He went on Unsolved Mysteries to solve his disappearance

Today, I'm going to share two very bizarre missing person stories, and they're both very unique. In fact, the second one is so memorable, I think a lot of you will retell it to your friends and family, because the ending is unexpected to say the least, and really paints a good picture of what Strange, Dark, and Mysterious content is all about. But, before we get into those two stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place, because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Like Button's house and eat like 99% of all their ice cream, leaving just a very thin layer of ice cream at the bottom, and then place that nearly empty container back in the freezer. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's stories. At around 1 a.m. on August 27, 2000, a fisherman named Sam Watts did his best to keep his balance on the wet deck of the huge commercial fishing boat that he was working on. And as he tried to do that, he looked over at his crewmate, Michael Edwards, another fisherman, who was grabbing onto the mast as the ship rocked underneath their feet. Sam and Michael, and the four other crew members on board this boat, had just dropped their anchor 56 miles off the northeast coast of Queensland, Australia, and up until about an hour earlier, the sea had been very calm. But now, you know, this huge storm had rolled in, the wind had picked up, the waves were huge, and while the four other crew members had already gone below to try to catch some sleep, Sam and Michael were now on the deck, doing their best to try to secure everything before they went down below. And so as the wind is whipping and the waves are smashing against the side of this boat, Sam and Michael decide they should split up to work more efficiently, where Sam will go to the front of the boat, then Michael will go to the back of the boat, and they would each kind of work towards the middle of the boat, checking all the fastenings and the knots to make sure everything was good, and then when they reached the center, they would be good, and they could go down below. And so they did that. Sam went to the front, Michael to the back, and as they began to work, they kept constant eye contact with each other, because this was obviously a very dangerous thing they were doing. But at some point, as Sam was making his way, he had to duck down to check a particular fastening, and so when he ducked down, he lost sight of Michael just for a second, but in that split second, this huge rogue wave smashed the side of the boat, practically capsizing it, sending Sam flying towards the railing, but Sam luckily grabbed onto the railing before being thrown into the water, and then as the boat kind of began to rock back to level, Sam instinctively looked back down the ship to look for Michael, and he watched through the darkness and the rain as Michael went careening off the side into the ocean. He hadn't been able to grab onto anything, and so the instant the boat kind of leveled out again, Sam screamed for Michael, but he couldn't see him, and so he ran down below, woke up the whole crew, and so moments later, the crew was on the deck. They had their big spotlights out, scanning the water, you know, through this big storm, looking for signs of Michael, and at the same time, the captain had come up, and he was on the radio talking to police, and so several minutes later, a police boat managed to come out to the fishing boat, and at the same time, you know, the crew is still desperately looking for Michael. They haven't found him yet, and now the police began circling around the whole area, calling out for Michael, throwing out buoys into the water in hopes of, you know, maybe Michael sees one and grabs hold, but nobody could find Michael. He was just gone, and so all that morning into the early afternoon, the police continued to look in the area for Michael. You know, the crew on board the fishing boat did the same thing, but still nobody could find a trace of Michael, and so around noon that day, the search was called off, and the police told Sam and the rest of the crew of this fishing boat that unfortunately, you know, at this point, it seemed very likely that Michael had drowned, and so of course, Sam and the rest of the crew were basically in shock. I mean, this happened so quickly. How could it be that, you know, Michael just a few hours ago was joking around with them, part of the crew, and now he's dead? I mean, it was just unbelievable, but now unfortunately, Sam and the rest of the crew had to basically put their grief aside and make a very practical, albeit very cold, decision, which was, you know, even though Michael's dead, do we stay out here and continue fishing, or because of his death, do we just go back home? And you might think that decision was actually super easy to make, that of course, you know, they would pack it in and go back home. How could you possibly stay out here and go fishing considering what had happened? But you need to understand it cost a lot of money to go out on these fishing excursions, and they had just left, and so they had not caught anything, so they had spent all this money, and they had no return from it, and these fishermen were not wealthy. In fact, honestly, they needed the money from this trip just to provide for their families, and so if they did turn around right now, I mean, it would really hurt all of them, and it would also make it really hard to get the funding again to go out later. And so after some pretty awkward deliberation, the crew decided that, you know what, we've got to stay out here and fish, but the silver lining was, hey, you know, if we stay out here for another day or so, you know, maybe Michael's body will float to the surface, and we can at least recover him and bring him back home to his family. And so all day that day, the fishermen stayed out and fished, and they were very successful. I mean, one after another, they were They're called flowery cods, but despite how incredible this was for their business, you know, this was not a cause for celebration, because they had just lost their friend the day before, and so it was a very somber day, and all day, you know, all the fishermen really are looking out at the water, hoping to see Michael's body, but, you know, by the end of that 24 hours of fishing, they didn't see any sign of Michael, and so they packed everything in, and they headed back to port. They sold off all of their cod that they had bought, and then each of the fishermen went back to their families and grieved the loss of their friend. A few days later, a factory worker was standing in front of a fish processing line with this huge 97-pound cod right in front of them. This is one of the flowery cods that Sam and the other fishermen had caught 24 hours after their friend had gone overboard, and so this worker took their knife and, like they did every day, all day long, began opening up this fish, and at some point, after cutting it open and looking inside of this enormous cod, the worker just stopped and couldn't believe what they were seeing, and then they began to scream. It would turn out a few days earlier, after Michael had been thrown overboard during that storm, he very likely had been alive when he hit the water, but the area where they were fishing off the coast of Queensland, Australia, was known for having lots of sharks and saltwater crocodiles in the area, and so pretty much immediately, Michael was attacked by either a shark or a crocodile or maybe both, and during this feeding frenzy, as Michael's getting ripped to pieces, his head got ripped off and began to float away, and at some point, one of those huge flowery cods saw the head and ate it whole, and then later that day, Michael's colleagues caught the cod who caught Michael's head, and so that factory worker who opened up that particular cod saw Michael's undigested head looking up at her, and apparently his face was fixed in terror with his eyes wide and his mouth open as if his final moment had been him screaming. Some of you might know that before I became a professional strange, dark, and mysterious storyteller, I was in the military, and while I was in the military, I definitely had some pretty wild experiences all around the world, but to be honest, what I remember most about my time in service was not any of my own exploits, but rather it was the insane stories I heard from other service members. Keep in mind, military service members are sent to some of the most isolated, desolate, inhospitable places in the world, and many times in those places, weird things happen, unexplainable things like borderline paranormal things happen in these places. Think being out in the middle of the ocean with absolutely nothing around, and seeing lights popping up in the sky, and coming out of the ocean, and seeing figures up on the mountains wandering around where there shouldn't be any people. I mean, there are insane stories out there from service members, but many of them are not necessarily told in the public. They're kind of kept within the military. It's a kind of part of military lore. That is the premise of Wartime Stories, and if that piques your interest, well, you're in luck, because not only can you right now go check out the Wartime Stories YouTube channel, but also, I personally hand-selected Wartime Stories to come under the Balan Studios umbrella, and we have collaborated to make a brand new weekly podcast, the official Wartime Stories podcast, which is available right now. Go look up the Wartime Stories podcast on any podcast platform. It's free. All you have to do is look up Balan Studios, and you'll find Wartime Stories that way, or you can direct search for Wartime Stories. Click on it, follow them, and give them a listen. It's an amazing weekly show with new episodes coming out every single Monday. Okay, back to the story. On the afternoon of July 13th, 1994, a man woke up feeling very confused and disoriented, and he felt some pain in the back of his head, and as he opened his eyes, he kind of slowly realized that he was on his back in a ditch on the side of the road, looking up at a big blue sky. The man tried to sit up, but as soon as he did, he felt this throbbing pain in the back of his head, and he reached back to touch it, but the second he did, you know, it hurt even worse, and he definitely felt there was a pretty big lump on the back of his head, and then when he brought his hands in front of his face, he saw he had all these bruises around his wrists that he had no idea what they were from, and so as this man in the ditch is trying to figure out what's going on, suddenly this older man, who he didn't know, just appeared by the side of the road and looked down and said, hey, are you okay? And so the guy in the ditch is looking at this guy, he's got no idea who he is, and he wants to say, like, what's going on? Where am I? Who am I? What's happening? But he couldn't find the words. It's like he just kept looking at this older guy, looking at his wrist, and feeling his head, and having no idea what's going on, but then for some reason, three names popped into this guy's head, the guy in the ditch. He thought of three names, he had no idea whose names these were, but for some reason, he felt like those names were really important. And so after a few minutes of awkward silence, as the guy in the ditch is trying to talk, he finally just blurts out these three names. He says, uh, Pat, Joel, Chris. And so the older man, who had asked the guy in the ditch what was going on, he didn't really know how to react to this guy blurting out these names, and so he kind of ignored it and just said, okay, uh, hi, my name's Steve. And then Steve, the older man, helped the guy from the ditch out of the ditch. And then once the man in the ditch was on his feet, kind of looking around, he looked at Steve and suddenly he could say other words. And he said to Steve, where are we? And Steve looked at him and said, we're in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Now, the guy in the ditch didn't know why, but he immediately felt like Wyoming had to be wrong. Like, there's no way he could be in Wyoming. But the guy in the ditch didn't know where he was supposed to be, he didn't know who Steve was, he didn't know who Pat, Joel, or Chris was, and so it's all totally confusing. And so he just stood there kind of saying nothing, and as he did, Steve said, hold on a minute, I'm gonna get my stuff. And so Steve kind of shuffled down the road like 10, 20 feet away, where there was a shopping cart full of cans, and there was a backpack and some other things dangling off the side. And as Steve grabbed the shopping cart, turned it around, and slowly began pushing it back towards the guy in the ditch, the guy in the ditch stared at Steve and kind of put together that, you know, Steve must be homeless. And this realization made the guy in the ditch think that, you know, maybe he was homeless too. And so suddenly, instinctively, the guy from the ditch began reaching into his pockets, thinking maybe he had an idea or something that would show him who he was, that would show he was not homeless, that he had a place that he needed to go to. And he reached in his pockets, but there was nothing. All he found was 23 cents and a comb. And so by the time Steve came over with his cart and asked the guy from the ditch, hey, do you want to come to the shelter with me? The guy from the ditch was like, okay, yeah, I'll go with you. And then once the guy from the ditch and Steve arrived at the shelter, when they went inside, you know, the guy from the ditch had to introduce himself to the people who ran the shelter. And so he made up a name, combining one of those names that was running through his head, Pat, with the color of the desk of the person who was asking him for his name inside of the shelter. And so he just called himself And after Pat Brown got a room inside of the shelter, he went to bed that night still having no idea what was going on, but he felt confident, you know, if I just sleep tonight, I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll know what's going on. I'll figure out, you know, what happened to me. But the next day when Pat woke up, he was still completely confused, did not know who he was, had no idea what was going on, but he had the wherewithal to know that, you know, something bad must have happened to him. And maybe he should go talk to the police because maybe they would know if other people were looking for him or something. And so Pat walked from the shelter to the police station, it was not far away, and he went inside and very politely, he walked up to the desk, he introduced himself to the cop who was on duty, and Pat just began explaining to the cop as much as he could remember. He said, you know, yesterday I woke up in a ditch. I don't know who I am. I don't know why I'm here. I think I have amnesia. I just keep thinking of three names in my head, Pat, Joel, and Chris, but I have no idea what they mean. Now, the cop who's hearing this did not think, oh my goodness, this is totally legitimate. Let's launch an investigation to figure out who you are. Instead, the cop is like, is this guy on drugs? Is he mentally ill? You know, what's going on with this guy? But the cop would say, you know, Pat was incredibly polite and did not appear to be intoxicated. And so the cop humored him and said, okay, you know what, let's look through the most recent missing person reports in the area to see if somebody matching your description, you know, is a missing person. And so the cop began going through the database, but he couldn't find anybody that matched Pat's description. And so at some point he said, look, like, I can't really help you very much here because you're a grown man. You do not seem to be in distress here. And even though it's very unfortunate that you can't remember who you are or where you need to go or, you know, where your family is, that's not really a police matter. But as he was saying this to Pat, Pat, who's kind of crestfallen, you know, he's putting his hands near his face and just kind of reacting to this news that the police are not going to help him. And the police officer says, hold on a minute, look at your hand. And so Pat looked at his hand and he saw, you know, there was no ring on his left ring finger, but there was a pretty obvious callus where a ring should have been. It looked like, you know, Pat must have been wearing a ring up until recently. And for some reason it was now off. And so the cop said, hey, it looks like you may be married or were married for a long time because he got that callus. But, you know, beyond that, I'm sorry, there's not much else I can offer you. And so even though this was somewhat valuable information, it didn't really point Pat in any direction. And so he was about to turn and leave when the cop said, hey, you know, do you want to ride to the hospital? Because it seems like you could be having some sort of medical event here. But Pat politely declined and just told the officer to please be in touch with him if anybody came calling looking for somebody that kind of seemed like him. And the police officer said he would. And so after this, Pat left the station and went back to the shelter and basically told himself, I'm going to stay here and just wait until my memory comes back. Because at this point, that was kind of all he could do. However, weeks would go by at the shelter and nobody would contact the police looking for somebody like Pat Brown. And Pat wouldn't remember any more details. The only thing that kept coming into his head was those three names, Pat, Joel and Chris. But that was it. And so finally, after a few weeks of no progress being made, Pat decided he would leave the shelter in Cheyenne and go to Jackson, Wyoming, because some other people in the shelter had talked about Jackson, Wyoming as being a place where people who don't have ID cards could get jobs and basically start over. And because Jackson was only a little over 400 miles away from Cheyenne, it was not unreasonable to try to hitchhike your way to Jackson. And so almost exactly two months from the day Pat woke up inside of this ditch, he began hitchhiking his way towards Jackson. And then when Pat got to Jackson, he was able to get a job without an ID. He got a job at a newspaper sorting mail and doing some clerical work. And at first he stayed in the shelter like he had in Cheyenne until he had saved up enough money to rent a room. And as the months went by in Jackson, Pat did begin to remember additional details about what seemed like his former life. He discovered while doing clerical work at the newspaper that he was able to use an adding machine without looking at it. It was like his fingers just knew where to go. He also discovered that he was able to do really complex math problems in his head. And then also in virtue of being at the newspaper, he saw a lot of information about the stock market. And he actually seemed to know a lot about the stock market, even though he didn't know why. Also, while Pat was in Jackson, he started to feel this really intense compulsion to go to a Catholic church. And so he began going to Catholic mass. And while he was in church, he just automatically began saying the prayers along with everybody else, even though, again, he didn't really know why he had that information in his head. But the biggest clue that came back to Pat while he was in Jackson was this recurring dream he would have where he was at this campground somewhere. And this little boy comes around the corner and looks up at Pat and says, hey, dad, mom needs your help with Chris. And then in the dream, he responds to this child by saying, OK, Joel, I'll be right there. And so with all these clues kind of coming back into focus, Pat sort of felt like he had a grip on who he used to be. Based on the callus on his finger and on that recurring dream, it did seem like he was a married man who had at least two kids, you know, Joel and Chris. And so his wife was very likely named Pat or maybe Pat was another child he didn't know. And then also he felt like he must have been maybe an accountant or somebody who worked with numbers, you know, based on the adding machine and understanding the stock market and complex math problems. And also he was a devout Catholic because that's the only way he would know all those prayers. But despite kind of putting together who he seemed to be in his previous life, that didn't really tell him anything about what he should do now. Like he didn't know where his potential family was or where his job was or where he should go. And so even though he had this kind of former life formed in his mind, he couldn't act on it. And so Pat's weird life in limbo in Jackson, Wyoming, just kind of continued to drag on. And so by the end of 1997, so by this point, it's been three and a half years since Pat has woken up in the stitch confused. He's still in Jackson, Wyoming. He still has no idea who he is. And it's starting to set in that unless he takes drastic measures here, he'll never figure out the truth about who he is. And so early in 1998, Pat does take drastic measure. He contacts a very popular TV show at the time called Unsolved Mysteries and asked them to please cover his story because if they did, it would be broadcast across the country and maybe somebody out there would recognize him and come find him. And sure enough, when Pat contacted Unsolved Mysteries, they thought his story was totally insane and they covered it. Pat's episode aired on April 10th, 1998, almost exactly four years after Pat woke up in that ditch. And on the day his episode aired in a city in Indiana, 1500 miles away from Jackson, Wyoming, a phone rang in a woman's house. And so she answered it and it was her cousin and her cousin told her, stop whatever you're doing and turn on the TV, put it on channel CBS. And so this woman, she walks into the living room, she turns on the TV, flips it to CBS and she sees an episode of Unsolved Mysteries is playing and it's Pat Brown's episode. And this woman is staring at the TV and she practically faints when she sees what it's about. But she stays composed and just stands there staring at the TV, so shocked she can't even say anything. And the whole time her cousin is yelling through the phone, you know, saying, can you believe it? Oh my goodness. And then at some point on the TV, a phone number flashed at the bottom of the screen where the producers of the show told the audience, hey, if you know anything about this case, call this number. And so with this, the woman who's watching the TV, she hangs up on her cousin and she dials that number she sees on the TV. Pat's drastic decision to call Unsolved Mysteries would indeed solve the mystery of who he was. However, the truth about who Pat was is not what you think. It would turn out some of the clues that Pat had sort of naturally recalled in those four years that he was kind of figuring out who he was were indeed clues of his former life. He really was a married father. Those three names, Pat, Joel, and Chris, those were the names of his wife and his two sons. Pat was his wife and Joel and Chris were his two sons. And he really was a devout Catholic, which is why he was able to remember all of those prayers. But some of the other clues he thought of over those four years, like his incredible aptitude for math, or the fact that he could use an adding machine without looking, or the fact that he understood the stock market so easily, those were clues about his former life. But specifically, they were clues about why Pat was in this position in the first place. It would turn out Pat Brown was actually a man named Carl Brodnick Jr. And Carl Brodnick Jr. was a wanted felon who had misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from the advertising agency where he worked as an accountant. And Carl had been under serious criminal investigation when he suddenly disappeared from his home in Indiana on July 8th, 1994, which is five days before Pat Brown woke up in that ditch on the side of the road with a lump on his head, markings on his wrist, and having no idea who he was or what happened to him. Now, there has never been a perfect explanation for what actually happened to Carl. But if you think about this logically, his claim of having amnesia is very likely true. Why would a guy use amnesia as his cover story to flee the law, you know, run to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and say, I don't know who I am, I don't know what happened to me. Only to then, what, a few years later, go on national TV and out himself and totally make himself a target for the police? It doesn't make any sense. And then also adding credibility to this idea that maybe something happened to Carl versus Carl running off to save himself is we know that when Carl disappeared on July 8th, 1994, from his home in Indiana, he took out $1,000 in cash from his checking account and then also took out another large sum of cash from his home's second mortgage. However, when he woke up in that ditch, all the money was gone. He just had 23 cents in his pocket. Now, after Carl vanished from his house in Indiana, police did go looking for him because he was under criminal investigation, so they wanted to find him. And they pretty quickly found his car 250 miles away from his home in a strip mall parking lot in Missouri, but there was no sign of Carl anywhere. And then right after the police found his car, they checked Carl's credit card and they discovered it had just been used in Colorado, so 900 miles away, to buy clothes. But when they went to that store and tried to find security footage of, when that transaction took place, there was no footage. And so there was no way of knowing if Carl really was the guy in Colorado making that transaction or if somebody else had his credit card. And then after that, there were no other leads. Nobody had any idea what happened to Carl. His family didn't know, the police had nothing to go on. And so very quickly, his case went cold until four years later, when that episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired. Now, there are many theories about what could have happened to Carl, but the leading theory that, again, is just a theory is that Carl may have been in debt to some very dangerous people. And so when he fled his home in Indiana, it's very likely that he was not running from the law, even though he was under criminal investigation. He was actually running from these dangerous people and that the reason he might've been stealing from his company was to pay off these dangerous people, but apparently it wasn't enough, hence why he decided to just kind of take off and run away. And these dangerous people seemed to have caught up to him and they captured him and it looked like they tied his wrists at some point because of the marks on his wrist and they very likely tortured him or something, hence why he had this very serious head injury. And then it seems like they dumped him on the side of the road, very likely to die. They might've thought he was dead already, but he didn't die. And when he came to, he must've really had amnesia from the injuries he sustained from these bad people that chased him down. But again, that's just a theory. When Karl's episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired, it was his wife, Pat Brodnick, who was the one who saw him on TV and couldn't believe it and called it in. And then when she called this in, at first, Karl was reunited with his family and it was this big happy reunion. Karl comes back home, he sees his wife and his kids and then he's immediately arrested and prosecuted for embezzlement. Now, ultimately Karl would plead guilty to the charges against him, but he would say the whole time, I don't remember committing this crime. I don't remember anything. And so ultimately Karl did not get sent to prison. He instead served time on probation and then after it was over, he just went back to living as Karl Brodnick Jr., despite still having huge gaps in his memory, at least according to Karl. If you're a fan of The Strange, Dark and Mysterious, then you've come to the right place. I have this mantra, do things that scare you. I am doing a full-blown tour across the United States. How do you feel about that? Oh, terrifying, but that's why I'm doing it. It's a privilege to have the opportunity to stand in front of people who have chosen to be here just to listen to me. I want the people in the audience to be drawn into the stories I'm telling the same way they are at home. We're Strange, Dark and Mysterious. So that's gonna do it. If you want more Strange, Dark and Mysterious content, remember, we have a whole slew of Strange, Dark and Mysterious podcasts that are free to listen to right now. All you have to do is go to any podcast platform and type in Ballin Studios and you'll see there's the Mr. Ballin podcast, there's Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, there's Bedtime Stories, there's Runful, there's Wartime Stories, they're awesome. Go give them a listen if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark and Mysterious. So that's gonna do it. Thank you guys so much. Until next time, see ya. Wait, don't go anywhere. 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