Author Archives: Garry Rodgers

About Garry Rodgers

After three decades as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective and British Columbia coroner, International Best Selling author and blogger Garry Rodgers has an expertise in death and the craft of writing on it. Now retired, he wants to provoke your thoughts about death and help authors give life to their words.

DID JEFFREY EPSTEIN REALLY KILL HIMSELF

On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Edward Epstein—a 66-year-old American mega-millionaire and registered sex offender powerfully connected to presidents and royalty—died in his prison cell at the Special Handling Unit of New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. The coroner ruled the death a suicide but, shortly, the publicly-exposed mass of improprieties surrounding Epstein’s custody control and supervision within the detention facility raised a massive foul play speculation. Many properly wondered, “Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself?”

It wasn’t just the crazy conspiracy theorists who wondered if Epstein truly committed suicide. There were just too many suspicious circumstances to ignore. Switches in cellmate placements. Epstein left unchecked for nearly eight hours before his death while under a suicide watch. Security cameras on his cell being disabled. Guards “asleep” at their station. Falsified records. No cell search for contraband. A blatant disregard for prison policies and procedures set in place to prevent such a death. Plus, the horde of high-profile people Epstein had dirt on.

Then, there’s the autopsy review by America’s high-profile forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden, who said Epstein’s broken neck bones could not have been caused by a self-inflicted, ligature hanging. In Baden’s opinion (who performed more than 20,000 autopsies in his 45-year career), it was far more likely Epstein was a homicide victim than a suicide statistic.

On June 27, 2023, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), through its Office of the Inspector General (OIG), released a 128-page report on the Jeffrey Epstein in-custody death investigation. Before dissecting the report and reaching a conclusion, let’s review who Jeffrey Epstein was and the facts leading to his sudden and unnatural death.

Putting it bluntly, Jeffrey Epstein was an enormous con man and an extreme pervert. He was born in Brooklyn in 1953 and completed high school with skipped-grades but never sought a college degree. That didn’t stop him from getting a physics and math teacher’s position at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. Epstein was quickly fired for inappropriate behavior towards underage female students.

Epstein reinvented himself as a banker. Given credit where credit is due, Epstein functioned at a near-genius level with figures. He worked his way toward the top of Bear Stearns but was “dismissed” for regulatory violations.

He went on his own, founding International Assets Group which specialized in money recovery for extremely wealthy clients. He once called himself a high-level bounty hunter. Because he excelled at this job, he quickly acquainted himself with some of the richest people in the world as well as those socially and politically elite.

In 1987, Jeffrey Epstein joined Towers Financial Corporation as a “consultant”. By 1993, Towers imploded in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes America had ever seen with over $900 million in today’s value simply gone. Epstein escaped unscratched and went on to an even bigger venture.

He founded J. Epstein & Associates in 1988. Its cover was to manage assets of clients with a minimum of $1 billion net worth—an exclusive club at the least. In 1996, he changed the name to the Financial Trust Company with a new headquarters in the U.S. Virgin Islands tax-shelter haven. Another venture was Liquid Funding Ltd. which was a novel and clever debt-repo service partnered with Bear Stearns that collapsed in the 2008 financial meltdown.

Through these years, Jeffrey Epstein amassed an unknown pot of wealth. Personal properties included a Manhattan mansion, one in Palm Beach, Florida, a New Mexico ranch, and an exotic island getaway called Little Saint James in the Virgin Islands. It was here that some of the sinister sexual seductions with underage girls took place.

Jeffrey Epstein surrounded himself with the elite of the elites. Tarred by the Epstein brush were people like Prince Andrew of the British Royal Family, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, financial titans like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Rupert Murdoch, and celebrities such as Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Alex Baldwin, a host of Kennedys, and the beat goes on.

The Epstein sex scandals surfaced in 2005. The Palm Beach conducted a 13-month undercover investigation on Epstein that brought in the FBI because of its international scale. Eventually, sixty young females gave evidence of being sex-trafficked through Jeffrey Epstein, his properties, and his female co-conspirator, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell (who is now serving 20 years for sexual offenses against minors).

One of the sworn allegations was that Epstein had 12-year-old triplet girls flown in from France who he sexually assaulted and had them returned the next day. Other girls came from Brazil, the Soviet Union, and across Europe. These minors were facilitated by Maxwell through her contacts in Jean-Luc Brunel’s MC2 Modeling Agency.

Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach in July 2006 on child abuse charges. These serious allegations were plea-bargained down to one count of procuring a minor and one count of soliciting a prostitute. It was called the “sweetheart deal of the century by the U.S. Attorney General who eventually had the prosecutor fired for agreeing to an Epstein guilty plea resulting in 18 months of open custody.

Meanwhile, Epstein went back to work as a money-maker and a kiddie-diddler. Then the civil suits started, and the criminal investigation continued. He was again arrested by the FBI for sexual offenses against minor girls, this time in New York after returning from Europe. That was on July 6, 2019. He was denied bail and sent to the Special Handling Unit (SHU) at the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP). Epstein remained there for 35 days until he died on August 10.

To understand what led to Jeffery Epstein’s death, it’s vital to know the chain of events that occurred to allow this to happen. This timeline is clearly laid out in Chapter 3 of the DOJ-OIG report titled Timeline of Key Events. Here is a summary.

September 21-24, 2018 — The FBP at MCC contracts to have their video surveillance system updated from analog to digital recorders.

March 17, 2019 — Resources for video upgrades are temporarily reassigned to other work leaving the recording portion half-finished. Livestream cameras are operational for real-time surveillance but cameras in the Special Handling Unit (SHU), including those near Epstein’s future cell won’t record.

July 2, 2029 — A New York federal grand jury indicts Epstein on child sex trafficking charges. A warrant is issued.

July 6, 2019 — Epstein is arrested at a New Jersey airport as he returns from France. He is incarcerated as a pretrial detainee at MCC. The news stories are viral and he is assigned to the SHU for protection from other inmates.

July 8, 2019 — Epstein is arraigned and pleads not guilty. The MCC Chief Psychologist routinely interviews him and finds no evidence of suicidal thoughts.

July 10, 2019 — Guards report Epstein appears “distraught, sad, and a little confused”. A specific suicide risk assessment is done, and the MCC administration assigns Epstein a suitable cellmate as a safety precaution.

July 11, 2019 — Epstein is re-evaluated as a suicide risk. The psychologist minimizes the potential and orders weekly follow-ups.

July 18, 2019 — A federal judge denies Epstein bail even though he offered a $100 million surety. The judge found Epstein “a danger to the community and a flight risk.”

July 23, 2019 — At 1:21 am, guards hear a commotion coming from Epstein’s cell. Epstein was on the floor, semiconscious, with an orange bedsheet strip around his neck. There are notable skin injuries on Epstein’s neck. The cellmate says he woke up hearing Epstein in distress. Epstein said the cellmate tried to kill him. Epstein is moved to the Psychiatry Unit and placed on a suicide watch, alone in a cell.

July 24, 2019 — Epstein is removed from the suicide watch after another psychiatric assessment but is still left alone in a cell at the Psych Unit.

July 25-29, 2019 — Daily interviews are done. Epstein emphatically denies having suicidal tendencies and states he does not remember how he received injuries to his neck.

July 30, 2019 — Epstein is transferred back to the SHU and placed in a cell visible from the guard station. MCC administration orders that Epstein be assigned a new cellmate. A suitable candidate is found and housed with Epstein.

August 2, 2019 — MCC administration concludes its investigation into the suspected Epstein suicide attempt on July 23 and determined they cannot conclusively categorize it as a suicide attempt.

August 8, 2019 — Epstein has a private meeting with his lawyers and updates his will. The prison staff is not aware of this change.

August 9, 2019 — Epstein’s cellmate is moved out at the request of the U.S. Marshals and taken to an out-of-state facility. Epstein is once again alone.

August 9, 2019 — Over two thousand pages of evidence in proceedings against Ghislaine Maxwell are unsealed. They contain very damaging evidence against Epstein, and they receive international media attention. Epstein meets with his lawyers. He then makes an unauthorized phone call to an unknown person.

August 9, 2019 — The last known bed check on Epstein happens at 10:40 pm.

August 10, 2019 — Guards begin breakfast service at 6:30 am. They find Epstein semi-suspended with his buttocks 2 inches from the floor with his legs straight out. A torn prison sheet is noosed around his neck and tied to the upper bunk ladder. Epson is unresponsive. Resuscitation fails, and he’s taken to the morgue.

August 11, 2019 — The New York City Coroner’s Office autopsies Epstein and rules the death a suicide caused by hanging.

June 27, 2023 — The DOG-OIC report titled Investigation and Review of the Federal Prison’s Custody, Care, and Supervision of Jeffrey Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, New York is released. They concluded there were “numerous and serious failures by MCC New York staff including multiple violations of MCC and BOP policies and procedures” that included falsifying records to cover up the lack of supervision on the night of August 9/10. The report upheld a suicide ruling and made eight recommendations to minimize a re-occurrence of the Jeffrey Epstein event.

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That’s the timeline of what led to Epstein’s death. Let’s deal with the highlights before wrapping up with the biggest issue of all—that the autopsy findings allegedly support a homicide ruling over a suicide.

Cell Search — The BOP has a policy of ongoing cell searches to locate contraband or items that an inmate could use to harm themselves or others. The report found no record that Epstein’s cells had ever been searched and that he had an excess of bed linens that he could use to make a hanging ligature.

Cell Checks — The last recorded cell check on Epstein was at 10:40 pm on August 9. He was found at 6:30 on the 10th. Checks are to be made hourly so that’s eight checks in a row that were missed. This is what the two night-shift guards falsify. However, they were caught by their own cameras.

Faulty Cameras — The conspiracy crowd made a lot of media and internet noise over the “disabled” cameras. The DOJ/OIG report takes a deep dive into this issue in Chapter 6. They found nothing intentional had been done to sabotage the cameras. Every camera aimed at Epstein’s cell was in proper working order except they were only on livestream mode. The recorders had never been updated. Typical bureaucratic inefficiency.

The only recorded video, though, was crucial. That was the camera with both Epstein’s cell door and the guard station in the viewfinder. It was clear evidence that no one had gone near Epstein’s cell door from 10:40 pm until 6:30 am. It was also clear that both guards in the recording never moved from their station during the same time. Apparently, they were asleep. Later, they were convicted of falsifying the bed check documents.

The Cellmates — The report does not name either of Epstein’s cellmates, but it does detail every move, the reasons for the move, and the concern the MCC administration staff had about a suitable watch person being with him at all time.

The Previous Suicide Attempt — The report overrules the MCC finding that there wasn’t sufficient evidence of a clear earlier suicide attempt. The OIG investigation notes this was a huge red flag and Epstein’s supervision should have been done accordingly.

The Ghislaine Maxwell Documents — This was the proverbial straw that broke Epstein’s back. He knew his case was hopeless and that he’d be spending the rest of his life in jail. It was now just waiting a suitable moment for him to hang himself. He found it on the night of August 9/10 when he was alone and unsupervised.

The Will and the Call — Both events seem suspicious, but the report lets the BOP and MCC off light here. There is no way prison officials could know what was going on in a meeting between Epstein and his attorneys. And there is no way to know what was said in a 27-minute private call that happened around 9:00 pm on August 9th despite that Epstein was supposed to be under outgoing call monitoring. He was using an unauthorized smuggled smartphone that should have been discovered if he’d ever had a cell search.

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So, let’s deal with the autopsy and the controversial broken neck bones. Dr. Kristen Roman, M.D. was the prosector (a person who dissects bodies.) She was a very experienced forensic pathologist employed by the New York City’s Medical Examiner Office. Her report’s final diagnosis is very clear, and the coroner has never deviated from it. Rather than paraphrase it, see the image below

 

The “broken neck bones” referred to by the news media through Dr. Michael Baden (who was hired by Jeffrey Epstein’s brother to second-guess the suicide ruling) are not bones at all—certainly not true neck bones like the thoracic and cervical vertebrae that make up the upper spine. Dr. Roman refers to “fractures of bilateral thyroid cartilage cornuae and left hyoid cornua”. These two anatomical features are soft cartilage in the throat—one supports the tongue, and the other supports the thyroid gland. They are almost always damaged or “fractured” in ligature hangings.

Let’s go to the source of this “broken neck bone” trouble. Dr. Baden gave an interview to Fox News on October 30, 2019. Here’s a Fox News quote from that show. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy is more consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicide, Dr. Michael Baden reveals. 

He noted that the 66-year-old Epstein had two fractures on the left and right sides of his larynx, specifically the thyroid cartilage or Adam’s apple, as well as one fracture on the left hyoid bone above the Adam’s apple, Baden told Fox News. 

“Those three fractures are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation,” Baden, who is also a Fox News contributor, said. 

While there’s not enough information to be conclusive yet, the three fractures were “rare,” said Baden, who’s probed cases involving O.J. Simpson, President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, record producer Phil Spector, New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, and many others. 

“I’ve not seen in 50 years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging case,” the 85-year-old medical legend told Fox News.

There are three things wrong with the Baden/Fox release.

  1. Given credit to Dr. Baden for correctly identifying the hyoid and thyroid cartilages, it was Fox News that sensationalized them as a broken neck. ie – this couldn’t have happened in a suicide hanging so it had to be a murder.
  2. Dr. Baden is out-of-line stating the hyoid and thyroid cartilages fractures are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and are more consistent with manual strangulations.
  3. Dr. Baden infers that he was physically present at the autopsy as an independent observer hired by the Epstein family.

Let’s examine these issues.

Dr. Roman’s autopsy report is very clear. She was the one who examined the body, and her findings are conclusive. She refers to the fractured hyoid and thyroid cartilages and never refers to them as neck bones or a broken neck as in vertebrae fractures. She clearly concludes Epstein hung himself with a torn bedsheet and no one else was directly or indirectly involved in intentionally causing his death.

In Chapter 7 of the OIG report titled Conclusions and Recommendations, the investigators deal with the Baden interview and his statement that fractured hyoid and/or thyroid cartilages rarely occur in suicide ligature suspensions. They interviewed Dr. Roman who contradicted Dr. Baden confirming that these fractures often occur in cases like the Epstein death. She pointed out that the ligature was a wide bedsheet fragment and not a small-diameter cord like the electrical connection on the C-PAC machine found in Epstein’s cell.

Dr. Roman explained the mechanism of the ligature and how the forces worked in this case. Because the fabric and the tied knot were wide, they created an upward furrow that was evident on Epstein’s neck. She stated the force was at the right location and would have exerted sufficient pressure in his suspended position to cause the cartilage fractures—she would have been surprised if the fractures hadn’t occurred.

The pathologist also commented in the OIG report that there was nothing on Epstein’s body to indicate defensive wounds usually seen in violent homicide deaths. There was no bruising except for the ligature location and what’s known as petechiae in the eyes which are small red dots or blood vessel ruptures caused by the circulation interference. Furthermore, there was no debris in his fingernails associated with a fight, and no contusions on his knuckles.

Nowhere in Dr. Roman’s autopsy report and interview with the OIG investigation does she confirm Dr. Baden being at the autopsy. This (in my experience as a homicide investigator and coroner) is highly unlikely. Autopsies, especially forensic autopsies like performed on Jeffery Epstein, are carefully controlled. Only those absolutely necessary may attend.

There would be no value in Baden being there. If he were contracted by the family for a review, he would be supplied with the entire material including photographs, documents, and whatever exhibits had been processed. Baden gave his Fox interview two months after the autopsy. By then, the entire autopsy results would be in and supplied to the family, ergo to Baden.

There’s one more reason that Baden probably wasn’t in that autopsy suite. He’s a publicity-seeking narcissist, and it’s well-known he’s never seen a camera or a mic he didn’t like. Anytime there’s a high-profile death, information processors like Fox News look for sensational sources. Dr. Michael Baden is on their speed dial.

And there’s a credibility issue over the suicide vs homicide conclusion in the Jeffery Epstein postmortem examination. Dr. Kristen Roman received her M.D. in 1999 and was board-certified as a forensic pathologist in 2004. When she autopsied Epstein, she had 15 years of operational experience with the New York Medical Examiner Office as an active prosector. Roman had nothing to gain by not being candid on the Epstein file.

You might want to read this Intelligencer article titled Why You Might Not Want to Believe Michael Baden, Celebrity Pathologist, on Epstein’s Death.

By Jeffrey Epstein committing suicide, he cheated dozens of innocent victims out of justice. It’s a travesty that this travesty developed into the widespread social mockery meme, “… and Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

WHO REALLY CAUSED THE HINDENBURG AIRSHIP DISASTER

On May 6, 1937, the largest airship ever built caught fire and crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Hindenburg, or Zeppelin dirigible named after Hitler’s predecessor, Paul von Hindenburg, was completing a transatlantic flight from Frankfurt—already 12 hours late due to strong headwinds and deteriorating weather. The horror took 36 lives, destroyed the aircraft, and ended the airship industry. Over the years, there’ve been competing theories as to what happened, but little revealed about who really caused the Hindenburg airship disaster.

The Hindenburg was an impressive sight and a technological marvel of the time regardless that it bore Nazi swastikas on its tail. It was 804 feet long—three times the length of a Boeing 747 (79 feet shorter than the Titanic)—135 feet in center diameter and weighed 242 tons. That’s a massive amount of gravity pull for a lighter-than-air, hydrogen-filled vehicle.

When the Hindenburg airship erupted into a flaming ball, news cameras below caught the entire conflagration. It’s been shown on newsreels across the world and, today, it’s easily viewed on Youtube. The film is black and white, grainy, and reminiscent of pre-WW2 camera technology.

Click Here to watch the original Hindenburg burn and crash newsreel 

What the film doesn’t show is whose ideological ambitions and actions set a disastrous chain of events into motion. Let’s look at the history of the Hindenburg, its fatal flight details, the theories, and some chemical science before concluding who was directly or indirectly at fault in this terrible tragedy.

Germany began developing its airship program at the onset of WW1 with lighter-than-air vehicles serving as military surveillance craft. Upon the armistice that ended the Great War, the United States forced Germany to turn over their remaining dirigibles to the US Navy who housed the fleet at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. The Americans built an infrastructure to support the ships including tie-up towers so that the vessels didn’t have to directly touch land.

The Hindenburg (Luftschiff 129) was launched on May 4, 1936. It followed an earlier design called the Graf Zeppelin which debuted in 1928. By the time the Hindenburg was destroyed, the Graf had made 590 transatlantic trips covering a million miles and carrying 34,000 passengers without a safety incident. The Hindenburg had 34 accident-free trips in the year it was in operation.

Hindenburg was a next-generation airship. It was powered by four 1200 horsepower Daimler-Benz reversible diesel engines that rotated quad-bladed propellors. Without wind current effects, the Hindenburg cruised at 76 miles per hour which was over twice the speed of the fastest ocean liner. This was attractive to the time-conscious 1-percenters who could afford a ticket from Germany to America. Back then, the fare was $450 USD. Today the ride would cost $7600.

Construction details of the Hindenburg included a webbed steel frame covered by a cotton-based fabric treated with advanced (for the time) treatments. It had sixteen independent and sealed bladders to house the inflation gas which were made of gelatinized latex rubber. The flight control module was in the lower bow area, ahead of double decks for the passengers and crew quarters.

The Hindenburg rivaled the Titanic when it came to luxurious travel. Paying guests could experience fine food and wines as well as relax in a sealed smoking room. Because of the extreme fire danger onboard a gas-floated airship, passengers were removed of all spark and fire-triggering devices like cigarette lighters and matches.

The dangerous gas on the Hindenburg was 7,600,000 cubic feet of pure hydrogen. The ship, like other German dirigibles, was designed to use helium gas which was inert, not like extremely flammable hydrogen. There was a reason why Germany used hydrogen instead of helium.

The United States had passed a law called the Helium Control Act of 1927. Initially, this was to conserve helium reserves, but it was also to control a world monopoly on helium and discourage other nations from expanding their military versions of floating airships. As the Hitler-led Nazis became more and more of an obvious threat in the mid-1930s, the Americans became even more strict in supplying Germany with any gas for their air fleet—military or civilian. With Hitler in power, there was no way the Nazis could purchase helium, so with hydrogen being cheap and easy to produce (unlike helium) the Nazi-backed industry went ahead and used hydrogen.

“But hydrogen is so dangerous,” you say. “Why on earth would they put it in an airplane?”  Here’s a quote from a resource article I sourced:

The German attitude about hydrogen in airships was the same as our current attitude about gasoline in our cars. When you go to work, you’ve got 10 to 12 gallons of gasoline in your fuel tank which is far more explosive and dangerous than hydrogen. You don’t think anything about that because everything is operating as it is supposed to be.

The Hindenburg departed Frankfurt at 7:16 pm local time on May 3, 1937. Pilot Max Pruss and First Officer Ernst Lehmann were part of the 39-person crew who attended to 38 passengers. The ship took its regular route flying 650 feet over the Netherlands and then out over the Atlantic to meet the North American coast at Boston, continuing southward past New York City and docking at Lakehurst.

Because of unusually strong headwinds, the Hindenburg was a half-day late arriving. There was another docking delay—a significant thunder and lightning storm. Safety protocols for the hydrogen-loaded prohibited every craft from grounding during a lightning storm. It wasn’t the risk of the craft being directly struck by lightning while in flight. Many were and they were designed to take direct electrical hits as long as there was no grounding path for voltage transfer.

To understand what physically led to the Hindenburg’s destruction, it’s best to follow an extremely well-recorded timeline of events on the afternoon and evening of May 6, 1937.

4:15 — Hindenburg arrives at the mooring dock area. The electrical storm is ongoing, and the ground control directs the craft to loiter and wait out the storm.

6:22 — Ground control observes a weather break but expects conditions to worsen. They give the Hindenburg an order to make “the earliest possible landing”.

7:08 — Hindenburg returns to the mooring dock. It encounters strong easterly winds and bypasses the dock tower, making a wide circle past the dock and to the port or left side of the craft.

7:16 — Hindenburg reapproaches the dock but encounters a strong gust from the southwest. The pilot compensates by putting the craft in a tight and hard S-turn.

7:18 — Something serious happened. The ship’s stern begins to drop, and the crew immediately drops 300 kg of ballast water to adjust the buoyancy.

7:19 — The stern continues to drop. Two more ballast discharges of 300 and 500 kg are made. The pilot also orders six crew members to run to the bow to balance the weight.

7:21 — The Hindenburg was above the docking pad at 300 feet in elevation. The wet manila tethering ropes were cast from the ship and hit the pad, effectively electrically grounding the steel airframe.

7:25 — The ground crew begins winching the Hindenburg down to the docking portal. The fabric on top of the craft, right where the tail rises, begins to ripple and a yellow flame appears.

7:25:05 — The entire tail section erupts in an orange flame ball. The stern rapidly sinks.

7:25:10 — Now the rear half of the ship is engulfed in fire, and the tail is near the ground with the bow violently raised.

7:25:20 — The bow ejects a “flamethrower’ burst or flame jet from the nose.

7:25:34 — The Hindenburg is on the ground, completely consumed in flames.

In the aftermath, the yellow-orange fire rapidly burns itself out, but the black smoke from the diesel fuel supply goes on for two hours. 35 people are dead at the scene including 13 passengers, 22 crewmen, and one ground worker caught underneath the ship. Over the next few days, several others died from their burn injuries.

The Hindenburg disaster effectively ended the floating airship industry. The public confidence was gone, and Germany suffered a black eye in the face of what was soon to be another world war. Besides, the airship model was already obsolete as heavier-then-air craft were already making transatlantic and transpacific flights safely and much more cost-effectively, not to mention the speed of modern airplanes.

This brings us to look at the theories as to what and who caused the Hindenburg disaster. This was an extremely high-profile world event. Naturally, conspiracy theories would show up. We’ll dismiss a few of the far-out suggestions before drilling down into the chemical science of how the Hindenburg was built and what really went wrong to cause such a catastrophic aircraft failure.

Sabotage — This theory holds no merit. There has never been any evidence to support the theory that someone intentionally scuttled the ship. However, the sabotage theory did come up in the official inquiry and it was raised by Captain Pruss as well as the naval base commander, Charles Rosenthal.

Lightning Strike — The weather at the naval base was continually recorded while the Hindenburg was docking and there was no electrical activity at the time. This is why they were making the dock. Hydrogen dirigibles were prohibited from making ground contact if lightning was present.

Engine Failure and Sparks — Again, there is zero evidence of this. The engines were in perfect working order. Besides, the sparks from a diesel engine’s exhaust would only reach 250C whereas hydrogen ignites at 500C.

Pilot Error/Crew Negligence — No real evidence of this either. At least, nothing intentional or supremely careless. This also applies to a hydrogen valve failing or being accidentally opened during the water balast discharges.

Catastrophic Mechanical Failure Causing a Chain Reaction in a Flammable Environment — This is the most likely scenario, and it takes some explaining. It’s necessary to look at the systems and structure of the Hindenburg to make some sense of the leading theory that has been discussed for years and analyzed by leading scientists and experts in the aeronautic industry.

The Hindenburg, like all dirigibles, was built with four interconnected systems. One was the airframe, skin, and stabilizers. Second was the flotation system with the hydrogen tanks. Third was the propulsion system. And fourth was the control system.

The airframe was a rib-work of honeycombed steel framing. There was nothing flammable about the steel and the grade was sufficiently high. It’s highly unlikely that the Hindenburg suffered any damage to the main frame which might have accidentally been broken. The same can’t be said of the stabilizers and supports.

The skin on the Hindenburg was extremely flammable. It was a cotton-based fabric that was treated with chemical compounds in a method called doping. This was common in the 1920s and 30s as many fixed-wing airplanes had fabric skins rather than metal. It was all about weight control.

In Hindenburg disaster terms, this is called the incendiary paint theory. It was developed in 1997 by Addison Bain who was a NASA engineer. Yes, a rocket scientist. He analyzed remnants of the Hindenburg skin that survived the crash and found the doping components were a mixture of Iron II Oxide (FeO3), Aluminum (AI), and Cellulose Acetate Butyrate (CAB). Mixing CAB and AI with Iron Oxide is a recipe for an incendiary bomb that goes off with what’s known as a chemical or pyrotechnical thermite reaction. It requires high heat to activate the thermite reaction, but having a hydrogen fire under the doped skin would do it.

The Hindenburg’s flotation system was a series of sixteen sealed rubber tanks with control valves for filling and releasing hydrogen. Hydrogen is perfectly stable and safe provided it’s contained outside of oxygen and away from an ignition source. The total hydrogen volume in the tanks was 7,600,000 or 475,000 ft3 per tank. By anyone’s standards, that’s a lot of fuel to burn.

There is no indication that the Hindenberg’s propulsion system failed. The Germans were, and still are, well-known for building dependable diesel engines and drive components. At the ignition, fire, and crash time, the four engines were operating normally. Also, the diesel fuel storage containers were not leaking and could not have contributed to the disaster. Note that the diesel fuel ignited after the main fire as evidenced by the following black smoke.

The control system also had no red flags. If there was a problem with controlling the Hindenburg, the crew would have known it. The Captain and First Officer survived to testify at the official inquiry and would have said something. The only unusual matter they reported was the stern suddenly sagging during the last seven minutes.

In an accident investigation process called case mapping, or root cause analysis, the method is to identify the outcome and then identify the events that caused it to occur. Let’s start with the outcome–the Hindenburg was destroyed, killing 38 people, wounding many others, and ending the airship industry. Why did this happen? Because the Hindenburg caught fire and crashed.

What caused the fire? Well, let’s stop for a bit and examine the first sign of trouble. That was the sagging stern. Why did the stern begin to sag? Because it was losing buoyancy. Likely, this was because buoyant hydrogen gas was leaking from a compromised bladder in the rear section.

What caused the bladder to be compromised and leak? It’s safe to rule out an intentional venting or discharge caused by the crew. It’s also safe to eliminate a faulty valve or the crew’s instruments would have detected the default. It’s far more likely that the bladder was damaged and punctured.

What could have ruptured the bladder? The first clue is this occurred in the furthest bladder to the rear. This is where the mechanical arms are for the rudder and stabilizer. The theory goes that one or more of the mechanical arms snapped and ripped open the bladder.

What could have caused an arm to snap? Let’s look at the event occurring two minutes before the sag started. At 7:16, the pilot executed the sharp S-turn to deal with a sudden wind gust. Up till then, everything was routine. It’s thought excess stress from the turn caused a rudder or stabilizer support arm to snap and rip right through the rubber bladder causing hydrogen to leak out and rise, filling the space above it—just under the skin.

Note that at 7:25, ground witnesses saw the skin begin to rumple at the base of the tail and a yellow flame appear. Five seconds later, the entire tail section was in an orange flame ball. From there, the fire progressively and quickly spread from the back to the front.

Hindenburg disaster, coloured image. View of the German airship Hindenburg (LZ 129) on fire over Naval Air Station (NAS) Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA, on 6th May 1937. This airship is famous for the Hindenburg disaster of 6th May 1937, when it caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at NAS Lakehurst. Of the 97 crew and passengers on board 35 were killed, along with one member of the ground crew. The balloon was filled with hydrogen, a highly flammable gas. The cause of the accident has never been established but the disaster destroyed public confidence and marked the abrupt end of the airship era. Here the ships water ballast tanks (black dots, lower centre-left) can be seen falling.

Why was this happening? Logic says that the heat from the hydrogen-fueled and incendiary skin coating melted the other bladders and released more hydrogen at an enormous rate. The skin, being extremely flammable when heated to the thermite point, was consumed in under one minute.

It’s worthy to note the flame colors. Hydrogen, when pure and on fire, burns with a faint blue hue. The coloration is towards the ultraviolet scale and would be more noticeable in the dark than the light. The burning doped skin, however, has a different color scale and would present in the yellow-orange range which was reported by all witnesses. Diesel, being diesel, burns black.

So, it’s all well that we’ve identified the leak and the general cause of the fire. What we haven’t ascertained is what the ignition source was. We know what it wasn’t and that’s the engine sparks, and we’re certain the Hindenburg wasn’t struck by lightning. So where did the ignition source come from?

This is where the static electricity theory comes in. The thunder and lightning meteorological conditions in coastal New Jersey that evening were perfect for creating a static electricity buildup within a metal and fabric creation like the Hindenburg. Containing static electricity is safe when a structure is already grounded or remains afloat and ungrounded. However, the grounding act allows an instant electron flow from positive to negative or from the high source to the low source.

It’s likely when the aircrew lowered the wet manila tethering ropes at 7:21, the ground connection was made and the static buildup in the Hindenburg was released. It’s thought that within the metal airframe there was the right-sized gap between two metal components to create an electron jump known as a brush discharge which allowed a spark to ignite the runaway hydrogen gas that was mixing with oxygen. The ideal spot would have been between a broken metal support component and the steel frame, right above the furthest rear bladder that was ruptured and spewing flammable gas into the oxygen-filled space under the skin.

To me, who is trained by Think Reliability as an accident investigator using the cause mapping technique, this perfect storm of a dirigible built of incendiary skin over a steel frame encased leaked hydrogen into an oxygen-rich container and ignited by a spark started by a static electricity buildup arced through a gap between a broken member and its frame makes sense.

I’m satisfied this scenario is what caused the Hindenburg to burn and crash. Taking this a step further, who is to blame for all this? A natural cause mapping progression is to ask what piece of the puzzle could be removed or changed so this tragedy would never have happened. That’s eliminating hydrogen and replacing it with helium like the Zeppelins were originally designed for.

The bottom line? Germany, because it was an extremely dangerous, world menace under Hitler’s Nazi rule, could not obtain helium from the monopolistic Americans. The Germans went ahead and used hydrogen in a government-approved aerospace program. You could make an argument that Adolf Hitler, being responsible for the Nazi government, really caused the Hindenburg airship disaster.

WHO REALLY KILLED BIG BAND LEGEND GLENN MILLER

On December 15, 1944, legendary big band leader and musician Glenn Miller disappeared while on a military flight from England to France. No trace of Miller or the airplane has ever been found, and he was declared dead one year later. Various theories of what occurred have been tossed around over the years. Some are pretty far out, but one conclusion is hard to argue against. Here’s the likely explanation about who really killed big band legend Glenn Miller.

Alton Glenn Miller was born on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Ohio. He was forty years old when he died at the height of his musical popularity. Today, his celebrity status would equal mega stars like (according to Chat GPT) Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Adele, or Rihanna. News of Miller’s disappearance shook the free world, not just the music industry. He was just that popular of an entertainer.

Also, according to Chat, “It’s important to note that the entertainment landscape has evolved significantly since the 1940s, and the way celebrity status is perceived and measured has changed as well. Therefore, while these modern entertainers have achieved considerable fame and success, it’s challenging to draw a direct parallel to Glenn Miller’s celebrity status during his time.”

Miller achieved his fame in gradual steps. He wrote his first composition in 1928 while being mentored by “The King of Swing”, Benny Goodman. One-by-one, Miler released timeless tunes like In The Mood, Chattanooga Choo Choo, and Moonlight Serenade. To this day, no individual or group has recorded more Top Ten hits than the Glenn Miller Band, and his style continues to be covered by top swing, jazz, and big band artists.

In 1942, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the Americans entering the European war theatre, Miller enlisted in the U.S. Army. His talent and skill were recognized by General Eisenhower who awarded Miller the commissioned rank of Major and tasked him to develop a troop morale program. In two and a half years, Glenn Miller with his hand-picked wind band performed over 900 shows for U.S. and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They also made 500 radio broadcasts for fighters in Europe and Africa.

When France was liberated in late 1944 and the Nazis were on the run, the Glenn Miller Band was scheduled to perform a huge celebration concert in downtown Paris. Miller’s band and equipment were sent by sea and road from England and prepared for Miller’s personal arrival. Glenn Miller, himself, remained at Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) near Bedford, England north of London. This was home to Eighth Army Air Force Command at the airfield known as RAF Station Twinwood Farm which held a mainly transport fleet rather than fighter and bomber squadrons.

Bad weather in France and over the English Channel delayed Miller’s departure from Twinwood on December 13 and 14, 1944. By midday on Sunday, December 15, the weather improved and Miller jumped aboard a small U.S. Amy utility airplane flown by a twenty-year-old rookie pilot named Stuart Morgan for a direct, non-stop flight from Twinwood to Paris. Also on board was Lt. Col. Norman Baessell who was friends with Glenn Miller. The three men departed at 13:55 (1:55 pm) local time and flew off towards France. They were never heard of again and the airplane has never been found, intact or wrecked.

Because this was an unscheduled service flight, Miller was not recorded to be onboard and was not noticed missing until three days later. This was partly due to Allied preoccupation with the Battle of the Bulge which started on December 16. A limited search found nothing, and it was presumed the plane dropped from the sky over the English Channel. There’s no doubt, though, that Glenn Miller was on that plane as thirteen witnesses confirmed they’d watched him leave from Twinwood.

One year after Glenn Miller was last seen alive, he was officially declared dead as per army policy. An army board of inquiry released a finding on January 20, 1945, that Miller’s flight crashed over the English Channel due to a combination of human error, mechanical failure, and bad weather. Miller, along with Baessell and Morgan, are still, to this day, listed as Missing In Action (MIA) by the U.S. Army.

Theories about what caused Glenn Miller’s disappearance began circulating shortly after the news broke to the world on December 24, 1944. The leading speculations are:

  1. Miller was on a secret mission authorized by Eisenhower to negotiate peace with Hitler. Instead, the Nazis kidnapped Miller, tortured him, then killed him and disposed of the body.

  2. Miller died of acute heart failure while cavorting in a Paris brothel. His death was covered up to avoid embarrassment to his wife and family.

  3. The airplane froze up over the English Channel, the engine quit, and it crashed into the water.

  4. The airplane was accidentally shot down by friendly fire and this was covered up.

Let’s look at these theories with objectivity and apply Occam’s Razor to the overall case—Occam’s Razor being the principle of parsimony where, when faced with multiple hypotheses, the simplest answer is usually the right answer. Especially where there’s proof to back up the conclusion.

The secret mission story is ridiculous. To think an entertainer—even one as high-profile as Glenn Miller—would sway any influence over a madman like Hitler is, well, just plain dumb.

The whorehouse story is just as ridiculous. Glenn Miller was known to be of the highest integrity. He was solidly married and had zero recorded incidents of impropriety. Besides, this theory and the Hitler one would have required an identifiable airplane that landed and was stored somewhere.

Let’s examine the ice-up and crash theory. That requires reviewing what kind of airplane it was and whether freezing/mechanical failure was likely. It was not. The missing airplane was a C-64 Norseman single-engine bushplane. It was built in Canada along with 902 other Norsemans and specifically designed to fly in harsh weather and arctic temperatures. Norseman planes are still in operation today, and they’re equally as dependable to the aged DeHavilland Beavers and Otters that are virtually indestructible.

The chance that the Norseman froze its carburetor and/or wings is highly improbable. That trip was done in weather the Norseman thrived upon. As well, freezing and stalling allows considerable time for the pilot to radio a Mayday and to deadstick it down to a belly landing on the water where the occupants could take to a liferaft.

So what about the friendly fire suggestion? For one thing, all air combat was long over in the region so flack from a ship or shore battery was not realistic. Same with a fighter intercept. The flight was in full daylight and the Norseman was highly identifiable as a non-armed American service craft.

But the friendly fire theory—accidental armament engagement—has merit and meets the Occam’s test along with sufficient proof to let the theory support the balance of probabilities and solve the mystery of who really killed Glenn Miller. The answer lies with documents and testimony in the Royal Air Force archives.

In 1956, a British film titled The Glenn Miller Story aired to the public. It ended with an image of a Norseman flying off into the sky over the Channel. A man by the name of Fred Shaw saw the show and came forward with fascinating information.

Shaw had been a navigator on an RAF Lancaster bomber. On a daylight bombing to Germany, Shaw’s formation of 139 Lancasters was recalled before dropping their loads on Nazi territory. Because it’s dangerous to land a heavy bomber like a Lancaster with live ordnance onboard, it was standard operating procedure to jettison the bombs in a specific zone in the English Channel that was restricted to all other aircraft—a no-go, no-fly region ten miles west of the safe air corridor that the Norseman was flight-planned to.

Shaw claimed that he and two other crew members saw a Norseman below them when they jettisoned their bombs and watched it get hit and then spiral down to the sea. He claimed there was nothing could be done to save the Norseman occupants, so they returned to base without any official report as they had no idea as to the Norseman’s specific identity let alone occupant load or flight purpose. Shaw stated he thought nothing more of the incident until watching the biopic and then put two and two together with the date of the incident.

At first, Shaw was written off as a publicity seeker. People suggested he couldn’t positively identify the crippled plane from his vantage point. Shaw countered, stating he had a full, unobstructed view and he was very familiar with the silhouette of a Norseman as he took his navigator training in a Norseman while in Canada, logging hundreds of hours in this airplane.

The simple, get-to-the-bottom remedy was to verify flight times. There was no question that Miller’s flight left Twinwood at 13:55 (1:55 pm) local time on December 15. The RAF logs for Shaw’s Lancaster identifier ”K” NF.973 showed it returning to base at 14:20 (2:20 pm) on December 15. Extrapolating times, this would calculate Shaw’s bomber to jettison its load at approximately 13:40 (1:40 pm) which was almost the exact time that Miller’s plane departed Twinwood airfield.

Because of the time conflict, it seemed obvious that the Norseman could not have been under the bomb-dropping Lancaster and that was that. Until 1984, when an aviation historian named Roy Nesbit, on behalf of the Air Historical Branch of the British Ministry of Defense, conducted an independent investigation, reopening the Shaw claim of the accidental bomb strike. He found the answer to the apparent time mismatch within the logbooks and route maps kept at the Public Record Office in London.

To Nesbit, who was a military pilot and very familiar with record reading, the clue was so straightforward as to be silly. The Lancasters were operating on Greenwich Meantime. They never adjusted for daylight savings time. However, due to the war, a special ordinance called the Statutory Rule and Time Order allowed Britons to operate on the one-hour earlier than Greenwich standard time. According to GMT, the Norseman actually took off at 12:55—45 minutes before the bomb jettison and exactly the time needed to fly a Norseman at 155 mph and place it under the Lancaster formation.

With the timing worked out, the question remained as to why the Norseman was out of the safe air corridor and into the extremely dangerous jettison zone. That answer lay with the pilot, Flying Officer Stuart Morgan. His service records established that he had only recently qualified on the Norseman, and he had no experience in flying with instruments in poor weather. Morgan would have been navigating solely on a magnetic compass using visual flight rules (VFR) on a cloudy day. Only a tiny misjudgment by Morgan or a fraction of a degree off course could easily have placed him ten miles to the west of his designated safe air corridor and into the danger zone.

Given that something suddenly, catastrophic, and overwhelming unsurvivable happened to the missing Norseman, the logical and simple conclusion is it probably was accidentally struck by friendly bombs jettisoned by a British Lancaster warplane. In all likelihood, the RAF really killed big band legend Glenn Miller.