Shipwrecked (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:01In the early morning hours on a Saturday in 2013, a man dressed all in black hid in the shadows on a side street in downtown Antwerp, Belgium. The man had lost track of how long he'd been there, but he didn't care. He'd hide in the shadows for as long as he had to, waiting patiently for the perfect moment that he knew was going to arrive eventually. And then finally, stumbling footsteps approached, and the man crouched down and got ready. But before we get into today's story, you may be wondering why you're getting a new episode on a Wednesday. Well, I am now going to be uploading four episodes to the Mr.

0:37Ballin podcast each week. Now, Mondays and Thursdays won't change. But beginning today, you're also going to get new slash exclusive episodes on Wednesdays. And on Fridays, you'll get a mix of new stories and also fan favorites. And these Wednesday stories, they aren't just going to be true crime. In fact, many of them will be based on the kind of stories that you already love if you're a fan of my YouTube channel. I call this series Places You Can't Go and People Who Went There Anyways. Or maybe more accurately, Things You Really Can't Do but People Who Did Them Anyway and Here's Their Story.

1:11These stories are insane. And I'm telling you, if you've not heard this series before, you're really going to like it. So make sure you check them out here each Wednesday. And you can also watch me tell these stories on my YouTube channel each week. So, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right show, because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons house and lay hundreds of mousetraps inside of their bed. Okay, let's get into today's story.

2:23We'll see you next time. near you. Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all. That's why drivers have trusted Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. Just tell Progressive what you want to pay, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit Progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match, limited by state law. After midnight on Saturday, October 19, 2013, a 23-year-old man named Odey Eguilus, stood at the bar in a packed dance club in Antwerp, Belgium. The bartender slid two shot glasses across the bar towards O'Day, and he grabbed both of them, he held one, and he handed the other to his friend, Kevin Rodriguez Fuentes, who was standing right behind him.

3:06It was Kevin's birthday. So O'Day raised his shot glass and shouted happy birthday in Spanish over the pounding dance music, and then the two young men slammed back their drinks. O'Day had moved to Antwerp, Belgium, from Spain about six months earlier when he had gotten a job as a computer engineer. When he'd arrived, he hadn't known anybody, but he'd met Kevin at a beer festival, and the two of them had gotten along right away. And Kevin was from the area, so he'd introduced O'Day to a bunch of his friends and shown him the best spots to hang out in the city, and the two had gotten very close very quickly.

3:39Now, standing at the bar after, you know, taking their shots, Kevin tapped on O'Day's shoulder, and he pointed out at the dance floor, and he grinned. because there was a group of young women about their age all dancing together out there. And so the two young men, they headed out to the dance floor to go speak with these girls. And from this point on, the night really became a blur for O'Day, who kept going back and forth from the dance floor back to the bar for more drinks. But, you know, despite that, O'Day was having a great time. It was really nights like this that made him feel like Antwerp was his new home.

4:12But he also knew if he stayed out much longer here, he might end up passing out right on the dance floor. So O'Day and Kevin and some friends they had just met on the dance floor stumbled out of the club and into the city. When they got out there, the streets were pretty empty. And so O'Day reflexively pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. Now, his vision was fuzzy, but even still, you know, one-eyeing it, he could see that it was close to 4 a.m. And given the fact that it was so, so late, basically it was the next day at this point, he just told the group goodnight, and then he turned around to start walking home to go to bed.

4:47The next morning, O'Day's friend, Kevin, woke up with a pounding headache. His eyes fluttered open and he looked around and he let out a sigh of relief because he was safely in his bedroom in his apartment in Antwerp. He had been so drunk by the end of his birthday celebration the night before that he literally didn't remember getting home. And so now, painfully, he rolled over and grabbed his phone off the nightstand and reflexively texted O'Day, along with another friend that had been out with him the night before, asking how they were feeling. The other friend texted right back, but Oday did not respond.

5:20But this didn't really worry Kevin that much. I mean, he's horribly hungover. Oday has to be as well, and so he likely is just sleeping it off, and he'll be in touch when he wakes up. However, all day that day, Kevin did not hear from Oday. And then the next day, October 20th, when still Kevin has not heard from Oday, he really started to get worried. But when Kevin called Oday to check on him to make sure he was okay, when he put the phone to his ear, it didn't ring. Instead, it went straight to Oday's voicemail, like his phone was turned off. And to Kevin, this was pretty unusual. Oday was usually very responsive, even with a hangover.

5:59And by this point, Kevin had given him a full day, 24 hours to recover, you know, like, he should be in touch by now, what's going on? So Kevin called the other friend who they'd gone out with, who had texted him back the day before, to see if maybe O'Day had checked in with him. But that friend said he also had not spoken to O'Day. And so at this point, Kevin hung up and just decided to go to O'Day's house and literally physically check on him. However, when Kevin arrived at O'Day's house, he found O'Day's roommates, but no O'Day. O'Day's roommates did not know O'Day very well, so they didn't know what was sort of normal and not normal behavior.

6:37So when he had gone out for Kevin's birthday party and didn't come back, they just figured he was crashing at a friend's place or something. But to Kevin, this was unusual. To hear that he had not come back, that was not normal, he would know if O'Day was at a friend's house. And so Kevin was starting to panic. But then Kevin remembered one of his and O'Day's mutual friends had recently gone out of town for a wedding. And so Kevin thought, you know, maybe that's where O'Day is. He's gone with her to the wedding and that's why he's not here. and that's why he's not answering his phone. So Kevin left Odey's house and called this friend, a young woman whose name was Oyane.

7:14He was hoping that she would have an explanation for everything, but instead, when she answered the phone, it was obvious from her voice that she was also freaking out about Odey. Oyane said she also had been calling Odey nonstop over the past day or so and she couldn't get in touch with him. And so it was becoming clear that nobody had seen Odey since the night of the birthday party when he set off around 4 a.m. to walk home drunk from the bar. Kevin had no idea what he was supposed to do, but he felt like his friend was in trouble. So he contacted the police and officially reported O'Day missing.

7:51The following day, Monday, October 21st, Kevin sat in a small room across from members of the missing persons unit of the Belgian National Police. And as soon as the officers started asking Kevin questions, it became clear that this was going to be a very frustrating meeting for everybody. Because no matter how hard Kevin tried, he literally couldn't remember much at all. His memory of his and O'Day's night out on his birthday were really just blurry images and pieces of random conversations because, you know, he was drunk. But Kevin did manage to remember what O'Day had been wearing. He had a gray hooded sweatshirt and a black and white checkered scarf.

8:27And he also knew the area of town specifically where they had gone out. But really, that was it. And so by the time Kevin left the police station, he felt like he was really letting his friend down. And he just couldn't handle the idea that now he would just have to sit around and wait and hope police magically found him. You know, when right now, Oday, wherever he was, could be in trouble or hurt or something. You know, he just felt like he had to do something. So that afternoon, Kevin met up with some of Oday's other friends, and together, they began hanging posters all around the city that had pictures of Ode on them.

9:00Antwerp was a very busy city, filled with bars and restaurants that stayed open very late, so they were sure that somebody had to have seen Ode while he was walking home. He couldn't have just disappeared into thin air. People don't do that. Meanwhile, detectives in the missing persons unit got to work. Now, Kevin had not given them a ton to go on, but knowing where in the city he and Oday had gone out and what Oday had been wearing did actually turn out to be quite helpful because with this basic information, police were able to collect CCTV surveillance camera footage from outside of the bars, restaurants, and street corners where Kevin and Oday had been.

9:39And it didn't take them long to pick up on Oday's trail. The investigators were hoping to find footage of Oday getting into a cab or some other vehicle or maybe wandering into a building or even evidence that he'd been attacked in some capacity. And at first, they thought that is exactly what they'd found. Because on camera footage, around 4am on the morning O'Day disappeared, the police saw him wandering down this dimly lit side street on his own. His black and white checkered scarf really jumped out on the footage. And the police watched on video as this man suddenly came out of the shadows and rushed O'Day.

10:15The man attacked O'Day and stole what looked like O'Day's wallet right out of his pocket, and then the man took off running. And as disturbing as it was, the footage did not actually surprise the investigators very much. While Antwerp was not a particularly violent place, it was a big city, and drunk people wandering home at night did occasionally get mugged. However, what the investigators saw next on the surveillance footage did completely shock them, because after the mugging, O'Day had pulled himself together and kept heading down the street, and on footage taken a few minutes later from a different camera, the police saw Oday still wandering on his own when suddenly two new men rushed up, attacked Oday, took his phone, and then they ran away.

11:02Meaning, in the span of just a few minutes, Oday had been mugged twice by three different people. And none of the investigators had ever seen anything like that. It was like something you'd expect to see in a movie or a TV show about a guy cursed with bad luck or something. But as bizarre as this was, investigators now had something to go on. They didn't know if these muggers, the three men, were connected in some way or if this had truly been two random unconnected muggings. But Odey's cell phone and wallet had been stolen by these guys. So they could track Odey's cell phone data and also his credit card info and the investigators hoped that would then lead them right to Odey's attackers and they could figure out what their affiliation was and why they targeted O'Day, and hopefully where O'Day is now.

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14:59And so they pulled surveillance footage from that ATM to identify the first mugger. Then, by using cell phone tower data and CCTV footage along the route where they saw his cell phone was taken, investigators were able to identify the other two attackers involved in the second mugging. And so now, they believe they just needed to talk to these thieves to figure out where Ode was. Fast forward to October 29th, 10 days after Ode's disappearance, and he still is nowhere to be found, officers from the missing persons unit interviewed these three muggers separately. The police made it clear that they had a pile of evidence here that showed they mugged O'Day shortly before he vanished, so there's no point in trying to deny it.

15:44They know what they did. And none of the muggers did try to deny it. In fact, all three men admitted that they had jumped O'Day on the street and they told the police exactly what they had stolen. But they insisted their attacks, the two muggings, were not coordinated at all. They just happened to have gotten to Ode within a few minutes of each other. And then even more importantly, they also all insisted that they had nothing to do with Ode's disappearance. All they did was rob him. That's it. As the investigators listened to these muggers talk, all they could do was stare in disbelief. The idea that three muggers had randomly committed two attacks on the same man within minutes of each other, and that their victim had then disappeared in what, yet another unrelated incident?

16:30Seemed almost comical. But no matter how hard the police pressed these guys, they all completely stuck to their stories. Which was, we mugged him, and then we ran away, and we never saw him again. The police arrested and held all three men in connection to the robberies that they admitted to doing. But their goal, despite what these men have said was to find enough evidence to still charge them with the kidnapping or maybe even murder of O'Day. But then a new piece of surveillance footage surfaced from a new camera, and this new footage actually showed O'Day moments after the second mugging. And on this footage, investigators didn't see any of the muggers dragging O'Day away or something.

17:13Instead, just like the muggers said, they really did take off after that second mugging. And just like he done after the first attack, Odey dusted himself off and just kept on walking down the street and out of the camera's range, but he was alone. And so now, to their complete astonishment, the police had to admit that the muggers might be telling the truth, and that Odey could have just kept wandering the streets of Antwerp for hours after he'd gotten attacked. They didn't know, but they know the muggers ran away and Odey was alone, at least briefly after the second attack. And also, this new footage made them realize that to really conduct this investigation, they were going to need to search the entire city to see if anyone, anywhere, had seen O'Day.

17:59So, in early November of 2013, about two weeks after O'Day's disappearance, Belgium National Police conducted a massive investigation throughout all of Antwerp. They visited all the bars, all the restaurants, all the clubs in the area roughly where O'Day and his friends had been out partying, but no matter who they spoke to, no matter where they went, nobody knew where O'Day was or what happened to him. But as they hit all these dead ends, the investigator's search continued and it sort of slowly migrated north through Antwerp in the rough direction where O'Day had been last seen walking, away from the city center and towards the banks of the River Skelt, which runs right through Antwerp on its way to the North Sea.

18:42On the evening of November 7th, so by this point it is 19 days since O'Day was last seen, several detectives from the missing persons unit stepped onto the deck of a very unique structure that literally floated on the River Skelt. The structure was called the Bod Boat. That morning, police boats had been dragging the river itself and were searching the riverbanks with dogs, looking for any signs of O'Day. But the search of this river couldn't be completed without a stop at the Bod Boat. So the Bod Boat was basically a massive club, bar, and high-end restaurant that had been built into a converted ship that was moored right in the middle of the stretch of the river that police were dragging.

19:24But the biggest attraction of the Bod Boat was not the food or the dancing. It was the almost Olympic-sized swimming pool that had been built into the deck of the ship, and it looked like it was floating right on top of the river. People referred to it as the world's largest floating swimming pool, and it was always packed. The bod boat had a very good, very wide, unobstructed view of the city and the river, and so the detectives were hopeful that if O'Day had passed by, someone on the bod boat likely would have been able to see him. So now the detectives split up and began interviewing the bod boat staff and the patrons, asking if any of them remembered seeing a young man in a distinctive black and white checkered scarf on the morning he went missing.

20:09Now, at this point, pretty much everybody in the city had already heard of O'Day. I mean, his face was plastered on posters everywhere, and people really wanted to help. But as detectives talked to everybody at the bod boat, in the pool, in the bar, in the restaurant, everybody, as much as people wanted to help and thought they might have tips that could help, nobody had anything that was meaningful. And so eventually, the investigators had to leave the bod boat, and they just spent the rest of the afternoon on the banks of the river watching the marine unit do its work. But just like on the bod boat, there was nothing found in the river itself.

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22:39Mr. Ballin podcast listeners can get 20 % off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. You'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages, plus all the new Sapphire learning tools. Visit rosettastone.com slash to redeem your 20 % off. Again, go to rosettastone.com and start learning a language for real. On November 19th, 2013, so now one full month after Odey's disappearance, friends and family gathered publicly both in Antwerp and his hometown in the Basque country of Spain. In Spain, his family made it clear that they still hoped Odey would be alive, and that this gathering was not a memorial.

23:19It was instead to show their love for Odey. and to bring continued attention to his story so he could be found. In Antwerp, O'Day's friends tried to convey the same message with their meetup, that O'Day had to be out there somewhere and he might be okay. We just need to keep looking. However, by the end of 2013, so now over two months after O'Day's disappearance, it became clear that the police investigation was really not making much headway at all. Police still had those three muggers in custody, in hopes that maybe they would crack and they would admit that they had done something to Odey after the muggings.

23:54But the three men had not changed their stories at all. And also, after over a month of canvassing the entire city, no new evidence had really surfaced at all. And so, Odey's friends and family really began to worry that the police might just abandon the search because there was nothing they could do. But then, starting in the early summer of 2014, so a little more than seven months after Ode first disappeared. Something incredible happened. Ode's story went viral, and not just in Belgium or in his native Spain, but all across Europe. And this really is not how things typically played out. Thousands of people go missing in Europe every year, and most of those cases go relatively unnoticed by the media and the general public.

24:38It just is what it is. But the story of this young man who had moved to Antwerp to start his career and a new life, only to vanish without a trace after being mugged twice in the middle of the night? It just seemed so unbelievable and also resonated with people everywhere. It just felt so tragic. And so as the police, who by this point really had throttled back their search quite a bit, I mean it's been seven months by now, as police were showing signs of just basically dropping the case, people all across the continent demanded the police not just continue, but increase their scrutiny. Look everywhere.

25:16Triple your efforts. Find O'Day. And so there's all this unbelievable international outpouring of support from this viral story. I mean, you had poets all over the world writing poems about O'Day, and you had musicians writing music about O'Day. You had charity groups coming out in Belgium and doing their own search for O'Day. I mean, it's like the whole world was rallying to get the Belgian government to act. Like, triple your efforts find O'Day. He's out there. And then what sort of pushed it over the edge was in October of 2014, as the first anniversary of O'Day's disappearance approached, one of the most famous soccer players in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, played a game with images of O'Day on his jersey.

25:59I mean, his story really had reached basically everyone. And it was at this point that Belgium did act. The Belgium National Police literally doubled down on their efforts to search the entire country for O'Day. They're not just looking in Antwerp anymore, they're gonna look everywhere. They also enlisted the help of Interpol, an international police organization, to expand the search to other European countries. And so throughout 2014 and into 2015, investigators in Antwerp revisited bars, restaurants they had gone to during their initial canvas, and they re-interviewed people connected to O'Day.