Unsolved Mysteries with Dennis Farina - Season 5, Episode 2 - Updated Full Episode | Forensic Files

next on unsolved mysteries at a uranium processing plant a worker vanishes and his remains turn up in a furnace was
he murdered because he knew too much a police chief tries to run a street gang out of town
and then he dies in a suspicious car accident he's the godfather of boston's irish
mafia and he's a fugitive with a million dollar price on his head ordinary household
objects do strange things when janine price is around is there any reasonable explanation
sound intriguing well stick around these are unusual cases that you won't want to
miss i'm dennis farina and this is unsolved mysteries [Music] [Music] [Music] fernald ohio 20 miles northwest from
cincinnati for many years this small farm town's main employer was the feed materials production center
also known as nlo unknown to the public nlo was actually owned by the department of energy
from 1953 to 1989 it was one of the few plants in the u.s that secretly processed
high-grade uranium for nuclear weapons when i was hired in there they said it was a low level
radiation plant and that you didn't have anything to worry about there was nothing back there that would bother you
and just you know going about your business not to tell anybody what you were doing
everything would be fine but conditions at the plant weren't fine in the fall of 1984 nlo was rocked by
scandal when a factory accident released massive amounts of radioactive smoke into the atmosphere
an investigation later revealed that over the years nlo had released more than 200 tons
of radioactive dust particles into the air and local water sources the effect that it has
on the environment is one thing we have an environmental disaster but i think if you did a survey around
the finale community you will find very few people who trust the government now it was a few months before this terrible
accident that dave box one of the plant's employees died a gruesome death inside the factory
his family is convinced that he was murdered possibly because he was going to blow
the whistle on the quantity of radioactivity that the plant was releasing in 1981 dave was hired at nlo
as a pipe fitter and quickly earned the trust and respect of his co-workers dave was divorced
but remained close to his ex-wife and three children [Music] he was great he would do anything for us
loved his children you know did his job he was just very kind person dave worked the graveyard shift on
sunday night at 11 p.m he met his rideshare partner harry easterling in the parking lot at a local
restaurant as usual hey harry hi dave dave got into my truck we left had a little conversation on the
way to work he had talked about vacation with his kids and uh bought a new lunch box for work and
everything seemed to be normal dave's job was to inspect and maintain equipment throughout the factory this included
making sure that the safety pumps and dust collectors used in the uranium processing
were working properly dave was a fairly quiet guy but if you worked on a job say it was
high radiation level dave would tell you say you know that particular dust collector is fairly
radioactive so watch yourself or that pump has a certain kind of acid in it so be careful when you work on it
[Music] only the maintenance crew and security personnel work the graveyard shift
the production lines were shut down at midnight dave reported to the maintenance room
for his assignment box yeah i need you to look at the pump building let's see him all right it was sort of
just like any other night he would open his toolbox leave his keys in his lock and lay the
lock and keys in the top of the toolbox dave went to one area and i worked on a job and another plant
a worker saw dave and a supervisor in a parked pickup truck the eyewitness spoke to us
on the phone but he declined to appear on camera he said that dave and the supervisor
seemed to be having a serious discussion but he could not tell what they were talking about
he noted the windows of the truck were rolled up even though the weather was hot
and humid an hour later the same witness ran into dave on the factory grounds help with that i'm just putting my tools
away all right he noticed that dave was walking towards plant four not plant eight where he'd been
assigned it was the last time that dave box was seen alive later that morning harry became
suspicious because he hadn't seen dave in hours approximately seven o'clock that morning
we had a safety meeting in conference room in plant four we showed up for the meeting but dave
wasn't there walked back over to the maintenance building put my tools away and noticed that dave's toolbox was
still open so i thought well he's probably working overtime so i went in made a few phone calls but i couldn't
locate him so i went back out and told the security guard that dave hadn't come out i was going
home and i would meet him the next night at the restaurant at around 7 30 that morning a furnace
operator in plant six told his supervisor that the casings in his oven were covered with a strange
sticky residue the worker also noticed a strange odor and something strange in here
this there's all kind of big firm crush all over the salt crust yeah i've dipped a couple of
ingots in it's got a slick film all over them that's okay just go ahead and keep dipping
larry yeah what there's something in there the supervisor apparently found nothing
wrong and told the furnace operator to go back to work on the way to his next shift harry went
to the restaurant to meet dave as usual it was dave's turn to drive and his car was already there
wasn't anything out of the ordinary because he would pull his car in and go get something eaten and come back to the
car or get something to take for lunch and i leaned up against dave's car and i noticed the fender was still cold
so i reached over touched the hood and the hood was still harry was worried when he got to work he
reported dave missing and had a security guard pry open his locker are these the clothes he was
wearing that's what he was wearing and you haven't seen him since you left no inside the plant
an investigation had begun plant records show that at 5 15 on the morning date disappeared the
temperature in the furnace in plant 6 had briefly dropped 28 degrees this sudden change suggested that
something foreign had been dumped into it a worker also found what appeared to be
a piece of bone on the lip of the furnace the sheriff's department was called and
the furnace was shut down it took three days for the molten liquid inside to cool
only then could employees search through the waste material my god those keys belong to the victim's
car they also belong to three padlocks of his and a one key we believed went into his residence but
we couldn't prove that because it was bent and in not very good shape if the keys pulled from the furnace were
dave's they would presumably have fallen in along with the foreign body at 5 15 am but dave's keys were seen
more than two hours later in his tool box so how did the keys get into the furnace
investigators concluded that dave was probably dead harry was stunned he was also confused about dave's keys
when i left the plant to go over to the maintenance shop his keys were in the box when i left
there to go home they were still in the box i went home when i came back that night
his keys were still in the top of his tool box the supervisor closed his box put the lock on his tool
box and took his keys out of the lock and from there on i do not know what happened to the keys
[Music] besides the keys investigators also found a steel toe from a boot part of an eyeglass frame fragments of
dave's walkie-talkie and a stainless steel wire that was looped together in three oddly connecting circles
also recovered were several pieces of human bone investigators were unable to determine
how dave ended up in the furnace they suggested that he might have committed suicide
dave had a history of psychological problems and around the time of his divorce he had apparently tried to kill himself
i believe that he voluntarily went into that furnace two individuals that talked to him
during the lunch time indicated that he was sort of depressed he seemed to be not very talkative and
was having some sort of a problem that he didn't wish to discuss it appears that possibly it was
suicide but i don't have any evidence to back that up that's only my personal opinion
i know my father did not commit suicide he had purchased groceries for the week he was planning a vacation with me and
my younger brother for the following summer to florida he paid all of his bills for the month
there was no reason for him to commit suicide he was probably lowered into the furnace
that he was probably murdered i can't think of any other way that it could have happened i don't believe that
it could have been suicide or that it could have been an accident why he was killed i think he knew
something plant eight had released four times more radioactive contaminants into the
environment than any other plant at the plant site i believe that they could have either shot him or
they could have hit him with something knocked him unconscious took the body back to
plant sex where the furnace is it's possible he was a whistleblower or was going to be a whistleblower
i would hate to think that he was conscious i can't imagine a more horrible death than that
no one ever gave us any indication or reason to believe that foul play may have occurred
there are probably people out there that know what happened and there may not be people that know
what happened either because you know if they knew i doubt that anybody would tell you
maybe fear of their life i can't believe he's gone i'm very angry i mean we loved him he loved us and
there was no reason for this to happen five years after dave bach's death the nlo
was shut down sadly years later dave's family is unable to lay him to rest days remains just a few bone fragments
are too toxic to be buried in the ground they have been sealed in a drum and shipped off to a nevada test site for
storage with other radioactive materials how dave died and why remains a mystery
if you have any information please log on to our website at unsolved.com i robert hamrick next a small town
policeman stands up to a street gang and then he dies in a suspicious car accident
[Music] rock creek ohio in the late 1960s a group of young men began terrorizing this quiet
and peaceful community they were involved in fights they were involved in threats they
pretty much had the entire village under their thumb when they spoke the village pretty much listened
the town counted on the sheriff's department for protection but they seemed unable to stop the crime
wave so the citizens decided to start their own police department i robert hammer soundly swear robert
hamrick was the third man in less than six months to take charge of the new police force
the other two had left after receiving threats from members of the rock creek gang but chief hammer
was confident that he could clean up the town help me god so help me god congratulations he wanted it to be a
nice friendly town he wanted you know to get these this gang off the streets so the people wouldn't
have to be afraid of them almost immediately hamrick and his family were harassed
they just did anything that they could to aggravate him when they knew he was home
and you know he would get fed up take off out there after him [Music] [Applause]
five months after he was sworn in chief hamrick investigated an abandoned building on the edge of town
inside he found an expensive sports car it was stolen we come across it fingerprinted it and
we bugged the building because we didn't know who was there bob was hiding in the office and when
they set up why we jumped down and busted them three heads in the air the suspects were believed to be members
of the rock creek gang they were arrested and released on bail shortly after these guys was arrested
for the stolen car is when the threats came in on the telephone but this one day i was in the kitchen
and the phone rang hello it was a man on the other end and he said tell your husband to leave
things alone and get him out of town or he's going to be hurt and he's going to be hurt bad
one month later during a routine patrol chief hammer called in to report that he
was in pursuit of a car heading west out of town an hour and a half passed with no
further radio contact finally the dispatcher requested that deputies tried to find the missing chiefs check
calendar wrote for a5 haven't heard from him or been able to reach him since 151
four hours later hamrick's patrol car was located on an isolated road it had hit a tree
chief chief hamrick was semi-conscious and barely alive hey 11 this is 5 28. sent out a signal 29.
chief hamrick is hurt real bad he had head and facial injuries i was surprised to find him moving when
i got there you know and then my next thing was to get him to keep him from moving
so they wouldn't do further injury to himself blood covered the back seat of the car
and hamrick's service revolver and night stick were missing and the car's ignition
and lights were switched to the off position investigators suspected foul play robert hamrick never regained
consciousness and ten days later he died despite all the evidence that pointed to murder
his death was officially ruled accidental the result of vehicular pursuit i still don't believe to this day that
all the injuries that bob received was a result of that car accident i believe my husband's death was not a car
accident and that he was beaten to death and that it was covered up there is evidence and people
just have ignored that evidence and they've ignored the circumstances at the time
and what was going on in the village at the time six hours after the crash the car that
hamrick had been chasing was found at a nearby gas station it was splattered with mud
and had a damaged tire the owner of the car said that when she dropped the car off for
repairs the previous day that the car was in good condition it was like that when i got here
were you driving this car last night no it was said that one of the station employees was
known to be a member of the rock creek gang knowing that he was from hung around the rock creek area and i
had had trouble with him in the past i felt that he was directly involved one local woman claims that she
overheard members of the gang bragging that they had murdered chief hamrick they were saying we killed us a cop
and we got away with it and they proceeded to tell how they killed him how they beat him in the head
they had it all planned they set him up get him down here on this dirt road and they took his billy club and they
started hitting him with it they put him back into his car and then they left him there
left him to die i knew in my heart they would never get caught [Music] i just hope that we find out what
actually happened and if we find out who's responsible that they pay for what they did they
took my father from me and i think it's time that they got something taken from them
for now the case of robert hamrick is officially closed however authorities are prepared to
reopen it if new evidence is found if you have any information please log on to our website at
unsolved.com next he's the godfather of boston's irish mafia and he's on the run and if you know
where he is it's worth a million dollars south boston massachusetts james whitey bulger has been described
as quick-witted hot-tempered and ruthless a petty thief turned bank robber who spent nine years in federal prisons
including alcatraz after his release bulger established an illegal crime empire in south boston
according to authorities he ruled his turf with an iron fist for more than 20 years
and in the process earned an estimated 25 million dollars from time to time the feds brought
whitey in for questioning but they never had enough evidence to nail them whitey bulger
seemed untouchable south boston was a tight irish catholic community a place where whitey bulger felt right
at home nothing happened in south boston without his approval every bit of illegal gaming loan
shocking drug dealing if it happened he had to sanction it and he had to have a piece of it
stephen i swear if only bobby friday two o'clock in his prime whitey operated out of the back of a
liquor store on the edge of south boston this is where he took care of some of his unfinished business
one night whitey's partner stephen the rifleman flemmi was inside the store so was a local bar
owner named tim connelly all right thanks sit down sit down how's your family he was about to become
a victim of bulger's exercise i want some respect from you expect oh i'll show you some respect
this is respect this is respect i'm gonna let you buy your life for fifty thousand dollars
that's fifty thousand dollars by the end of the week i can't get at all jimmy oh yeah i was good you call me on a good
day huh cause i'm gonna let you give me 25 in two days connolly returned to the liquor store
with 25 000 in cash bulger realized that they got half of the money back and conley promised the other half
and everything was forgiven out of florida yeah conley claims that bulger then came out put his arm around
him said now you're our friend again thanks but connolly didn't like his new friends
he went to the fbi and helped them build a case against the so-called dawn of south boston tim connolly turned
to the fbi because he was scared and i think um connolly decided that it was time to start talking
are you implying that mr bulger threatened you mr conley yes he did sir with connolly's help the
fbi was finally able to tighten the noose around bulger's operation whitey bulger was indicted along with
stephen the rifleman flemmi also indicted was cadillac frank salemme the boss of new england's
italian mafia so they grabbed stevie flemmi and when they did they were unable to locate frank salemme
or whitey bulger six months later they found frank salemme in florida but they have yet to
find whitey frank salemme was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison stephen flemmi was sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole whitey bulger is wanted for 18 counts of
murder narcotics violations and money laundering he has been placed on the fbi's 10 most
wanted list and a 1 million dollar reward has been offered for information leading to his arrest whitey bulger is 5
feet 8 inches tall and weighs 155 pounds he has blue eyes and white hair when last spotted bulger was traveling
with his girlfriend catherine grieg she is also wanted by the fbi for harboring a fugitive
this video footage shows bulger and krieg walking near the city center in terramina sicily
update there are new developments in this case here's one of our staff with details
on june 22 2011 the fbi finally arrested whitey bulger now 83 years old and his companion catherine grieg 16
years after they disappeared they were living in an apartment in santa monica california
bulger was sentenced to life in prison but was beaten to death by inmates thought to be affiliated with the mob
they apparently took revenge on bulger for being a snitch catherine grieg served her time and has
been released [Music] next meet a woman whose psychic ability causes objects to spark
explode and even fly across the room [Music] long beach california janine price is an ordinary woman with
extraordinary powers janine says that she's had psychic experiences ever since she was a child
they began with an ability to read minds and to predict the future when she was just
10 years old janine says that she was consumed by a strong feeling that she had a sister
that she had not met but her mother refused to discuss it she just ignored me so then i became even more
obsessed with finding out who this person was that i was seeing that i went prying into my parents
personal effects one time there were a lot of pictures of children but this one picture i came across
when i touched it i knew it had to be the person mama what what who who's this is me where did you get
this mom who is it it's nobody it's just a picture i i know who this is it's my sister
isn't it jeanine's mother finally admitted that janine did have a half-sister judy from her father's previous marriage
i then told my mother that mom i know i'm going to meet her one day and right after i meet her she's going
to die but she says something's going to happen to judy says i i know she's going to die
and something with her head something's something's something with blood and in her head
it's like something's going to burst when janine was older she finally had the opportunity to meet her half-sister
one day her brother andrew showed up with a long lost judy hi jeanine judy how are you we bonded very very quickly
very closely matter of fact your eyes are exactly i never told her that i had a feeling that she was going to have a
short life after she had known me it i just knew it wasn't my place to do so all the time there were times where i
want to say judy now don't go out the door because you're not going to live and i want to spend a lot of time with you
[Music] within a year judy was admitted to the hospital complaining of severe headaches
her doctor said that it was only migraines but janine recalls that on her first visit
she sensed that her childhood premonition would soon come true as soon as i touched judy the sense of
death and illness was so strong i think i became too overbearing with the doctor
i started suggesting that he'd take x-rays of her her skull and her brain and cat scans
she needs a brain scan brain scout yes is there some medical information do you know the name of your former
doctor no but um it's very important you see i didn't want to tell you this but she
she has a brain aneurysm i remember the doctor telling me you don't even know what you're talking
but you're not the doctor and i said no i'm not but i know my sister has an aneurysm on her brain
i remember distinctly warning everyone what they did for it wasn't enough that she needed you know something to
detect there might be an internal problem indeed there were there was because uh shortly afterwards
she died judy died at the age of 35. the cause of death a brain aneurysm for janine the loss was devastating
she sought out dr michael persinger an expert on psychic phenomena to help her understand her own abilities
when individuals feel that they can see into the future and they have verified experiences of
precognition what you find is that these individuals brains are organized in such a way
as that they can make connections between events that most people cannot dr persinger believes that psychic
episodes results from short bursts of high levels of electricity within the brain similar to epileptic
seizures what precognition is is that you're seeing things in time outside the normal temporal frame
well suppose portions of the brain that mediate space and time are suddenly enhanced in
terms of activity according to dr persinger the brain of someone with psychic abilities is something like a
television that can receive channels that others cannot during what he calls psychic brain
seizures they are more capable of receiving and transmitting these signals of the 30 or 40 individuals with
janine's profile many of them also report having the ability to influence objects at a distance the experiences
such as light bulbs exploding around them radios failing glass breaking did you turn the light on
no i was in the other room there were several incidents where things actually exploded in my hands
i remember one time i was holding a coffee pot we finally had to remove all our glass
glasses out of the house because they were if i touched them and if i got upset they would break in my hand in general
it appears that these occurrences are associated with stress and tension and the theory is
that they are a means of the mind of the brain to release the stress or tension in the
individual janine says that a number of psychokinetic activities occurred during a very stressful time of her life
i can't talk to you i've seen her get real upset she ended her ex-husband it had words and it was a
really a trying situation what was that it was just this like a magnetic force just went and just just
pulled off the wall and slung it to the other side of the room we were going out
to the car one day and i wasn't even angry i was just charged up mom can i have a dollar for lunch i'll
give it to you in the car the force was so strong that the energy that was coming off my hand
actually caused sparks and the keys flew up out of my hand come here what can you warm this up one
of the most dramatic incidents apparently happened when janine asked her son to warm up a baby bottle in the
microwave i put it on for one second my mom got mad she went over there and touched it and reset it
[Music] when the repairman came he had no explanation for the microwave sudden destruction
we do not know what type of energy it is so we invent a term for it pk cyclokinesis
by looking at the brains of people such as jeanine we might get an understanding of the
form of energy that causes these types of incidents [Music] scientists still cannot explain the
mysterious forces of psychokinesis but the exploration has helped janine and others like her cope with the
powerful forces in their lives what what was what want to try plugging it in coming up when a kansas city man dies he
leaves more than 150 000 to his heirs but who are they kansas city missouri like many elderly people in america
george marsh lived the last years of his life alone he watched the world go by from a
wheelchair at his favorite window in a nursing home but marsh was also a man of mystery
he had quietly saved 175 thousand dollars worth as much in his time as nearly a half a million dollars today
he talked about how he used to work hard and that was it but just to look at him he didn't
appear that he had that kind of money george marsh moved to kansas city in 1917 for the next 20 years there are no
records of his employment in 1942 he worked as a laborer for the railroad but all details of that job were lost
many years ago in the early 50s marsh was night watchman for the armor meat packing
company but those records were destroyed in a fire [Music] for 60 years marsh lived downtown in the
quality hill area these few facts of george marsha's life were discovered by kansas city inheritance investigator
michael ledman i think george marsh was a very secretive person he shared his life with no one you would think you
would find one person that would have had some communication or been close to george in some way and
that's not the case was a customer here at the store for 10 or 12 years he was very conscious as to what he was
trying to buy he always tried to buy the sale items the cheaper products and as he left he always paid cash for
his groceries in 1979 the apartment building where marsh lived was destroyed by a fire
george lost his home and all of his belongings totally alone he was forced to move into
a nursing home he just sit in a chair all day long he didn't have anything to say
he spoke with an accent like he might have been german he was right-handed and the
middle finger on his right hand was cut off at the joint and he had some numbers inside of his
arm numbers like 3 4 5 seven something like that voter registration records show that
george may have been married for a while lula mae marsh lived at the same address as he did but she
seems to have disappeared from the records by 1946. he told me one day when i asked that he had a son
but he said i have no idea where he is i haven't seen him for years i don't know anything about him and then
tuned me out he was not willing to elaborate after george died it turned out that
george had nine secret checking accounts in four different banks for a total of about 175 thousand
dollars today that would be worth nearly a half a million dollars but george left no will this is all that
remains of george r marsh an envelope that contains the personal belongings of his turned over
to me by the nursing home and that's a birth certificate some pictures a divorce decree
according to his birth certificate george was born in czechoslovakia and christened joseph zalinka
the most mysterious thing about this case is the fact there has been a change of name apparently
the fact that he leads leaves a lot of money we really don't know how he accumulated that money
and that there's no heirs and he cut off any connection with heirs one paper showed that he divorced a
woman named catherine zelenka in 1932. there is no mention of george's son or of lula marsh he also left behind
five old and yellowed snapshots the name catherine was written on the back of this picture
this one has been signed your loving niece eleanor and this may be the only existing
photograph of george marsh the voice shown here may be george's son update after our broadcast we received a
call from one of george's long-lost relatives his niece eleanor when i looked up and
saw my senior high school picture on tv i couldn't believe it so then when he read your loving niece
eleanor i was just stunned i was just amazed and then the very next picture was uncle joe
and i said my gosh that's uncle joe [Music] the zelenka family lives in rock springs
wyoming george's brother jim has been looking for him for years i never know no idea why he kept away
from the family because there's no hard feelings we were all united always the estate of george marsh who was known
to his family as joe will be divided between jim and eleanor and joe's other surviving relatives
but more importantly they want to keep his memory alive they have brought back his body to the
family burial site the money you don't mean as much as finding out where he's at i just feel
good all over to know that i located him and know where he's at and i'd be able to
bring his body back to rest with the rest of his family [Music] [Music] [Music] you

This episode includes: Whistle Blown, Brenda's Fire, Southie, Electric Lady and Marsh.

Brief Summary

Three cases of mysterious deaths and criminal activity, including a uranium plant worker, a police chief, and mobster Whitey Bulger.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Dave Box. Dave Box, an employee at a uranium processing plant, mysteriously disappears and is later found dead in a furnace. Was it an accident or murder?
Chief Hamrick's Fatal Pursuit. Chief Robert Hamrick investigates a gang and ends up in a suspicious car accident that leads to his death. Was it really an accident?
Janine's Psychic Premonition. Janine Price had a premonition about her half-sister Judy's tragic fate.
The Mysterious Life of George Marsh. George Marsh lived a secretive life, hiding his wealth and connections until his death.
Family Reunion After Death. George Marsh's long-lost relatives reconnect after his passing, uncovering family secrets.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How did the keys get into the furnace?

A mysterious twist in the investigation of Dave Box's death.

0:58WatchJul 26, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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