that wedged him even tighter and his left leg ended up being pinned up behind him. Oh my God. Now, once they realized that Brock wasn't going to be able to get out of this position, one of his friends stood watch with him.

While the others went to get help, they went to the sheriff's department and got there around 6 p...m. And rescuers followed them back into the cave and it took a while to get to the area. And hours later, they were still trying to slowly extract him from the place he was wedged in.

A representative from the sheriff's office told reporters Brock did as much shimmying as he could. But it was taking hours and hours of gently and slowly pushing and pulling and trying to coach him and doing everything they could to get him out before he was finally freed in the early morning hours, Wow, now, like I said, this whole situation seems similar to Hale and Marrow's upon first read, but it was basically that Hale and Marrow. The two 17-year-olds were essentially lying prone, so they were lying in a regular laying down position face down, they weren't tilted at an angle.

They were just laying down, okay, like, on their bellies. yeah, just laying on their bellies in a prone position. Got it?

So very uncomfortable personally, mentally. I don't know if I could have gotten through that the way that they did for 12 hours. So I'm saying that for sure. But this just happened to have the added tragedy of him being tilted down, yeah.

And also, he was in that downward angle position and his left leg was like brutally pinned up behind him. So, blood had rushed to his head for hours, and because his leg was pinned, circulation had been disrupted on the entire left side of his body. Oh my god. So when he was taken from the cave after 12 plus hours, he couldn't walk or stand without help.

He was also described as very, very fatigued and weak and ended up needing to be hospitalized and stabilized. But he didn't have to get his leg amputated or anything. No, he didn't, and fortunately, Brock Clark survived his terrifying ordeal. But it was really situations like this and the other ones, like Hale and Merrow, that earned this particular section of Nutty Putty the name. The scout eater, the scout eater.

Yeah, that's so upsetting now, just a few weeks after Clark's horrific incident. 23-year-old David Crowther, a Brigham young university student, became stuck between two large rocks in Nutty Putty. After he and a group of friends went to explore the cave late one evening, once they realized they couldn't move him, his friends called for help, and rescue workers were able to use an air chipper to free him after more than seven hours. So that's the thing about these rescues.

It's not like someone flies in and they take you out of the thing and they're like, don't do that again. Be careful. It's hours and hours of you being stuck wherever you're stuck. And think about mentally what that would do to you. Because you'd be sitting there being like, Am I ever going to get out of this? Or that's the thing?

Like, you'd be like, What's going to happen here? Like, that's horrific, and I think that's unfortunately what happened when that ends up. What is what happens to John Jones? Because eventually he realizes, like, I'm going to die here, aren't I?

Oh my God. And it's like they and they couldn't help him. It's just like that just made my heart sink. It's awful.

So, according to the National Speleology Society, it's hard to say it is. An average of. About 2 million people visit caves annually across the United States, most of them go quote on low risk, at risk expeditions or on guided cave tours.

Of those, roughly 50 per year require emergency assistance after getting trapped, and interestingly, 83 of those are men. I wonder if it's because, like of their build, yeah, maybe that's what it is now. Given the large number of visitors to America's cave systems every year, serious and or fatal incidents are, you know, they're pretty infrequent, relatively.

But they tend to be so shocking when they do happen that they prompt calls for officials to take action. Yeah, in Utah, it wasn't just the incidents of emergency rescue that were raising alarms, but the general conditions of the caves themselves as well. John Jasper told a reporter in 2005 It smells like a gym when you first go in EW.

The article that this was comes from was focused on, like, you know, the general safety of nutty putty Cave. But Jasper was like, No. In addition to it being challenging and very difficult, the behavior of the visitors was creating unsanitary conditions that also posed a serious problem. Is he saying, like, people were like, using the bathroom and stuff in there, probably.

I think it's like, yeah. And he said, if there's a death, the state officials would probably be on the ball to close it immediately, and he was correct. Wow, now it turned out that John Jasper was not exaggerating at all. Because the back-to-back emergency rescues of Brock Clark and David Crowthers in the fall of 2004 had prompted a number of complaints to state officials.

Many people started demanding that Nutty Putty Cave be closed to the public school and institutional trust, Lands Administration Representative Gary Bagley said. Quote Closing the cave is one of the options. But obviously, the trust would have preferred that another organization just take over management of it and actually keep the cave open. But as far as Bagley and the trust were concerned, Nutty Putty Cave had become more of a liability than it was really worth. That's what it sounds like to me.

And they were like, we don't necessarily want it to be closed off to everybody, or just like sealed off. They kind of wanted to direct their resources into something that was a little more profitable and less like, you know, dangerous, dangerous, like.

There was a lot of liability involved with this and they were like, I don't know if this is really something we're really prepared to handle. Like, I don't think we have the resources. Like, in simple terms, the school and Institutional Trust Lands Administration did not possess the resources or expertise to manage Nutty Putty as a destination for visitors.

It doesn't sound like it like, I think the initial look at it was something different, and now it's become this massive destination. So they were thinking this is going to be better off in the hands of a more appropriate organization for what it has become. Because, honestly, by 2005, Nutty Putty was receiving more than 4,000 visitors per year.

Whoa, which is nearly twice that of any other cave in Utah. That's insane. But Jasper estimated only about 1 of them were properly equipped to enter the cave. 1 of visitors were properly equipped to enter the cave.

1 of 4,000.

Yikes, so the issue of public safety came up again a few minutes later, I mean, a few months later. Oh, okay.

Though this time it was under unfortunate circumstances. Oh no, now this is really awful. So, on August 17th, 2005, Jennifer Gilbrace and a group of five friends went out to explore the caves under Y Mountain in Provo, Utah. According to Jennifer's father, Chris, she had experience exploring caves.

Okay, but she had never been in this cave system, as far as he knew, he said. I think it was just an adventure that went bad. Oh, no. Now, across western Utah, there's a lot of old mine shafts that have been out of use for nearly a century.

And they are literally all over the landscape and they can look very much like cave systems. Oh, but they're like, super dangerous. They pose a far greater risk than natural cave systems because of their instability, right? Like they collapse a lot.

That evening, Jennifer and her friends decided to enter a cave known as the Cave of Death. Oh, which is in fact, not a cave at all. It's an abandoned mine entrance that dead ends a few hundred feet in. Of the five friends, only one, Joseph Ferguson, was like, No, I don't want to go in a mine shaft.

And he waited outside, Okay. The other four went in the several hundred feet in and lowered themselves into a deeper shaft to explore the interior. So they went several hundred feet into the cave and then, like, lowered themselves further in. Oh wow.

Now, when nobody had returned for several hours, Joseph began to panic. Oh, no, and he's just sitting outside this mine entrance alone, yeah. And he called police, who put together a rescue team to find the four friends in the shaft.

When they found Jennifer and her friends in the lower part of the mine, they were all dead. The exact cause of death is unknown. What? According to rescuers, quote the guide, rope was reportedly intact. Cold water, lack of air or a hangup might've caused their deaths.

Although they couldn't be certain about what happened.

So officials theorized that maybe. After lowering themselves into the shaft, Jennifer and her friends became trapped in a very small space that regularly flooded with water. And so they panicked and were unable to reverse their course. And it's believed that they couldn't find their way out and probably suffocated due to limited oxygen in the pool. Oh my god, what a fucking way to go.

That's so horrific, I know I feel like we keep saying horrific, but that's the only word you can use to describe this. Truly wow, yeah.

Within hours of retrieving the four bodies, authorities had put a no trespassing sign outside of the entrance to the mine and began pouring cement to close off the entrance. While sealing up the entrance would likely prevent any future deaths like this. It wasn't always a permanent solution, Provo Mayor Louis Billings told reporters. There are mines all over these mountains. The problem with sealing up caves or mines is that it often makes the curious explorer even more so. A prime example is the Spanish Moss Cave, which has a steel door.

People have been so curious that they dug underneath it to get in. It's like, I'm sorry, but if you have to dig underneath a steel door to get in, you gotta know. If something's sealed off like that, leave it alone. It's like when we open up a sarcophagus that's been under this wild amount of Earth for hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years. And we're like, Wow, let's open this up. It's like, Okay, I get it.

I'm for science, I'm for exploration, I'm for looking into history, all that. There's a line, there's certain things that I'm like, I don't know, I don't know.

Some things just don't give. They don't pass the vibe check, and a closed off mine or a closed off cave system, it's not passing the vibe check. Leave it alone. Something bad happened in there.

Just leave it alone. It's like earlier this year when they found that worm that was like prehistoric, they were like, let's thaw it and figure it out. I'm like, isn't that every disaster movie ever just stop doing it?

But of course, we're getting science forever. Yeah, no, science, absolutely. But don't go into sealed off places like this. It's dangerous, yeah.

And I don't know about worms, and I don't know about worms. Just for the record, I mean, read the truth.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia or a corrupt police coverup?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Uh, while no one had died in Nutty putty Cave since the early 1990s. It was clear to officials that the popular cave system posed very serious risks to specifically inexperienced and unprepared spelunkers and cavers. Yeah, because, by the way, 1 of 4,000 is 40. Yeah, it took me a minute to figure that out. Those are the that's the amount of people that are prepared to go in, he said. 40 people, probably out of those 4,000, knew what they were doing.

And that was like, a probably yes, like, yeah, wow, yeah.

Not great, real bad, not good at all, uh, and that's the thing. It's like the if you're experienced and you're ready to take on the risk. And you know what you're getting into. And you go with the proper equipment, that's on you, man.

Like, you accept the risks you know that like, and hopefully you're safe and all that good stuff, totally. But if you're inexperienced, this just isn't the level that you should just like dive right into, I feel.

Like, this is just really, really scary and challenging, uh? But in May 2006, the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration SITLA installed a large gate to discourage visitors from going in. Until. And they basically were doing that as like a hold pattern. Like, until we figure out what's going to happen to the future of this cave, like, please stay in, so, SitLA spokesman David Herbertson told the press This is a moral thing that we don't want to live with. The cave needs more management or to be closed.

And, according to Herbertson, the four deaths in the mine at Wye Mountain quote reemphasize the need for people to take precautions when they're in caves. And basically, the SitLa did not possess the resources to provide visitors a safe, spelunking caving experience. That seems to be the theme of all of this. And what he said was, I don't think liability, and I do appreciate this part of what they said, I really think they meant this.

He said, I don't think liability is an issue at all. And he said, But I do believe that we don't want to tell somebody that their son or daughter died in our cave. Yeah, I mean, of course not, and I think that's pretty decent of them. That their main focus was not being responsible for more deaths, not liability, not fully like profitability and all that. They were like, No, what we really don't want is to have to go to somebody's parents and say, your kid is dead in our cave.

Yeah, who wants to do that now? While most people understood this idea to seal off unsafe mines, people were down for that. They were like, mine's like, yeah, totally closing off access to mines to like access to caves they were mad about.

Was a controversial matter? Okay, people stand on two very different sides, Timpanagos Grotto vice chairman Chuck Acklin said. There are more caves in Utah than we know about right now. Sealing off all the mines makes sense, but the caves? there's a lot of science in those caves that we don't understand yet.

And I do understand that argument, and you wish there was some type of way to.

Stop inexperienced people from going into those caves, but allow experienced people. But it's like, How do you discern? And they tried many, many times, and people. Unfortunately, we are a species that is not great at listening and not great at understanding boundaries. And so you'll always have people that will bend the rules and put themselves and others at risk.

Unfortunately, you can't stop them, and that is not what happened in the case. It's really not what happened in any of these cases. Especially the ones in the Nutty Pitty Cave and the one of John Jones. They were spunking, they were, you know, and they were experienced.

They knew what they were doing and it was just freak accidents and it was getting turned around. It was that kind of thing. And that's the thing. Look, look, what even happens to experienced people?

So that's the thing. It's like you don't know what to do, because it's like you do need cave systems for, like, scientific research. There's so much we don't know, and it's like you don't want to seal that off and just be like, Well, I guess we'll never know.

But like, how do you make it safe? It's just so hard. There's really no right answer, I don't think, unfortunately. But so again, there's a lot of science in those caves that we don't understand yet.

And as a compromise, the SitLa contracted with Timpanagos Grotto to take over management of Nutty Pitty Cave and also some other cave systems on their property. And anyone interested in venturing inside, they now said that they needed to contact the Grotto, submit an application for entry into the cave. Essentially acknowledging the risks and proving that they were experienced enough to manage the expedition. I was waiting for that, like some kind of release, yeah, which that makes sense. And Acklin said, We've attempted to manage the risk, but we're unable to manage the gamblers.

And that is no truer statement has been said. Yeah, all we can do is manage the risk. People are going to gamble and that's just the way it is. And he said he was referring gamblers as people who continued to enter the cave without the permissions and waivers required.

Oh, okay, and honestly, at this point, I don't know what else they could do so. On the afternoon of November 24th, 2009, 26 year old John Jones and a large group of friends and family arrived at the entrance of Nutty Pitty Cave. They were super excited to explore this notorious cave. John and his brother, Josh, and his family had grown up in Stansbury Park, Utah.

So they had spent a lot of time together as kids, exploring the Utah caves and cool places all over the state. Utah is way cooler than I knew. Oh, Utah is super cool. I didn't know a lot about Utah, to be honest.

There's so much history in Utah because it's like, there really is, I think it's like one of the oldest places. It's very, it's like, fascinating when you're like, Go Utah, Utah, you know?

Salt Lake City Housewives. I haven't watched that. One of the best franchises there you go. But John had moved to Virginia for med school two years earlier.

And so he hadn't been in a cave in years, and especially not one as challenging as Nutty Pitty. He had also married his longtime girlfriend Emily, and together they had a one-year-old daughter together, and Emily was also pregnant and due with a baby that June. Oh God.

So his trip back to Utah for Thanksgiving was kind of an opportunity for John to reconnect with his group of friends and hang out with his family. And all doing the thing that they had once loved to do together, yeah, like adventure. That's really sad that it was like a reunion, yeah.

And so the group reached the entrance to the cave around 8 p.

M and spent some time exploring the big slide before. John, Josh and two other members of the group separated from the others to go to search more challenging sections of the cave. So they didn't have a guide and they didn't have a proper map, so they only had a vague idea of where the birth canal was located. So they went in the general direction. They believed it to be in. And after wiggling through very difficult and tight alcoves and passages, they thought they had found what they were looking for.

They only had a light like a headlamp on, and it was a light from his father's decades-old headlamp to show the way. So it wasn't even like a brand new one, right? John entered into a waist-high hole headfirst, he inched his way into the crevasse with his hips, stomach and hands. And the natural process of erosion in this hole had created what basically was a tight corkscrew of rock that few, if anyone, had successfully navigated.

So they don't even know if anyone has gone. Where John Jones ended up being. Oh, no, and he was. John Jones was six feet tall and nearly 200 pounds, so he's like a built guy, yeah. So he found himself in trouble pretty quick.

Oh, no. When he realized the passage was too small and tight for his frame, he looked for but couldn't find a space large enough to turn around. So he kept pushing forward in the hope that he would widen. At one point. Because he was thinking he was going to end up at the end of the birth canal, right? And it would open up.

Of course, but the problem was they weren't in the birth canal. They were in a very poorly mapped section of the cave known as Bob's Push, which is only 18 inches wide and 10 inches high.

18 inches wide. Oh yeah.

So he's looking into a fissure that drops straight down and it looked like it widened at the bottom. So he kept pushing forward, thinking he'd found a place to turn around. I'm surprised he could even push forward at that point. Oh, it's like, slowly and gradually, you push forward, too.

It's like a lot of effort, a lot of strength, a lot of energy. Now it's difficult to know exactly what happened, but rescuers believe John sucked in his chest to investigate the fissure. So he slid his torso over a lip of rock and down into a 10 inch wide side of the crevice. So he went from 18 inches to 10 inches, but when his chest expanded again, he was wedged.

Oh my God, now he's in an upside down position, with all of his weight pushing downward and all of his the blood rushing to his head. Yep, and the more he struggled to free himself, the deeper he slid into the increasingly narrow fissure. This is awful.

Until he became wedged into a section that was only about eight and a half inches wide. How does that? How is that even possible? I have no idea, like, I don't understand, I can't even wrap my head around that.

How does the body fit in a section that is that wide or that is only that wide? It's like, when you literally tuck everything in, basically, that's so crazy.

Which is even more suffocating because you're like you have no room to expand your chest, to breathe. To make matters worse, as he was sliding deeper into the fissure, one of his arms had been pinned under his body and the other was forced backwards. Caught on an outcropping rock. Oh my God. On his way in, he had used momentum to wriggle and slide his way forward. But without the use of his arms or hands, he couldn't push himself backwards. So he can't use his arms or his hands at this point.

Now, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, when Josh learned his brother was stuck, he thought it was the beginning of another family adventure story. Because when they were younger, their father had gotten stuck on a similar caving trip. And the story had been this like, favorite to tell at family gatherings ever since. About, like, the amazing rescue and like, he got out and wow, like, what a crazy story. That makes this even sadder. Yeah, so Josh was like, Oh, this is just gonna be one of those. Like, like, I'm so sorry. He's uncomfortable, like that sucks, but like, we're gonna get him out and then we're all gonna laugh about this. Oh, and the fact that he had that much hope.

Oh, they all had so much hope. Oh, this is so heartbreaking. But as Josh slowly crawled into the cave to reach his brother, the increasingly tight space made him anxious. He couldn't, and by the time he reached John, he was like, Oh, shit.

Like, this is not good. And Josh said, Seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock, that's when I knew it was serious, swallowed by the rock. Now. Wrapping his feet around John's calves, Josh tried to extract his brother and ended up being able to move him a few inches. And that probably gave them even more hope.

Exactly, but with nothing to hold on to and gravity pulling all of them down, John slipped back into his original position. Oh no, Josh was like, I have nothing I can do. And he started to panic. So he crawled out of the fissure and made his way to the surface to call for help. While one of their friends stayed below with John.

Okay, good, now. Confident that help was on the way, Josh made his way back down to where John was stuck and tried to keep his spirits up. What a good brother. While they waited for a rescue, they made small talk, they sang Mormon hymns, they were Mormon, and they prayed together to pass the time. And after about an hour, they started to hear the sound of rescuers approaching.

And but by that point, Josh didn't even want to leave him. Yeah, no, like he was like, I really don't want to leave him by himself down here. He later said to a reporter, I didn't want to leave him.

His life was in that cave, in that little crack. Oh, this is gut-wrenching, isn't it? Like, there's I can't think of something more horrifying, truly.

Oh, I don't even have the words now. The rescue attempt that happens here is long, arduous and equally as terrifying. Yeah, so. The three-person team of rescuers arrived on scene a little before midnight. And within 30 or so minutes, they'd reached the opening of the fissure where John had become stuck. And as the smallest member of the group, at five foot three inches, Susie Motola volunteered to venture into the Crevasse, where John was. Which, like heroes?

Yeah, seriously. After 20 minutes of slow progress, Susie's headlamp finally found the back of John and she could see that he was very trapped. And what he said? When she got there, she heard he heard her coming. And he said. She said, like, I'm Susie, I'm here to help you, and he said, Hi Susie, thanks for coming. But I really, really want to get out. Oh my god, I'm gonna like, cry at this, that's the thing.

And her response, because they were optimistic they could get him out, was, Oh, no worries, John, you're going to be out of here. Lickety split, which I'm glad, she said. That, of course, give him like a little something to hold on to. It's just so, so awful that he never like. And you can tell when, like, just that quote, I really, really want to get out.

You're just like, I really, really want to get out, like I can, just like I feel that, and you know that, like, you feel like a little kid. Being like, I just really, really want to get out of here. Like when you panic and you know that feeling when, like, you, you've done something and you regret it so much. And you're like, if I could just hit rewind, like, please, so true, that's exactly.

It's like, oh so. Susie tied a rope around John's ankles and very slowly worked her way back out to deliver the other end of the rope to the team. At the entrance of the cave. But apparently, the friction caused by the rope rubbing against the various pieces of rock only created more tension. And it made their efforts to pull him out much harder. Oh, no.

So while the other rescuers worked to come up with a new plan, Susie decided she was going to try to keep John calm and prevent him from panicking. And at this point, he can't even see these people, right? He's just there, looking into, like a dark darkness. And so she tried to move him so that he could be more comfortable. But he was too heavy and she couldn't lift any part of his body because he was so wedged.

So she cut off the legs of his jeans to allow a little more space, so maybe it wouldn't rub. But it didn't really do a lot to improve his comfort. And then she started trickling water from her water bottle down his arm, hoping that some of it could trickle into his mouth. She's so sweet. Then, when she'd run out of out of ideas, she started awfully humming a Mormon hymn to him. Now, as they talked, and as she tried to keep him calm, she noticed John's voice was becoming, quote more nasal and his breathing labored.

She could hear that his lungs were filled with fluid. Oh my god. Susie knew John was in big trouble here, but at the time she didn't know how big of trouble he was in. Back at the cave entrance, trauma doctor Doug Murdock had arrived to assist in the rescue, which, like, they immediately got a trauma doctor. That's great.

And he filled in everyone with how bad this situation really was, he said. Quote Being upside down, your body has to pump the blood out of the brain. your body isn't set up to do that. The entire system starts to fail.

So do you basically have, like, an aneurysm? At some point, everything just starts failing. Oh my God. Now being in that position, his circulation was slowing down. So it was allowing for fluids to pool in the brain and lungs, capillaries to leak and toxins to build in his blood. And if they weren't able to get to him soon and get him out of that position, the toxins that were leaking into his blood would leak into his heart and other vital organs.

And although he couldn't say with exact certainty how long he had, Dr Murdock estimated John had about eight to ten hours in there before he died. Oh my God now. While Susie worked to keep John calm, the team outside the cave finally had come up with a full like a total plan. This whole pulley system, threading the rope through anchors pounded into the wall of the cave.

Okay, and this. They did this so that it wouldn't rub against the wall and create that friction again, right? And the problem, however, was that the size of the opening where John was stuck was so tight that each piece of equipment had to be sent down one at a time, in a process that took nearly one hour for each piece. And he only has eight to ten hours to even live at this point.

Meanwhile, they're still brainstorming other possible strategies. These people must like, but this is unprecedented. They must be so stressed and but like, for them to be just like giving. The amount of times they try here, and the lengths they go to, and the danger they put themselves in, and the things they come up with, like they tried so hard.

Like, they tried so hard, you must be terrified as a rescuer going in there. Because what if you take one long turn? It's literally a split second decision of which way to go and when you get down there. I'm sure Susie and everybody else who ended up like this guy Ryan, this guy Dave, who goes down there to talk to John, his brother Josh.

You hear this guy talking to you and being like, I really, really just want to get out of here. Like, thank you for helping me, like, please help me everything, and you must want to be like.

All I want to do is get this guy out like I'll do whatever I can, like. You just want to lift this guy out to his family and be like, he's okay.

You know, like, that's that's all they ever want out of a rescue, and they're not getting it. And you have, like, the weight of the the world on your shoulders. Yeah, it's, oh, it just must be such tough, the physical load I can't even fathom.

Like, my body won't even begin to imagine that physical load that it takes, but the emotional and mental load is unthinkable now. They ordered air drills and chisels, but the equipment was too large to get down into the Crevasse. They considered explosives to create a second opening where they could pull him forward.

But they quickly realized that wasn't going to work, that was going to cause more dangerous problems. They even ordered six gallons of vegetable oil, hoping that they could slide him out, and they tried, but it it was impossible, so now he's covered in oil.

It's they tried everything.

By 4 p.

M. The next day, rescuers had managed to pull John back nearly a dozen feet in the direction of the opening. And we're beginning to feel optimistic. They're getting closer. But they would soon, and they thought they were going to get him out.

They were like, Okay, we're moving him, this is working, you know? They managed to free 16 year old Brock Clark from a similar spot just six years earlier. So they were like, we can do this.

I think we can do this. But the problem was, John was stuck way further down than Clark was. And he and Clark, I think, was in like a different spot in the Crevasse. And he was also a 16 year old teenager, right? He's built differently.

And it's like, this is a grown man, like, that's, it's, yeah, now. Despite the optimism of those working on the surface, things inside the cave were not as optimistic. John's heart had been working overtime to circulate the blood for nearly 24 hours. Oh my God.

I didn't realize he was stuck for that long, and at this point, his heart's working so hard. His body is going through such an excruciating amount of stress that. Each pull on the rope caused his legs to knock into the wall of the cave. And he would have an excruciating wave of pain go through his whole body. And then, at this point, it gets even worse. Because they had reached a point in the tunnel where the tight angles meant they couldn't bend John's body backward without likely breaking his legs. Oh my God.

And at this point, they said. The physical trauma of that is something that his body at this point is so weak. He will go into shock and die like he will never be able to survive the trauma. If he had just gone down into there and they broke his legs, that'd be different. Horrible trauma I can't even fathom.

But your body isn't in the state where it will necessarily kill you. He is so weakened right now that there's no way he would have survived that. I don't even know what to say. So as they're realizing all of this, they realize that the anchors holding the rope on the pulley system were starting to give way. Oh my God.

So after hours underground, Susie Motola had crawled out because she needed a break at that point. I mean, it's been 24 hours and she was replaced by rescue worker Ryan Schertz. Like Susie, Schertz was an expert splunker. He was very familiar with the caves in western Utah and he knew what the situation was.

He understood the dangers here. And when he actually made his way down into Nutty Putty and reached John, he said he had to fight back tears, knowing how little chance this man had. Of course, because he's like, I just knew. When Schertz reached John, John said to him, Help me get out, I don't want to be on my head.

And he was talking about the new position he had found himself in because he had been pulled out of that other crevasse. And I guess where he was now, he was kind of on his head. Oh no, because the pulleys were breaking, so they had to leave him in that position.

And then he said, Why did you guys put me here? Oh, this, I'm gonna. I'm like, actually gonna break down, honestly, like, honestly, this is a devastating story, this is just like torture.

He also just seems like like a really nice guy. It's just like everything he's saying is like he was panicking. But he was also just like. He seemed just like a kind guy who was going after an adventure with his family and had done this before. So it's not like he was like, Oh, I've never been in a cave before.

I'm gonna do this. And just knowing that his dad had been stuck before and had gotten out of it and the hope that that gave them. You know, he was sitting there being like, my dad went through this. My dad came out like, we can do this, and his whole family was probably thinking that, and his wife is pregnant.

His wife, Emily, has a one-year-old with him and is pregnant with his child due in June. And wasn't it just Thanksgiving? Hadn't you said that earlier? It was, yeah, it was Thanksgiving, like this was their Thanksgiving trip.

It's just awful, this is devastating, this poor, poor family. So Ryan Shurtz sat with John and tried to keep him calm, keep his spirits up, all while the rest of the rescue team was rebuilding the pulley system.

Now, wow, and then they're gonna have to put all of the all of it back down and all of the equipment down.

Yeah, takes an hour at a time for each piece. Oh, my God. And Ryan, Shurtz said he knew there was really not a lot he could physically do for John, but he was like.

I just wanted him to know that he wasn't alone, like he wasn't stuck in a crack alone there. So he helped him get water through a long straw attached to his water bottle. Wow, he said. He rubbed John's leg, hoping that human touch would help calm him down.

Oh, my God, and then, he said. As a devout Mormon, he shared stories with John about his time as a missionary in Ecuador. Because it was something they could bond over. Yeah, and it was something that comforted him. And for the most part, I guess Ryan, like Ryan, really was a calming presence.

But every now and then, he said, the situation just overwhelmed John, and he would become panicked and start thrashing his legs and screaming. Because he's probably just trying to, he just wants to get out, like, desperately.

You must just want to bust, you want to like Hulk through that rock and just get the fuck out, yeah, now. By late afternoon, the rescue team had finished installing the new pulley system and were ready to try once again to extract John with several hard pulls. That's what they were hoping to do now.

They were like, we just got to try. And they knew this would cause a lot of serious physical trauma. Because they were like, at this point, we can't slowly try to get him out.

We can't be gentle. We got to, like, wrench him out of there if we want to try to get him. And Dr. Murdoch and other medical assistants were on scene and were totally ready to administer immediate medical assistance. To keep him from slipping to shock and dying once he got out.

As eight people pulled at the entrance of the cave, Ryan Schertz tried to guide John's body, while John did his best to push with his hands. Now, after about 20 minutes, Schertz yelled for the team to stop and lower John a little in order to give him a break. And John said, My legs are killing me. And then Schertz felt Ryan Schertz. The rescuer felt an explosion of pain and screamed, and then blacked out. Wait, the rescuer did.

Under the strain of trying to pull John out, an anchor had come loose from the cave wall, sending a metal piece. I think it's a carabiner rocketing into Ryan Schertz's face, immediately breaking his jaw and nearly severing his tongue. What the fuck?

Like, what the fuck I don't like? You couldn't write that like that is, you would write that, and somebody would be like, Jesus Christ, like you did. Way too much. How is this kind of devastation happening in this small place? This place feels fucking cursed, dude.

And the accident caused the rope to snap and it sent John sliding back into the fissure, no where he landed on his head.

Susie Mottola said It felt like a slap in the face. So he just got put back into the exact same position that they had spent over 24 hours getting him out of now. Ryan Schertz, who had just got hit in the face with a metal piece and blacked out, broke his jaw and nearly severed his tongue. Tried his best to explain to John that he had to leave to get medical attention. And he was eventually replaced by another rescuer, who was his father, Dave Schertz. Oh, wow.

John apparently told Dave Schertz I'm going to die in here, Oh my God. Just the fact that he knew that at a certain point, and Dave Schertz tried to reassure John that they were going to get him out. But by that point, it was becoming obvious that they really don't have a lot of options here, like they've tried everything.

Of course, the team worked to fix the pulley system, but the tools were too large to get down into the crevasse. And Dave couldn't get into where John had landed to even tie a new rope. So after a few hours, Dave Schertz was exhausted and radioed to let them know that they'd need someone to replace him. And when he reached the rest of the group, Schertz said, he's dying right now. He has a heartbeat, but he's had difficulty breathing before I got there.

You can't get someone down there before he dies. Oh my God. So Brandon. Koalas volunteered to go down and to be by John's side, and he took a telecom radio with him so that John could speak to his wife. Emily. No.

But by the time koalas reached the fissure, John had lost consciousness and he never even got to say goodbye to his wife. Never woke up again. A few minutes before midnight, a paramedic from the rescue team crawled down into Nutty Putty Cave and pronounced John Jones dead at 11 56 p..m. on November 25th, 2009..

Oh my God, no one should die like that. No, no one should die like that, not even like the worst person on the planet should die like that.

And this guy, like, had a one-year-old and a baby on the way. I feel for his family and his wife so hard.

There aren't even words. And when you hear his wife, when she talks about it, her outlook on the entire thing. I'm like, man, like, you're made of different stuff than I am. Like, she's just like the strongest lady she would have to be because she just looks at it a different way.

I have like that lump in my throat right now. Like, holy shit. Because there were so many moments where you were like, he's going to get out, they were so close and he probably thought, I'm going to get out.

And then to have him fall right back down, it's like that fall must have just been like, talk about devastation. And just the fact that, like, somebody was on their way down there. So he could talk to his wife, at least talk to his wife, and I'm sure that's probably the only fucking person on planet Earth he wanted to talk to.

Yeah, exactly, and I'm sure the rescuers are sitting there being like, second-guessing everything. And you know, they have all this guilt, even though they've tried everything they could and put everything at risk. For to get him out of there. That's the thing then you have to go home that night and know, and of course, know that you tried your hardest, but you're only human.

And he's such a handsome guy, like, I know, I mean, let me see Emily's so beautiful, like they're like a beautiful couple.

Like, beautiful, so sad. it's horrifying, like whole life ahead and like, Oh my God.

Yeah, like, whole life ahead. And he was only 26 years old by the way. Wow.

Like, you quite literally have your whole life ahead of you. 26 years old. That's just the saddest thing that I've ever heard in my life. It's horrific, truly, truly, truly horrific.

Now, obviously, John's death was unbelievably devastating for his family and the team of rescuers. And anyone who had really just put every bit of hope on the line that he was going to come out battered but still alive, right? John's brother, Spencer Jones, told reporters the next day We all were very optimistic and hopeful. But it became increasingly clear last night after he got restocked, that there weren't very many options left. We thought he was in the clear and then when we got the news that he had slipped again, that's when we started to get scared. Because they get this news that they got him up a part of the way.

Like, we're close, we're getting there. And then to get the call, that he slid, that he slid right back to where he, that I. My brain won't even compute that kind of disappointment.

No, truly, you can't ever understand that disappointment unless you've gone through it. I can't imagine it's incredible.

It's incredibly horrifying. This is a mind boggling case now. Before leaving the site, Lieutenant Tom Hodgson, from the Utah County Sheriff's Office, promised that they would retrieve John's body the next day. But he learned that that was a promise he was not going to be able to keep years later, he told a reporter to make that phone call on Thanksgiving morning to a family that is hopeful.

You will be bringing their son out and they'll get some closure. It wasn't an easy phone call to make God, so they didn't even get to have Thanksgiving together before this happened. No, and they found out that they weren't getting at his body.

Because they couldn't. The family was understandably horrified, of course, but they did eventually understand, which I can't imagine, like you just said, made of different stuff.

Like, these are incredible people. Like, you know, you have to eventually be like, Okay, I have to look at this, there's nothing you can do. What can we do? But like, damn.

They had struggled for hours to move John just a few feet while he was alive and able to use his hands to, like, help. Yeah, push a little bit. So the effort required to move him. Now that he was no longer alive and able to push himself, it just wasn't going to happen.

To even attempt the retrieval would require putting a lot of members of the rescue team at risk. Which was something neither the family, like John's family. I was like, don't do that, or the sheriff's department wanted. They all agreed like, there's no reason to put other people at risk here. Um, so their inability to retrieve John's body meant that that was nutty. Putty Cave was his final resting place.

His body remains there, in the position it was in. That's horrific. And John Jones was the first death in Nutty Putty Cave. But given the previous incidents in the cave and the obvious risk it posed for amateur and obviously professional cavers and spelunkers, state officials voted unanimously to seal the cave with concrete immediately. Well, and especially now that they can't get him out of there. Nobody should ever, ever, ever go back in there.

Lieutenant Hodgson told the press We've suffered a tragedy in this cave that we hope to prevent from happening again. Though they were absolutely grief stricken and heartbroken, the family agreed and told the press. We feel like it would be John's will to protect the safety of future cavers. And they said, in time, they started to actually appreciate that John's remains were left in a place that he loved his entire life. Okay, his wife Emily told a reporter in 2018. John loves the outdoors.

He loves Utah, he loves wide open space. It's so fitting that it's his spot now. Wow, and that was in 2018..

And I also love that. She refers to him as, like, John loves this, He loves the like, love, present, tense. He's still around, like somewhere, yeah, now. A few days later, construction crews sealed Nutty Putty Cave with concrete plugs at two points.

One at the entrance leading to the fissure where John became stuck, so inside the cave, yeah, the entrance of that fissure. And a second concrete plug was put at the main entrance at the top of Blowhole Hill.

The plugs make the cave inaccessible, but they were careful to create a plug that was not going to interfere with the ecosystem. Oh, that's good. And actually could be removed if they needed to, but there would be a lot of effort involved and a lot of cost involved to remove it. But it's not impossible.

So as of now, there are no plans to reopen Nutty Putty Cave. I hope they don't, it remains closed. But again, they made a plug there that seals it off but does not interfere with the ecosystem, which is nice. But that is the Nutty Putty Cave incident.

And the death of John Edward Jones, that's one of the most devastating cases that we've ever covered. I agree, I definitely agree. There are not even words for where my brain is at right now.

It's really, really, really horrifying and just so tragic. that's the thing. It's just so tragic and unthinkable, like, truly unthinkable. And just to put yourself in the shoes of anyone involved in this case, like to put yourself in the shoes of John. Being stuck there for hours and hours and hours and trying your best to get out of there.

The rescuers, his family, his wife like.

I can't even fathom, truly, how do you go on? Can't even fathom.

And I know I'm saying that a lot, but I don't know what else to say in this case. My brain won't even compute it. You're so right, he just looks like the nicest guy. yeah, just like a sweet guy.

Oh, that was a really, really sad one, yeah. And I hope that anybody that goes spelunking is super, super, super, super careful and stays as safe as they possibly can. Yes, please do. wow.

So we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it. Weird. I'm not doing a not so weird for this one.

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