Dark Mysteries of the Florida Everglades: The Flat Tire Murders, Missing Planes, and The Skunk Ape
In the summer of 1975, the bodies of young women began surfacing in canals along the edge of the Florida Everglades. To make matters worse, investigators blamed the victims for their own deaths. Today, we will cover many things the Everglades have swallowed. From serial killers to a doomed jetliner pulled from the sky, to a creature with over 600 documented sightings. The deeper you go, the stranger it gets.
TW: Death of minors, SA, mass casualty event
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SOURCES
The Flat Tire Murders: Unsolved Crimes of a South Florida Serial Killer (2021 Exposit Books), by Michael P. Burns
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/1240325752
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/231003097
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231539109
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231550509
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231552860
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231570565
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231571012
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/231587239
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231599587
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231611378
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231625001
https://www.newspapers.com/image/232175747
https://www.newspapers.com/image/232177692
https://www.newspapers.com/image/232252790
https://www.newspapers.com/image/232349227
https://www.newspapers.com/image/301829732
https://www.newspapers.com/image/301829916
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/301867568
https://www.newspapers.com/image/301965985
https://www.newspapers.com/image/302115396
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airlines_Flight_705
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https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptids/comments/10qv4j4/is_this_picture_of_the_skunk_ape_genuine/
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TRANSCRIPT
If there’s two things I know to be true about the Everglades, it’s that 1. You should never go there, and 2. It’s a place that swallows things. People. Airplanes. Evidence. it feels like a sort of black hole, where things can go in, but never come out
Today, I want to take you on a journey through some of the mysteries. We’re going to start on the outer edges of the Everglades and work our way towards the most remote and terrifying section. And the stories are going to get stranger and stranger as we go
Welcome back to heart starts pounding, I’m your host Kaelyn Moore
Today, I want to tell you about the everglades. The magic, the mystery, and the darkness that lies deep wtihin the eight thousand square miles of marshland sitting at the southern most tip of Florida
But before we dive into the strangeness, a couple of updates. As a reminder, we’re reading Slewfoot by Brom for this book club round. We’ll be meeting in mid may, so join us over on patreon, even the free tier, and grab yourself a copy if you want to join in
We also have a couple fun bonus episodes that you can listen to on patreon or on apple podcasts. March was fae and fairy lore, and this month is going to be deep ocean mysteries. So if you like this episode you’re probably going to want to head over there to listen to more.
Ok, that’s all Jinx and I have for you right now let’s get into it.
The Florida Everglades is a place unlike anywhere else on earth. It’s a self-contained ecosystem consisting of nearly eight thousand square miles of marshland—but it doesn’t resemble Louisiana’s canopied, haunted bayous. it actually looks more like the African savanna, with wide skies and a carpet of grass… except that grass is sawgrass—sharp enough to cut through human flesh upon the lightest touch. And what looks like “land” beneath it is in fact alligator-infested wetland filled with dark, murky water and the muck of a thousand years’ worth of dead plants and ash settled at the bottom.
For at least as long as the Miccosukee tribe has been in the area, the everglades have been seen as sacred. But as more and more people started moving into the area, and cities and towns popped up near the swamp, the natural balance between the people and the Everglades shifted…
See, There’s a road that goes through the Everglades. Alligator Alley—a more than 60-year-old two-lane highway that connects the Atlantic coast of South Florida with the Gulf coast. At night, Alligator Alley is pitch black, except for what’s lit by headlights and the moon (when it’s out).
Over the years, countless human remains have been found in the canals that parallel Alligator Alley, or along the side roads that splinter off the highway. And that’s because the Everglades have become known as a great place to dump a body.
The cover of darkness and minimal nighttime traffic offer ideal conditions. And any body that’s left there would be gone within minutes. Either eaten by alligators, or it would sink unrecoverably into the muck below, never to be found
Not to mention that Most parts of the Everglades are so far from the alley it would take hours for an airboat to reach them.
So it wasn’t uncommon for people to go missing in the area. But it WAS uncommon for their bodies to be found. Which is why it was so strange that for one summer, in 1975, so many bodies of teen girls were discovered in the Everglades.
One warm summer morning in South Florida, in June of 1975, 15-year-old Gale Spiece hopped into the family truck with her dad and brother for a day of fishing in the Everglades. Their excursion took them up U.S. Highway 27, beyond Alligator Alley, to a secluded spot about four miles north of civilization’s nearest outpost.
Having found what looked like a good spot to fish, the Spiece family pulled off the highway onto a gravel path. The only thing separating the road from the vast wetlands was a canal that ran parallel to the highway.
Gale’s dad gathered his fishing gear while she wandered over toward the water. As she neared the bank of the canal, her eyes were drawn toward something in a nearby thicket— something that didn’t belong.
At first, Gale thought it was a pair of garbage bags—until she saw the foot sticking out. She drew nearer with hesitant steps until finally the full picture emerged. It was the bodies of two teenage girls, around Gale’s own age—fully clothed, lying on their sides, back-to-back. One was facing the swamp, and the other was facing Gale—with a stream of blood coming from her mouth.
<<>>
After the story hit the news more than fifty anxious parents, who didn’t know where their daughters were, contacted authorities to view the crime scene video. And by early the next morning, the two murdered girls had names.
Barbie Schreiber and Darlene Zetterower were the best of friends. They were bright and creative 14-year-olds who attended middle school in Hollywood, Florida, where they were regarded as good students and actively involved in school activities. Barbie had a love for art, and Darlene a passion for poetry.
The last time anyone saw Barbie and Darlene was on the night of June 18th. School was out for the summer, and the two girls had spent the evening at Barbie’s house before deciding to go for a ride on a neighbor boy’s motorcycle. About an hour later, a friend of theirs saw them hitchhiking near State Road 441, climbing into a white van with two men she didn’t recognize.
Less than twelve hours later, their lifeless bodies would be found in the exact spot police con- cluded someone made them lie down, side-by-side, and shot them execution-style—on a lonely gravel road twenty miles from their homes.
This isolated spot at the edge of the Everglades immediately rang alarm bells for investigators.
Just days earlier, the bludgeoned and strangled body of 19-year-old Nancy Fox was pulled from the very same canal—just 150 yards away from where the girls were found. And like the two middle schoolers, Nancy was last seen hitchhiking—on her way to a neighborhood laundromat she would never reach.
Nancy was also last seen in the same general area from which the two girls disappeared—on the southeast side of Broward County along a remote stretch of highway 27.
Now, Highway 27, which is even older than Alligator Alley, offers many of the same conveniences for the bad-intentioned. Finished in 1949, the stretch that begins at the Broward County line and winds its way north into Palm Beach County, passing the isolated sugarcane city of Belle Glade, has seen little development in the 76 years since it opened for travel. Much of itis flanked by nothingness and is coal-black at nighttime. It features dirt side roads, dead-end turnoffs and canalfront alcoves where a shady presence could linger for hours in the nocturnal void, completely undetected by the occasional motorist speeding by.
Just a few weeks after the other girls’ bodies were found, on the afternoon of July 10th, another family, The Windovers, pulled off this stretch of highway for a pit stop. They had just traveled from their home on the Gulf coast, into Broward County, and felt like now was a good time to stop for a picnic lunch with their two daughters, who were traveling with them.
The family turned south on Highway 27 and drove for about five miles, until they came upon a rest area with a small public park. They pulled inand began unloading their picnic basket and blanket, and suddenly, Robert spotted a snake on the road, slithering toward his kids—so he raised his arms and ran toward it, chasing it into the canal on the opposite side of the road. And just as the snake disappeared into the water, Robert noticed something that made his face turn pale. It was a human arm protruding from the surface of the canal.
Authorities soon pulled the fully clothed body of a teenage girl who would be identified as Robin Leslie Losch, a 14-year-old honor student fresh off her freshman year of high school. The last people to see her alive were the employees of a convenience store near her house. The manager thought she was acting peculiar, like maybe she was stoned—so he had his assistant manager kick her out. When she didn’t return home that night, her parents reported her missing. That was two days before she was found sixteen miles west of her neighborhood—dead.
The official cause of death was drowning. The medical examiner found no outward signs of violence, so he couldn’t classify it as a homicide. But the circumstances were suspicious. How did Robin, who was an award-winning swimmer, end up drowned in a canal sixteen miles from home? And how did Robin, who (also, mind you, didn’t drive), end up in this remote place?
Local newspapers picked up on the pattern. Here were three cases where young women in their teens disappeared from the same general area in southeast Broward, within a five mile radius of each other, eventually ending up in or near a canal running parallel to Highway 27, fifteen or more miles away from home, on the edge of the Everglades.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office, who investigated these cases, wasn’t sure there was a connection. When they spoke to the press, Broward authorities didn’t offer much opinion on who might be behind these crimes. But they did have lots of opinions when it came to the victims.
The chief of Broward’s detective squad told the newspapers: "Every one of these girls contributed to her own death." They were ‘habitual hitchhikers,’ he said. They were “drug users, sexually promiscuous, with poor school records.” “They exposed themselves to dangers.”
"They went wherever time and the tide carried them,” said the chief. "They were always going somewhere with their thumbs out." "We're lucky we don't have more murders."
The detective chief described 14-year-old honor student Robin Losch as, quote, “a free and easygoing individual. She tested authority and didn't like anyone telling her what to do. If you told her no, she couldn't do something, she'd go out and do it.”
The Sheriff himself, meanwhile, told the press he was calling the series “the Lifestyle Murders,” because he attributed these teenagers’ deaths to their so-called ‘lifestyles.’
Instead of looking into the murders of four innocent teen girls, the detective blamed it on them. And maybe he thought this washed his hands of any responsibility, that he could just move on and no one would notice. But they kept happening.
And the next one, Ronnie Sue Gorlin was different. She didn’t fit the profile he had invented.
BREAK 1
Ronnie Gorlin was 27 years old, engaged to be married, and had a career. She was a respiratory therapist who grew up in South Florida but was now living in Pennsylvania. Ronnie had returnedfor the summer, to spend some quality time with her parents. In mid-July, Ronnie and her folks went on a tropical jaunt to the Bahamas. And when they returned, her mom came down with a stomach bug so severe it landed her in the hospital.
On the afternoon of July 22nd, Ronnie left her parents’ home in Hallandale Beach, in southeast Broward County, to visit her mom in the hospital. On the way there, she made a pit stop at the 163rd Street Shopping Center in North Miami Beach.
That evening, Ronnie’s father reported her missing after she failed to show at the hospital.
Her car was found the following morning inside the 163rd Street Shopping Center parking lot. A mall security guard spotted the car parked at an odd angle, blocking traffic, so he called the police to have it towed. When the police arrived, they discovered the vehicle had a flat rear tire with a puncture mark.
Around the same time, a surveying crew found Ronnie’s nude body floating facedown in a canal in an undeveloped part of Miami-Dade County, twelve miles west of where her car was found—and less than a mile east of Highway 27. She had been brutally assaulted with a knife, bitten, beaten unconscious, and then rolled into the canal to drown.
Investigators formed a picture of what they believed happened to Ronnie: Her killer had either followed her to the shopping center parking lot, or was lying in wait there; scoping it out for a crime of opportunity. Then they saw Ronnie getting out of her leased Oldsmobile and walking toward the mall. they waited until she entered the department store before approaching her car, and, after making sure no one was looking, they punctured her tire with a sharp instrument. They then lingered waiting for Ronnie to return. And once she did, her killer watched from a distance as she started her car, backed out of the parking spot, and quickly realized one of her tires was flat. That’s when her killer presented himself to her as a ‘good Samaritan’—offering her a ride to the nearest tire shop. Only he didn’t take her where he said he would.
Just Eight days later, a twenty-one-year-old woman named Elyse Rapp failed to return to her apartment after leaving for a quick run to the store.
She was found dead the next morning; nude, savagely attacked, bitten, beaten unconscious, and dumped in a canal to drown—the very same canal where Ronnie Gorlin had been found a week earlier, less than a mile away.
But there was another chilling parallel. Elyse’s car—which was leased, just like Ronnie’s—was also found in a shopping center parking lot.
With a flat tire.
Metro Miami-Dade police had no doubt Ronnie and Elyse were killed by the same person, a man, they believed. And now, the murders were front page news. Reporters were calling them the “canal murders.” Six young women slain. Was one killer responsible? Did their so-called ‘lifestyles’ lead to their deaths?
Of course, Ronnie Gorlin didn’t fit the “lifestyle” mold at all, nor did Elyse Rapp
The bodies still continued to surface. On October 26th, a man took in West Broward found was a woman’s decomposing body partially concealed by weeds.
And then, On New Year’s Day, 1976, two snake hunters stumbled upon the scattered bones of a teenage girl twenty feet from the bank of a remote canal in South Miami-Dade
Ten days later, a similar story: two men cutting firewood in Pembroke Pines came across the body of a 17 year old girl floating face down in a nearby canal. The body was fully clothed, with a handbag strap wound tightly around her neck.
Newspapers continued to cover the series as the body count continued to rise. By some counts, the tally of victims had risen to 14.
A headline at the time tried to sound reassuring. It read. “Families won’t give up search for girls’ killer,”
But as the months wore on, news coverage grew more scant. After September 1976, not a word was printed about any of the cases until August the following year. And then not again until 1982. And then not again until 1990—when a Miami Herald columnist revealed that Ted Bundy had been asked about Ronnie Gorlin and Elyse Rapp’s murders shortly before his execution. Bundy denied that he was responsible. And investigators couldn’t place him in Florida that summer.
The cases then faded almost completely from public awareness and into obscurity. It seemed they would never be solved, as if the only people still thinking about them were the loved ones whose hope for answers grew dimmer with each passing year. It was easy for police to forget about the young women who brought their deaths upon themselves, as they told the public. And all of them went cold
But what have we talked about on this show before. Sometimes, all it takes is a fresh set of eyes. Someone with a dark curiosity who wont let a mystery go. And in 2023, that person found this case…
Because that was when A new generation of investigators inherited these cases. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office now had a dedicated cold case department, and one detective named Andrew Gianino decided to pull the Darlene Zetterower and Barbie Schreiber file and give the case another go.
The Broward County Sheriff's Office now had a powerful new technology at its disposal: a tool called the M-Vac, which is able to pull DNA from biological material otherwise too degraded to extract with conventional methods.
The crime lab put the M-Vac to use on the clothing Barbie and Darlene were wearing when they were killed. And the criminalists were able to successfully develop two male DNA profiles from biological material left behind on the girls’ clothing.
One of the profiles was more complete than the other, so Detective Gianino uploaded that profile into CODIS, the national database. And immediately, there was a hit.
The DNA profile belonged to a Fort Lauderdale native named Robert Clark Keebler—a convicted sex offender with a lengthy rap sheet and a violent history.
Two years would then pass before Broward investigators were able to identify the man behind the second DNA profile. And that man’s name was Lawrence Stein—a known friend and criminal accomplice of Robert Keebler’s. Together, these two men had committed many other crimes, including multiple sexual assaults in California and Arizona, dating back to 1972, and the abduction of two teenage girls in Plantation, Florida in 1974.
Around the time Barbie and Darlene were killed, Keebler was known to drive a white van. Much like the one the girls’ friend had seen them getting into with two men, the night they disappeared.
Police finally knew who Barbie and Darlene’s killers were, and Broward County closed the case—without bringing charges against either man, because both of them were dead. Keebler had died in 2019, and Stein had been dead since 2005.
And sadly, the parents of Barbie and Darlene died long before they could learn the identities of the men who took their daughters’ lives.
Investigators are continuing to explore whether Keebler and Stein may be responsible for other unsolved murders. So far, they’ve not linked them to any additional crimes. And investigators don’t believe their m.o. fits the murders of, say, Ronnie Gorlin and Elyse Rapp—whose killer flattened his victim’s tires in mall parking lots.
Which brings up the horrifying reality that multiple killers could have been stalking the area around the Everglades, waiting for vulnerable young women walking by themselves. Even now, more than a half century on, people believe that there are still killers out there taking advantage of how good of a place the Everglades is to dump a body. It’s not like 1975 was the first time murdered women turned up in South Florida canals, nor was it the last. But one thing is certain: there were more bodies found in or near South Florida canals within a one-year period, from spring 1975 to winter 1976, than during any other year before or since.
It happens so often, that the people in the area might have grown accustomed to hearing stories of these bodies being found in the swamps. Actually, they’re probably accustomed to hearing a lot of weird things about the Everglades
Because bodies turning up is not the only strange thing that happens there. No, some people believe that there is a kind of ‘force’ in the Everglades that draws things, like planes, into it.
So let’s continue on, deeper into the Everglades, as we shift gears a little bit. And explore the mystery of what the locals call, The Everglades Triangle
And let me tell you, the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ has nothing on it
Since the beginning of the 20th century, anywhere between fifty and, by some estimates, over a hundred planes have plunged into the murky and critter-filled depths of the Florida Everglades—a vast and indifferent wilderness where things tend to vanish without a trace. Earning itself the name The Everglades Triangle
The date is December 29th, 1972. Eastern Airlines crew at JFK Airport have just made their final boarding call for Flight 401, scheduled to depart New York for a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Miami.
Thirteen crew members and 163 passengers settle into the wide-body Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jet, with two aisles and a movie screen for in-flight entertainment.
At around 9:20pm, the plane lifts off into a clear, moonless night sky. (sfx takeoff)
The cockpit crew for this evening’s flight are Captain Bob Loft, a 32-year veteran pilot with nearly 30,000 flight hours who ranks fifth in seniority at Eastern Airlines. And sitting next to him is his first officer, Albert Stockstill—a 39-year-old former Air Force pilot with 5,800 flight hours.
Everything is smooth sailing and routine for most of the way—that is until 11:32pm, when the flight crossed into the airspace right above the Everglades and began their initial descent into Miami.
Captain Loft puts the landing gear in the “Down” position to prepare for landing. But then First Officer Stockstill notices something: the nose gear indicator light, which is supposed to turn green when the landing gear is locked, is dark.
Stockstill and Loft try to troubleshoot the problem, how did this happen?.After a few frustrating minutes, they radio to the control tower that they’re gonna need to circle until they figure out why their indicator light won’t turn on all of a sudden.
Stockstill engages the plane’s autopilot system while he and Loft hunker down to solve the problem. He removes the nose gear light lens assembly, thinking that maybe the issue is with the bulb itself rather than the plane’s nose gear. And looking at the assembly seems to support his suspicion. But then, as he’s trying to reconnect the assembly, it jams.
Captain Loft tells his flight engineer, Don Repo, to go down below deck and do a visual inspection. At this point, the plane loses 100 feet in altitude, and the control tower notices and directs the crew to turn the aircraft left.
All this time, the passengers in the cabin have little indication anything is wrong. More than a third of them are still asleep. A few grow antsy about their arrival being delayed. Through the cabin windows, the passengers can only see the deep black of the sprawling Everglades.
In the cockpit, frustration continues to grow. Captain Loft will not land until he’s confident the nose gear is correctly configured
By this point, technical officer Angelo Donadeo is assisting flight engineer Repo. Both men go down below the flight deck together
The control tower now notices that Flight 401 has dropped to an attitude of 900 feet. Control radios the flight crew and asks: “How are things comin’ along out there?”
The flight crew responds by requesting approval to turn back around toward the airport.
The control tower grants this request. Flight 401 begins turning.
A few seconds later, First Officer Stockstill becomes puzzled when he notices the altitude is dropping.
“We did something to the altitude,” he says to Captain Loft, who responds with confusion.
Stockstill then asks: “We’re still at two thousand feet, right?”
Loft looks at the altitude and shouts: “Hey, what’s happening here?!”
A series of shrill warning beeps fill the cockpit.
Down on the ground, a local airboat pilot named Bud Marquis—known around the community as “Bullfrog Bud”—is out frog-giggingwith his good buddy Ray. The two of them watch as Flight 401 slams into the marshland
<<>>
Instinct suddenly takes over and Bud and Rayspeed toward the wreckage in their airboat.
At the crash site, he finds dozens of people still alive. The fuselage is being pulled into the muck, and in the distance, the flames are reflecting off of Alligators watching and waiting. But Bud immediately gets to work, helping the wounded.
For the next hour, Bullfrog Bud rescues survivors, shuttling them to safety in his airboat, two or three at a time—as many as he can fit.
He continues his efforts even after trained rescuers begin to arrive at the scene, where the roaring and whirring of the airboats and the helicopters drown out survivors’ shouts for help, making it hard to locate them among the tall weeds of the wetlands on this moonless night. Workers can hear the screams but they can’t tell where they’re coming from. They’re trudging around in the dark murky waters of the Everglades, trying to rescue people before it’s too late.
They can hear the sound of flight attendants singing christmas carols to keep moral up. And they can see little flames flickering from passengers that lit matches to help themselves be found, trying to keep the flames high so they didn’t ignite the jet fuel all around them.
Ultimately, five crew members and ninety-four passengers will be counted among the dead. Eight flight attendants, and 67 passengers, will survive—most with serious injuries.
First Officer Stockstill died on impact.
Captain Loft died in the wreckage before he could receive medical aid. And Flight Engineer Repo later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
Many of the dead passengers were seated in the midsection of the plane. It’s found that the energy of the plane’s impact was absorbed and mitigated by the soft mud of the swamp, which also helped cover the survivors’ wounds and slow their bleeding. Though eight wereinfected with pathogenic swamp organisms and required isolated recovery in hyperbaric chambers.
Of the 77 survivors, 17 had only minor injuries and required no hospitalization.
The National Transportation Safety Board led an investigation into the crash, and what they discovered was that, somehow, the autopilot had switched off while the pilots were trying to troubleshoot the indicator light.
What made the autopilot disengage? No one could say for sure. But people couldnt’ ignore the fact that the second the plane entered the Everglades airspace, things started going wrong, parts started malfunctioning and the plane started rapidly descending, as if it was getting pulled by some unknown force into the black swamp below.
But, like I said in the beginning, the deeper we get into the Everglades, the stranger it’s going to feel. We’re working our way from the perimeter, all the way into the dead center. As far from the road as you can get. The darkest area555 of the Everglades, where few have ventured. But the ones that have gone there, come back with stories.
Stories of a creature that lurks within the swamp.
It was 1957, deep in the heart of the Big Cypress Swamp , on the western end of the Everglades. Three friends had just spent the day hunting deer without much success, and now the sun was starting to set, the sky was darkening, and visibility was growing ever worse. So the three hunters found a dry spot where they pitched a tent, built a fire and began cooking dinner.
As they were preparing to eat, they heard a rustling in the dense scrub brush nearby. The three men froze and waited- hoping that whatever was making the sound would just trudge on deeper into the swamp, away from them. For a few moments, all they heard was the crackling of their fire.
Until suddenly, a large dark figure charged out of the brush and instantly demolished their tent. The men darted up and recoiled as the creature, which was hairy all over like an animal but retained the shape of a man, stormed their camp and began stealing their food.
The three hunters began running breathlessly through the dark swamp until they reached their vehicle and sped away.
The men had no idea who, or what, they had just seen. It looked like some hybrid of a man and an animal, and—most memorably—whatever this thing was smelled really, really bad.
What the hunters saw that night wasn’t the first, and certainly wasn’t the last, sighting of a large, hairy half-ape, half-man-like creature in the swamps and backwoods of Florida.
Most of the reported sightings have been at nighttime. The creatures generally stand six to eight feet tall, with thick bristly brown or black fur, walking upright on two legs, like a man.
But the most distinctive feature isn't what you see. It's what you smell. This Bigfoot-like creature has been called the “Florida Skunk Ape”—so-named for its absolutely overpowering stench, which some believe is due to its habit of sheltering in abandoned alligator dens in the intensely humid Florida heat, and trudging through the bacteria-rich swampwater.
The Florida Skunk Ape is known by many names. The indigenous Seminoles of the area called it Esti Capcaki which translates roughly to ‘Furry Cannibal Giant.’
Others call it the Swamp Ape, the Stink Ape, the Bardin Booger, or the Abominable Swampman, which is my personal favorite
To date, there have been over 600 documented sightings of the Florida Skunk Ape— exponentially more than of the Yeti, making the Skunk Ape one of the most frequently sighted Bigfoot variants in the entire world. And 600 may be an undercount, for many sightings go undocumented out of fear of ridicule.
What may be the first documented sightings occurred all the way back in 1884, in the Florida panhandle, where a band of former Confederate soldiers formed a posse to track down someone, or something, that had come to be known locally as the “Ocheesee Pond Wild Man.”
This so-called “Wild Man” had been reported hiding out in the Chattahoochee swamp, where he, or it, had been observed swimming in the lake from island to island, and appearing to have foot-long hair covering his entire body.
The posse eventually located and captured the “Wild Man” and, reportedly, they concluded that he must be an escaped mental patient. So they carted him off to the Tallahassee insane asylum, and from there he was taken back to Chattahoochee, where scientists tried unsuccessfully to determine if he was human or not.
And that’s where all extant documentation of this incident ends, and the true nature of the Ocheesee Pond Wild Man remains a mystery.
In February of 1971, an electronics engineer named ‘Buz’ Osbon, who was president of the Peninsular Archeological Society, led a group of five treasure hunters into the Big Cypress swamp to dig for Native American relics.
As the sun began to set, the five men set up camp atop a large shell mound. There, they pitched two tents—one large tent for three of the group members, and a smaller pup tent for the remaining two.
After a hearty campfire meal and a good round of conversation, the men settled into their respective tents, and by 10 o’clock they were all fast asleep.
But then, at around 3 o’clock in the morning, one of the men was jarred awake by something that sounded like an elephant clomping up their shell mound and moving closer to their camp.
The man pulled the tent flap aside and peered out into the moonlit night, and he was startled by what he saw. Standing before him, about eight feet away, was what appeared to be some kind of giant, a man-like figure standing and staring at the camp.
At first, through his bleary eyes, the man thought that the figure was another member of his party—and maybe his perception was distorted by still being half-asleep.
His instinct told him to close the tent flap and lie back down—so he did.
The next morning, he told the other members of the group what he saw, and they began looking around the area for clues. That’s when they found tracks in the dirt—huge footprints, which looked just like a man’s bare feet, but way bigger than any human foot they’d ever seen. They measured the largest prints, which were 17 and a half inches long, and 11 inches across. They also found smaller footprints alongside the larger ones, which suggested, perhaps, that it wasn’t just one lone creature, but a family of them.
That same year, a ten-year-old boy named Dave Shealy was out deer-hunting in Big Cypress with his brother when the sight of a Skunk Ape plodding through the swamp stopped them in their tracks. As they stared in awe of the creature, which was unlike anything they had ever seen, rain began pouring down on the area. The Skunk Ape didn’t seem to like this, and quickly scurried away into the unseeable distance.
Three years later, two Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies had their own unbelievable encounter with the Skunk Ape when a large, ape-like creature stalked them through an Orange grove in the city of Lantana. The two deputies drew their guns and fired at the shadowy creature, who then grunted and receded back into the thick woods. The deputies followed the creature’s footprints to a barbed-wire fence, and in a part of the fence that appeared to be disturbed, they found a tuft of hair that had gotten snagged on the barbed wire.
By 1977, so many sightings of the Skunk Ape had been documented that a Republican State House representative named Paul Nuckolls proposed a bill—House Bill 1664—to protect skunk apes, making it a misdemeanor to, and I quote, “take, possess, harm or molest anthropoid or humanoid animals which are native to Florida, popularly known as the skunk ape."
The bill passed committee, and the Florida legislature came close to making the Skunk Ape a protected species before the bill died unceremoniously.
Twenty years later, Dave Shealy was now in his thirties—and still thinking about that Skunk Ape encounter he and his brother had in the Big Cypress Swamp in 1974.
And as time passes and technology improves, folkloric stories of creatures in the woods tend to disappear, because no one is ever able to capture them on camera.
But the skunk ape is one of a handful of creatures that only became MORE compelling with the invention of handheld cameras.
in July of 2000, Shealy saw another Skunk Ape! And this time, he had a video camera ready. With his camera, he captured footage of a dark, loping figure slogging through swampy water, on two legs, with an unhurried gait before disappearing into the brush. I’m going to include the footage of this on our instagram @heartstartspounding
It wouldn’t be long before even more compelling evidence of the Skunk Ape’s existence would surface. In fact, in January of 2001, what some believe is the most definitive proof that the Skunk Ape is real arrived with an anonymous letter at the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.
The letter, which was printed from a computer, was written by someone who claimed to be an elderly woman from Myakka, Florida, who had noticed one morning that apples had been stolen from her back porch—yes, she kept apples on her back porch—two nights in a row. On the third night, the letter writer said she heard low “whooping”-type sounds and movement coming from the porch area. And when she went outside to investigate, she observed something that looked like an orangutan crouching behind a palm frond about ten feet away.
The letter writer said she then raised her camera and snapped a photo of the creature, who froze as soon as her camera’s flash went off. She then took a second flash photo, at which point the creature stood and lumbered off into the bushes.
In her letter, the writer described the creature as standing six to seven feet tall and giving off an awful stench that lingered in her backyard well after the creature bolted.
The writer signed her letter not with her name, but with “God Bless”— followed by “I prefer to remain anonymous.”
Some believe this letter is a hoax, but others have pointed out that the letter writer sounds credible. She doesn’t contradict herself at any point, for one thing. And her tone is not sensational. Rather, she seems baffled and genuinely concerned.
“I’m a senior citizen,” she stressed, “and if this animal had come out of the hedge row after me, there wasn’t a thing I could have done about it…. I’m concerned because my grandchildren like to come down and explore in my backyard. An animal this big could hurt someone seriously.”
“My husband says he thinks it is an orangutan. Is someone missing an orangutan?”
“I saw on the news that monkeys that get loose can carry hepatitis and are very dangerous. Please look after this situation. I don’t want my backyard to turn into someone else’s circus. “
She included with the letter the two photos she took—which have come to be known as the Myakka photos—and opinion has been split on what those photos depict.
A primate specialist in Japan took a look at the photos and claimed to have identified the “creature” as a commercially available gorilla costume—although no one has ever been able to identify which costume it would have been
Multiple veteran Bigfoot researchers have studied the images and reached the conclusion that the photos are a hoax. But cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has said he believes the photos to be authentic. He wrote that the creature in the images “looks like what would be expected of an unknown primate in the underbrush in Florida.”
Over the years, more video and images have surfaced purporting to show the Florida Skunk Ape. One video posted to YouTube in 2013 was largely met with ridicule. Most of the evidence tends to dissolve under scrutiny.
As with Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and all the other cryptids, we’re forever asking the question: is the Skunk Ape real or is it fiction? If it’s fiction, then what is it that over 600 people, dating back to the 19th century, have seen out there in the swampy wilds in Florida?
And what other mysteries will the Everglades keep forever suppressed in its nearly eight thousand square miles of mostly impenetrable, and largely unexplored wilderness?
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, in her 1947 book The Everglades, called it the “River of Grass.” The Seminoles call it “Pa-hay-okee.” And I call it a place to be respected—from a safe distance, for the Everglades is the kind of place where planes disappear, bodies are never found, and the toothy sawgrass swallows everything whole.
Is it really so impossible that something large, frightened of humans, and very smelly has been hiding in there all along? Or is the Skunk Ape just another thing the Everglades has swallowed—this time, in our imagination?
That is all I have for you today, if you want to help preserve the sacredness of the Everglades, and make it so the skunk ape always has a home, you can check out Everglades.org and the work of Everglades activist Betty Osceola. Shout out to listener Karla who sent me their stuff.