February 16, 2021 • 42 mins
In 2014, a young German man walked into an airport in Bulgaria with a flight booked, then suddenly ran out leaving all his posessions behind, never to be heard from again. This is the story of Lars Mittank.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's
Jerry And this is Stuff you Should Know. That another
true life mystery addition, a true life mystery. Yeah, Okay,
(00:28):
I don't I don't want to say crime because I'm
not sure crime was involved. I'm sure it still falls
under the umbrella of true crime, but it's it's a
mystery of disappearance, how about that? Yeah? And this one is, uh,
this can be frustrating to research, and this is our
caveat and that. Um, this situation, as you will learn,
(00:48):
happened in Bulgaria to a German Man and that's part
of the reason it's hard to get great information. Um,
there are plenty of people on the internet telling this
story with different details, and uh, it's just sort of
one of those cases where like we can't get our
hands on Bulgarian case files from the cops right and
(01:10):
read it ourselves. So, um, we did find a redditor
who did something last year who claims that he got
information from Lars's mother who you're gonna meet, Sandra not.
She's not gonna be on the show. You're not gonna
really meet her meet through our words. But you know
who knows this is someone on Reddit, and um, all
(01:32):
his uh sources were in German, so I couldn't double
check those either, right, Yeah, no, I mean that's that's
a caveat that works for just about any true crime
or disappearance case these days, just because there's so many
people who you know, take a story and run it
through their own grinder, and you know, like you said,
little details, little facts get changed here, and then somebody
(01:53):
else picks up the same fact without double checking it,
and now all of a sudden, it's all over the place,
and you can't tell if that's because it's real or
because a bunch of people just repeated the same incorrect facts. So, um,
we're gonna definitely do our best. But one of the
things about this story is there are enough, you know,
totally verified facts to it that that you know, you
(02:17):
don't really need to get completely lost in the details.
People have gotten completely lost in the details, um, but
they've still not solved the case. That hasn't helped anybody yet.
So just the facts that are known are kind of
strange enough. Yeah, and I think it's it's always more
comfortable for us when it's like when there's a book
(02:38):
that's been written about it, published by like a real
publisher like Beverly. Clearly it's not just internet dudes. Uh,
But you know a lot of times these more recent
sort of missing person cases, it is just internet dude.
So you know, yeah, that's what it is. And the
dude that we're talking about, uh is named Lars Matonk
(02:58):
and he's known as the most famous missing person on
YouTube because he is. It is pretty bad almost. It
should have probably just scared us off of this episode
to begin with, um, the the because you know, you remember, um,
what was the name of that con the YouTube convention?
We went to that one time. Oh it was like
(03:23):
Internet com but it wasn't that. It was close to that.
I can't remember. That almost put me off of YouTube forever.
We blocked our memory bank as we did our our
biggest show ever there in front of about twelve people. Yeah,
it was pretty bad, but I don't think of it.
But by the way, we should think Dave Meischner, who
was who's a listener who turned me onto this quite
(03:45):
a while ago. So sorry it took so long to
get to Dave Um. So we're talking again. We're talking
about Lars ma Tonk and he uh vanished from the
face of the earth. As his mom put it, it
was like the earth just swallowed him up. Back in
July eighth, two thousand and fourteen, in a town, a
resort town in Bulgaria on the Black Sea called Golden Sands,
(04:07):
which looking at pictures of it, it looks like a
pretty charming little place. Uh, big con, that's it. It
might as well have been called Internet Con. Yeah, but
did you look at pictures of Golden Sands is to
get a feel for the place? Yeah, you know, looks
like any lovely seaside hamlet. Yeah. And I couldn't get
the impression of whether it's more like Destined or more
(04:29):
like Panama City beach. I just couldn't. It seems like
a big party spot, if that's what you're wondering, Okay,
But like it also looked like it. It was fairly
like clean and well run and not just like you know,
just whatever kind of thing. I don't know. I place
it between the two from what I can tell. But
(04:49):
that's where that that's where this event took place where
the disappearance took place. There's actually Varna, Bulgaria, which is
the main town that Golden Sands Resort beach town is
right outside of Yeah. So as far as Lars Uh
the young man who would go missing, he was born
in February nineties six in northern Germany. He was an
only child. He was handsome kid, very popular, He was athletic,
(05:14):
he was smart. He did well in school. Um after
he ended up. After he graduated, he ended up getting
a job at the g d S who has power
plant about a hundred miles from where he grew up,
fixing um small electrical machines. He was an engineer and
it seemed like he had a really good life and
he enjoyed his job. He loved and this will figure
(05:36):
in so put a pin in this. His one big
love was his UH football club, his soccer team that
he followed, which is in you know this is not
how they would pronounce it, but the Verder Bremen football Club.
Oh really, how would they pronounce it? Well, it's always
just a little more German. Like the guy the Reditor.
(05:58):
He narrates his own document Henry, and he said it
in a way that I'm not even gonna attempt. Oh okay,
all right, fine, So, UM, that whole football club thing
actually plays a role in this because, um it may
be at the center of his disappearance. We're not a
hard percent sure, but UM, to kind of give you
an idea of what kind of guy Lars Metank was.
(06:19):
Matank was. His dad had a stroke a couple of
years before he disappeared, Um, and his mom had to
take care of his dad full time. Lars was an
only child, and he would come home, UM I guess
about a hundred miles from where he lived and worked
almost every weekend to help take care of his dad,
which is not every guy in their late twenties would
(06:41):
do that, you know. Um, And apparently he was dedicated
enough that his mom had to kind of encourage him
to go along with five other friends of his two
a week long vacation at Golden Sands in Bulgaria in July,
the end of June beginning of July. Um, he wasn't
going to go. In his IM said no, you should
should totally go. You you deserve a week off like this.
(07:03):
So he went. Yeah. So the um, it's a big
party scene Like I said, it is well known for
young people from all over Europe going to take advantage
of the resort deals, all inclusive places, the cheap booze,
plenty of drugs to be had. Um Lars was the
(07:24):
life of the party, according to his friends. Um as
I saw it anywhere from three to five friends. I
know for sure, two guys, and I think these were
his high school mates who were most prominent, named Tim
Schultz and Paul Roman Um. But they were hanging out,
going to the beach playing soccer. Uh. The one weird
thing that I think people may have made too much
(07:45):
about online as far as internet sleuthing goes is his
friends remarked that he didn't have much of an appetite
on the trip, was eating like soup and salad and fruit,
whereas they were, you know as an all inclusive resort,
so they were just like feasting on everything, and I
think they thought it was odd that he wasn't. But
I don't make a whole lot about that. Yeah, neither
did that one Redator slash documentary and who said that
(08:07):
he apparently had kind of gotten he had been on
a health kick, so he was kind of watching what
he ate a little more. Um. Yeah, some people have
been like, there's your there's your answer right there, that
that explains it all. Yeah, basically. Um So, I mean
the week went by pretty uneventfully. I think one of
his friends later said on TV or in an interview that, um,
(08:30):
it went by really quick. Um. On one of they
think the second to last day, they went to watch
a World Cup match. The World Cup in Brazil was
going on at the time, and UM, you may not
know this about Europe, but they're really crazy about soccer.
Uh so much so that they have their own word
for it football, which is goofy. But that's the way
(08:51):
it goes. And so they went to um this bar
rock bar or okay, b a r um which sounds
like a cool place, and they watched the match, I
think Costa Rica and the Netherlands. And while they were there, UM,
there were a bunch of soccer fans. They're watching this
from all different clubs and countries, and there were some kids,
(09:12):
I guess who were recent high school graduates and we're
fans of FC Byron, which is the rival to UH
Verder Bremen. And I guess they kind of got into
it verbally only with um with Lars and his friends. Yeah,
and I also saw places that there was actual physical confrontation.
(09:34):
We don't know for sure, but we do know that
it wasn't the biggest deal and it wasn't the big
fight that happened later on. Um, after this night out,
the guys apparently go to this McDonald's which is kind
of an open air um order than open air window
kind of thing, and Lars didn't want to eat because
I guess he was on that health kick, and he
(09:56):
sort of just stood nearby while his two buddies were ordering. Um,
they got their food, they turned around, he wasn't there.
They don't see him for the rest of the night.
But like I said, it's sort of like, you know,
spring break party central. So if one of your friends
disappears for the night, and you're a bunch of dudes,
you might just think like, all right, well, you know,
(10:17):
maybe he ended up meeting somebody, or maybe he just
went out and partied some more. But it didn't send
up these huge alarms that he didn't come back that night. Yeah. So, um,
when he did show up again, I don't know if
it was later that night or the next morning. Um,
he said that he had been beaten up, actually jumped
by three or four Bulgarian guys, um, and that he
(10:41):
had gone to duck when one of them threw a
punch and it acts actually taken a punch in his ear,
which is a terrible place to get punched. And he
said that he was quite convinced that it was those kids,
those high school kids, um, who were fans of Byron
FC Byron, that they've gotten into it with at the
are earlier that night, UM, because apparently they had said
(11:04):
this is just I only saw this in one place
that they had said that. Um, they had shouted that
it's easy to get to pay somebody to beat other
people up in Bulgaria. And so this happened close enough
and close enough proximity to that other altercation that he
just assumed that's why those guys jumped him. I mean,
there's apparently there was no other explanation for it. So
(11:26):
that was his story. He showed up with an injured
ear in the story that he had been jumped by
some local bar Bulgarians. Yeah, and his friends apparently didn't
necessarily believe that story because he wasn't you know, he
didn't have black eyes or bloody knows or anything. He
looked fine and he was acting fine, so they weren't
(11:47):
too sure about that story. Um Again, with the internet, sluice,
I've seen people saying that, like he totally made up
the story about the fight. But that is all just
people speculating online. I know if you ever want to
see people just take a piece of information and then
spin it to the ant due the most extreme possible
interpretation of it, that you could do worse than hang
(12:10):
out on the internet. Uh. So he goes to a doctor,
he gets the diagnosis of a ruptured ear drum. Apparently
went and saw a specialist at a hospital who confirmed it.
Said you should get surgery, and Large is like, great,
but I'm not getting that here. I'm gonna go back
come to Germany if I'm gonna get surgery. Uh. And
(12:30):
then this is sort of one of the keys is
he was given uh an antibiotic name uh seff rock Sime,
and he was given the strongest possible dosage, which was
about I think it was five yes, and that's a
just a general I think a cephlexin based antibiotic um
(12:51):
that doesn't really usually have many side effects, and if
it does, have side effects. It's typically something like an
upset stomach. I saw that there's a condition where it
turns huge patches of your skin very dark all over
the place, almost like your highlights have been shaded. Um,
it's really interesting to look at. But that's that's has
(13:13):
nothing to do with any other anything that that Lars exhibited,
any behavior he exhibited. Um, the it's just antibiotics. I mean,
if you've ever taken antibiotics, you know that there's not
really usually many side effects to it. Right, So uh,
Lars catches um, well again, different information. I saw that
(13:36):
his friends we're gonna stay with him, he insisted they leave.
So his friends eventually do catch that original flight out
and large stays behind. Um, you know, because of his ear.
He was a little concerned about obviously, with changes in
the atmosphere on pressurization on a plane. He didn't think
it was a good idea. And I'm not sure if
(13:57):
that original doctor told him that might have been a problem,
but he knew it was going to be a problem.
So a little bit about that original doctor. I saw
that from the rehdator who said that he spoke to
the guys to his mother that his mother said that
that Lars said that the doctor didn't really treat him.
The first one did and said you should go to
(14:17):
a specialist. But then when he went to the specialist,
a specialist said like, wouldn't speak to him in English,
and and Lars felt he had mocked him, and that
apparently Sandra thought that that was really significant because that
was not a word that Lars typically used. But he
still managed to get the antibiotic from the doctor. The
thing about the perforated or ruptured ear drum is I
(14:39):
was looking on the internet, it turns out, and the
National Health Service says that if you have a perforated
ear drum, it would probably actually make flying more comfortable,
not more dangerous. So I can understand Laws being worried
about that, not being a trained medical professional, but if
he's encountering at least three other medical professionals in Bulgaria,
(15:02):
you would think one of them would be like, actually, no,
that's you're you're actually better offline like this, or or
would at the very least be like, you don't have
to worry about that at all. It's not that's not
a thing interesting. Yeah, so too, All right, well, let's
take a break and we will come back and talk
about what happened after his friends left Lars alone in Bulgaria.
Right after this, all right, so large as buddies go
(15:55):
back home to Germany, Lars has left there by himself,
which is at the key as far as understanding that
they weren't worried about him. He wasn't behaving weird. He
seemed fine. He seemed like Lars. Otherwise one of them
probably would have raised some sort of alarm bells and
been like, hey, maybe we should stay here, but they
said he seemed relaxed, he was in a good mood,
(16:17):
and so they took off. Um, being summer, Lars had
a hard time getting a hotel room because everything was
booked up and he was staying on extra. So he
ends up having to check into the Hotel Color Varna,
which was a really seedy place that this cab driver
takes him to. Apparently a lot of drug dealers, a
(16:39):
lot of sex workers, but that was kind of the
only place available. And um, we don't know a lot
about what happened that night other than these phone calls
and texts that he exchanges with his mom. So one
thing though about the Hotel Color I looked at it.
Trip Advisor gives it a four out of five, and
booking dot Com has it at seven point eight out
of ten. And it is definitely cheap. I think rooms
(17:01):
are like twenty five American dollars a night, which is
suspiciously cheap. And that yeah, there is like probably some
criminal activity there, but that it's not like it's not
like a trap house hotel or anything like that. But
it was the fact that it was his only option
I think kind of tells you quite a bit too
about it. Sure, so um he goes to this hotel,
(17:24):
he checks in. Apparently the person behind the counter made
a copy of photo copy of his credit card, and
according to his mother, that did not sit very well
with lars Um. And at eleven PM, after he's checked
into the hotel, he calls his mom. I think it's
the first phone first of many phone calls that evening,
(17:45):
and he tells her that he wants her to block
his credit card because he's kind of sketched out by
this hotelier who has made a photo copy of his card.
He's worried that they're going to use it for fraud
and he can just unfreeze it when he gets back.
That's the first phone call all he makes. Yeah, there
ends up being another call where he has left the hotel.
(18:06):
He said that he was hiding on a hill. Uh,
and I think he even said that he was at
risk of falling, So it must have been sort of
some sort of a really steep type of situation, I guess, um.
But he said that there were four men after him,
that we're trying to kill him, or that intended to
kill him at least, And he said, don't call me
back because my phone I don't want my phone to ring.
(18:30):
I'm not sure I knew he didn't have a smartphone
with him. He left that at home and brought sort
of a cheaper phone, so I don't know if it
didn't have a way to turn the ringer off or not,
or if he was just not thinking clearly, but he
said not to call him back. He eventually texts his
mom what is Sarah? Fam five hundred, which was at antibiotic, which, um,
you might think means like he's feeling weird and like,
(18:53):
what is this? I've taken that to me says that
that if he was behaving weirdly or experiencing some different behavior,
that he guessed that that's what it was. That's the
only explanation for that, because they found that he had
taken three of them. So, Um, he knew that he
had that in his system, which I guess if he
(19:16):
was acting weird, maybe that's what he thought it was.
That's what sticks out to me. Yeah, And I think
was that it was either that night or the following morning.
When he asks, I think it was the following morning. Um,
you know, she had booked a flight home for him.
He doesn't get back in touch with her, which really
worries her. But the next morning he does get back
(19:36):
in touch. There's two days after this bar fight. She's relieved.
He says, he's going to go to the airport and uh,
can he get five euros? Uh wired, you know, moneygrammed
or whatever? Western What did they have Western Union over there? Yeah?
Supposedly there's a real detail in there, and that it
was Western Union. Well what's the what makes Western Union important?
(20:00):
So his mother had never heard of Western Union and
laws hadn't either, But apparently he talked to another German
tourist at the airport who had told him to use it,
and he was able to describe to his mom how
to use Western Union in a way that she understood
how to use Western Union after he explained it, which
said to his mom that he had his wits about him.
He wasn't out of his mind, He wasn't um wasted
(20:24):
on drugs or anything like that. He was very much
with it mentally, alright. So he um and I saw
two different things here. Either his mom urged him to
go to the airport doctor just to make sure he's
good to fly, or there was some requirement that he
do so. But either way, he goes to the airport
(20:44):
medical center. And this is where things get a little confusing, because, uh,
it's really all over the place whether or not he
goes in right away or whether he goes in later.
But he apparently calls his mom tells her, hey, they
said I shouldn't fly or drive. But he hadn't even
gone to see the doctor at that point. Uh. And
(21:06):
then once he does see the doctor, the doctor ends
up giving a few different versions of what happened while
he was in there, which is, either, you know, some
people think that looks really shady. I think it could
have just been like at the time, this doctor, you know,
you're not making some really big mental notes about the
random patient that comes in, like this guy is going
to be an international mystery in an hour. Yeah. So
(21:29):
you know, it could have been innocent that heads his
story changed, or it could be sad. It could be
so for from uh, from what I saw that the
doctor UM changed the story three times and that airline
employee came in, uh. And then later it was an
airport employee came in, which I think kind of across
the internet became a construction worker because that the airport
(21:51):
had recently undergone or was undergoing renovations. And then I
guess the third story was that the doctor said that
no one had come in uh, and that Lars had
excused himself to go to the toilet and did not
come back. The doctor was expecting to come back. He
just never came back with the doctor didn't know uh
if that was in fact what happened was that Lars
(22:13):
wasn't coming back because he was sprinting through the airport
and running out of the airport and into the surrounding countryside. Yeah.
And in the version where someone does come in, UM,
what that means is is that literally a human being
another person walks into the examination room and apparently really
(22:33):
freaked out if if that version is correct, really freaked
out Lars, who was already obviously feeling a little bit
paranoid and was like, what is this person doing in here?
In the one version of the story, the doctor tries
to explain, Hey, it's just a construction guy, or no,
this is an airline employee that's going to actually walk
you to the plane. Um, it's a little frustrating to
(22:56):
not know the exact truth, but no matter what happens,
we do know that he's rented from the airport because
that part is actually on YouTube and on CCTV, And
that's why he's the most famous disappeared person on YouTube,
because it's very compelling to watch this uh young kid
drop all and you don't see him drop his stuff,
(23:17):
but clearly he walks in with a backpack in a
duffel bag and he sprints with nothing in his hands
at like full you know, twenty one year old athletic
gallop out of there as if someone is chasing him. Yeah. So,
but there's a couple of weird things about it. If
you watch the video and and again you can go
anywhere on the internet and see this. I think it's
(23:37):
a good thirty seconds of it, um cut together that
he is running in the airport, and then when he
gets outside he kind of like walks and then jogs
a little bit and runs some more. But then I
saw somebody on I think it was read at two
on a different post um they're they're unresolved mysteries group
is just really good. Um. But somebody pointed out that
(23:59):
if you watch him, he's not really like looking behind him.
He's not he's not looking to see somebody coming after him. Um.
And it kind of puts a different spin on things
because you do think, well, surely he's running for his life,
but if you're running for your life, it does seem
like you would be a lot more concerned about who
was coming after you and would probably look behind you
(24:20):
a little more. He doesn't quite do that. Actually, he's
it's a very strange run, but it's also not like
the run of a person who's out of their mind.
That's a That was what stood out to me is
that he doesn't seem to at all be out of
his mind. Yeah, and another couple of details here, um
that was tough to verify. Supposedly, in the doctor's office,
(24:42):
he said, I don't want to die here. I have
to get out of here. Uh. I don't know if
that's true or not, but um, supposedly that's what he said.
And then the mom, Sandra evidently saw she went over
there um to you know, do her own investigat ing
obviously right after it happened, and supposedly saw footage directly
(25:04):
from the airport that had a lot of different stuff
that was not included in the footage that went to
the police. And she said in the footage that she
saw was that when he leaves the airport, he stands
there like checks his pocket as if he's checking to
make sure he has his passport and his wallet and stuff,
and kind of looks around and orients himself for a minute,
(25:26):
like should I go this way? Should I go that way? Um?
If you look at other places on the internet and
you just look at that footage, it looks like he
just bolts from the airport and then continues to either
kind of walk or jog and never stops, never checks
his pockets, never orients himself at all. Yeah, So he
actually walks within um, twenty feet of a couple of
(25:47):
cops who are standing talking to one another in the
parking lot. He walks past them. Um, he goes behind
the sand pile and then eventually goes over. I think,
is it actually on camera him going over of the
fence or is it just presumed that he went over
the fence. Now it's on camera, but it's one of
those things where it's like they had to circle and
highlight him because he's so far in the distance. But
(26:09):
he he goes over a barbed wire fence into a
full bloom sunflower field, which are very very tall and
literally disappears never to be seen again now. And on
the other side of that sunflower field, very importantly is
the a two highway, so who knows what happened. And
then beyond that there's a lot of woods. I wouldn't
(26:29):
call it like the most densely forested place on earth,
but there's a pretty decent sized woods around there. There's
also a lot of farm fields too that's exposed and
out in the open, but there's a highway on the
other side of it, and that's to me, is is
extremely important. All Right, Should we take another break? Yes, alright,
we're gonna take another break and bring it home with
what happened from there and then some of the theories
(26:51):
about what happened to large mat talk. Yeah, so Chuck,
(27:23):
just to recap Lars Matonk has fled. There's a really
good way to put it, the airport leaving behind in
the doctor's office all of his stuff, including his wallet, phone,
and passport. Now, is that verified? I saw that basically everywhere,
including speculating that she saw him checking is. Yeah, I didn't.
(27:44):
I thought that was very confusing. But I saw it
in the sun which I realized is not the most
credible source, but sadly it is one of the most
credible sources when it comes to researching this case. Um,
I saw it on a Yale um article. It's it's
basically every rewere that his wallet, passport and phone were
left behind. Um, I I be. But I mean that's
(28:07):
a really good point, Like we're totally we're lost in
the sunflower field. As far as that stuff concerns, we
we don't know. We've got to get our hands on
the police report. UM. And even that I read when
when Lars's mom hired um Bulgarian lawyer as an investigator. Um,
they got weird conflicting information about you know, what was
(28:31):
found with him or not, or what was what was
left behind by him or not. So even his mom
probably couldn't say for certain what was there. Yeah, I
get the picture that it was a frustrating experience working
with the Bulgarian police. Um. It seems like the Germany
got involved with interpoll, but they had some frustrations as well.
(28:51):
There's there's some speculation that they intentionally kind of um
kept the story on the download because they didn't want
it to affect to her is him? Yeah, I could
see that. Other people say that, well maybe not that,
but it just wasn't widely known it was some German kid. Uh,
it wasn't all over the newspapers, and so people, you know,
(29:15):
they didn't necessarily even know what was going on if
they saw this flyer, or they maybe not have. Maybe
they didn't even run it on the evening news. Yeah,
and so like if it was three weeks four weeks
after the disappearance, that like news started to really spread,
or maybe news never really spread. If you were a
driver and you gave a kid a ride on the
A two highway outside of the airport, um, you might
(29:37):
not have ever put two and two together or um,
if you saw some kid running through a field into
the woods. You might not have ever heard of Lars
Matonk either. So, um, there's it's possible there's people out
there with information who just aren't aren't don't know to
cough it up, although that's probably exceedingly unlikely these days
(29:59):
because of the exposure that this story has gotten. Yeah,
one interesting tidbit is that they did find that those
five hundred euros were untouched in his account. Um, and
I don't think we mentioned I think some people speculate
the fact that it was five hundred euros on the
nose and that it was Western Union and he had
(30:20):
never used it meant that he was being told by
somebody to get five hundred euros wired via this way.
But again that's just internet speculation. Well, I also saw
that it was his mom's decision. He just asked her
to wire him some money, some money he had decided
that that that was according to that documentarian who knows,
(30:40):
we really need to get sounder ma talk on here, dude. Um.
One of the cool things that happened through this through
his mother investigating this is various leads came in over
the years, like hey, there's this guy that speaks German.
He could be Lars. She would go check it out,
there's this other guy. Uh oh. Over the years, she
(31:01):
has ended up finding fifteen German expatriots in Bulgaria somewhere addicts,
some were mentally ill, uh, Some were actually reunited with
their families, some didn't want to be reunited. But she
found all these people, so like every time that happened,
it gave her hope that even though the chances, you know,
with a case like this is if you don't find
(31:24):
this person within the first you know, a few days
or the first week, it's like very slim to no chance.
All of these things gave her hope that she could
if she just kept at it, that she might eventually
find her son. Yeah. I was really surprised to see
that there was a statin here that said that something
like only three percent of missing persons cases aren't resolved
(31:44):
within the first year in Germany. Yeah, not even in Germany,
but among German citizens. Yeah, I thought it would be
a lot higher than that. But that's that's actually not
not bad as far as I can tell. Yeah. So, yeah,
one of those people, by the way, um who was
found that was thought to be. There's like a whole
(32:04):
thing where people are following this case and anytime uh
something ends up on the internet, uh, it ends up
being passed along to Sandra Matonk who will basically post
on her Instagram like, hey, uh, this was sent from
this town. Can somebody go see if they can find
this homeless guy and and get me more pictures of
them so we can figure out if it's Lars. Like
(32:25):
she does this kind of frequently. There was one where
a guy turned up in Brazil who looks a lot
like Lars, but disheveled with the beard and his hair
kind of crazy. Uh. And that turned out to be
a different man Um who was missing from British Columbia
named Anton Pilpa, who was reunited with his family after
five years. And they think that he hitch hike, hitchhiked
(32:47):
and walked from British Columbia down to Brazil um and
then kind of lived around uh Rio. I think Rio
um on his own for a while during a mental
break man. Uh So some of the theories over the
years that have been formed, um, the one that seems
the most obvious to me is that along with the
(33:09):
ear injury, there was some sort of a head injury,
maybe a concussion left untreated that led to erratic behavior
and paranoia maybe, and that you know, once he had
left and had no money and no phone and no passport, Uh,
he sort of was just sort of perhaps lost his
(33:30):
memory and lost in Bulgaria and still lost in Bulgaria. Yeah,
that's entirely possible, especially if it was a head injury
that was getting worse and worse by the hour. Um.
That could definitely explain the erratic behavior of leaving his
stuff and running through the airport and jumping the fence
(33:51):
into a sunflower field, Because if you think about it,
everything up to that point you can explain by him
being intimidated in a hotel he didn't feel comfortable in
um by some guys who aimed to rob him. And
even if those guys didn't aim to rob him, just
him thinking that they were going to rob him explains
(34:12):
everything else up to that point. The thing that makes
it inexplicable as far as I'm concerned is him leaving
the airport the way they did and potentially leaving everything behind.
That throws everything out the window and actually makes the
idea of a traumatic brain injury a lot more um
possible in my mind. The problem is that if that's
what happened to him, it's really possible that he's up there,
(34:36):
you know, out in the woods somewhere still and just
hasn't been found and is is dead probably by now. Yeah,
I suppose he could have just you know, wandered into
a town and assimilated. Well. His mom apparently does believe
that he's still out there, which is why she tries
to shake down every lead she can, but thinks that
he does have memory loss and that that's why he's
(34:58):
still out there just and is never her contacted her.
Another theory is that, you know, maybe everything he said
is true, maybe there were men following him. Maybe it
had something to do with that fight, and these guys
that may or may not have been hired to beat
him up. Apparently the human trafficking in Bulgaria is a problem,
(35:19):
and maybe you know, a young, handsome, fit man like
Lars could have been a target for human trafficking and
that he really like had every right to be anxious
and nervous because otherwise he seemed like he was okay. Uh,
It's all very confusing and frustrating. I can't imagine what
Sandra Matonk has been going through for these years. So dude,
(35:42):
just can't even I mean, when you're when you have
when you don't have closure like that, your imagination is
left to just fill in whatever blanks. And you know,
in a situation like that, people's imaginations tended to go
to the darkest places. I can't imagine the stuff that
she's come up with or that people have suggested to
her too, you know, being caught up in it and
forgetting like this is the mom, Like this is real
(36:03):
to her, this is her life. This isn't just something
on the internet. But what about the trucker. Oh, so
that's one of the leads. Um, uh, that there was
a trucker in uh what where was it? Brandenburg? The
trucker So there was a trucker that in two thousand
nineteen picked up a hitchhiker in Dresden and drove him
all the way to Brandenburg. I guess, um and uh.
(36:27):
He said later on he didn't know about the Lars
Matonk case at the time, but he said later on
he found out about it and said, oh man, that's
got to be the kid that I picked up. And so, um,
his His mom shook down the story, and I don't
think that she ever got in touch at the truck
driver else. The truck driver was just like, here's what
I think, but I can't. I can't say either way,
(36:49):
and I don't know where he went. So there's like
a beyond the lookout among you know, Lars matonk watchers
in Brandenburg. From that story. Yeah, there was another stuff
like that that kept her owen totally. Um. I saw
there was another one about a man in Dusseldorf UM
that the whole thing lasted for about two hours. That's
how fast things get done. She posted pictures that somebody
(37:10):
had sent her of a man, a homeless man in
Dusseldorf UM, and asked for more pictures than they Within
two hours, the coptain Dusseldorf had picked the guy up
and verified that it was not Lars. Yeah, I mean,
I think the head injury and loss of memory, like
he would want to get back to Germany. By all accounts,
he had a good life and enjoyed his job, was
(37:30):
a pretty happy guy and loved Germany. UM. So like
the idea of him choosing to stay there of his
own like sound mind just doesn't seem likely at all. No,
And unfortunately that really strongly suggests foul play as a
possibility to the fact that he has not turned up,
he has every reason to, like you said, turned turned
(37:52):
back up again, get back to his life. I saw
that um this on the State Department's website for Bulgarian
human trafficking. Like, Bulgaria does have a human trafficking problem,
but it seems to be typically targeting Bulgarians, especially Romani
people um who end up getting forced to beg on
(38:12):
the streets, are forced into hard labor if you're a man.
Um that it doesn't necessarily target tourists, and I think
the Bulgarian officials would probably not put up with that
because it would harm tourism so dramatically. So it's fairly
unlikely that like a blonde German guy named you know,
Lars would be would end up begging on the streets
(38:32):
of France at the behest of the Bulgarian mafia. And
I also saw another theory that he was a drug
mule and he flipped out, was scared he was gonna
get caught, and ran out of the airport. What really
kind of undermines that theory is that no drugs were
found in his stuff, so it's possible he took drugs.
A lot of people are like, well, clearly he was
(38:54):
on drugs, Like, why else would you do that? Um,
that's a possibility as well. But again, if you really
look at some of his behavior, um it the yes,
the fact that he ran out of the airport and
jumped over a fence, that's erratic behavior. But if you
look at the way he was behaving during that erratic behavior,
he's not acting erratic. If that makes any sense. It's
(39:17):
it's it's just it's one of the most bizarre mysteries
I've ever heard. So kudos to you and uh Dave
Meischner for coming up with this one. Yeah. I knew
nothing about it until Dave sent it, So way to go, Dave. Yeah,
we need to spend more time on YouTube. I guess
we can totally missed this one, so we can go
back to vid gun. Right, do you got anything else? Nope?
(39:37):
All right, Well, if you want to know more about
Lar's matonk go out and solve the mystery, will you,
at least for his dear mother's sake, And since we
said his dear mother's sake, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this this is another kid right and
in Uh, this is actually from dad. My son Hans
colored a picture of you podcasting today, prompted, which did
(40:01):
you see this picture? No, I gotta bring it up.
It was very cute, which I thought was awesome. I
said we should send it to Josh and Chuck in
his eyes lit up. He wrote out what he wanted
to type in an email to you, and I thought
it was better to just send you his note. I've
been listening to the show for the last ten years
or so, and introduce my son a few months ago.
We read books before bed, including yours, and then listen
(40:21):
to the podcast as he falls asleep. I'm thankful that
I'm able to share this with Hans. He's a smart
kid with incredible memory, so we'll often bring up facts
he's learned from you guys, which I had already forgotten. Uh.
And the picture, what's adorable? What's the name of the
guy who sent it? I'm looking for Sam Okay And Uh,
(40:43):
it's a picture with magic marker and you were sitting
upright at a table and he actually nailed it because
you're on the left, you know, back in the before
times when we were actually in our studio. He has
it right, you're on the left, I'm on the right.
I am. It looks like I'm passing out though I'm
kind of slumped over. But he's got two little microphones
(41:05):
and then two little pieces of paper with a handwritten
thing that says notes, pointing at the paper and says
I listen to your she almost every night. And then
there's a handwritten letter which is great, which I'll read
UH as best I can. I love your show, Chuck
and Josh. Today I listened to your s y s
K about ear wax. I told my mom and UH
(41:27):
and had some of your tips. Hey, have you guys
made a football episode like Touchdown? But if not, can
you make one? I listen to almost all the episodes
except ones that my parents don't let me watch. I
also have your book. I have read some of the
chapters in it and they are great. I like that
you guys have different types of episodes, like short stuff
(41:49):
and just regular episodes. I'm your biggest fan. I'm the
second grade. Yours, sincerely, and that is Hans last name
redacted because he's a kid Hans, I was amazing. I'm
going to find the picture. I haven't been able to
find it yet, but that was a beautiful letter. And
you have a super cool name by the way. Yes,
I love it, and thank you Dad, Sam and whoever
(42:11):
else is in the family helping to support the show.
We really appreciate it. Ye. Well, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Hans, maybe try drawn
a picture. What are you waiting for? Um? We love pictures.
You can send them off to us here at stuff
podcast did iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
(42:32):
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's
Jerry And this is Stuff you Should Know. That another
true life mystery addition, a true life mystery. Yeah, Okay,
(00:28):
I don't I don't want to say crime because I'm
not sure crime was involved. I'm sure it still falls
under the umbrella of true crime, but it's it's a
mystery of disappearance, how about that? Yeah? And this one is, uh,
this can be frustrating to research, and this is our
caveat and that. Um, this situation, as you will learn,
(00:48):
happened in Bulgaria to a German Man and that's part
of the reason it's hard to get great information. Um,
there are plenty of people on the internet telling this
story with different details, and uh, it's just sort of
one of those cases where like we can't get our
hands on Bulgarian case files from the cops right and
(01:10):
read it ourselves. So, um, we did find a redditor
who did something last year who claims that he got
information from Lars's mother who you're gonna meet, Sandra not.
She's not gonna be on the show. You're not gonna
really meet her meet through our words. But you know
who knows this is someone on Reddit, and um, all
(01:32):
his uh sources were in German, so I couldn't double
check those either, right, Yeah, no, I mean that's that's
a caveat that works for just about any true crime
or disappearance case these days, just because there's so many
people who you know, take a story and run it
through their own grinder, and you know, like you said,
little details, little facts get changed here, and then somebody
(01:53):
else picks up the same fact without double checking it,
and now all of a sudden, it's all over the place,
and you can't tell if that's because it's real or
because a bunch of people just repeated the same incorrect facts. So, um,
we're gonna definitely do our best. But one of the
things about this story is there are enough, you know,
totally verified facts to it that that you know, you
(02:17):
don't really need to get completely lost in the details.
People have gotten completely lost in the details, um, but
they've still not solved the case. That hasn't helped anybody yet.
So just the facts that are known are kind of
strange enough. Yeah, and I think it's it's always more
comfortable for us when it's like when there's a book
(02:38):
that's been written about it, published by like a real
publisher like Beverly. Clearly it's not just internet dudes. Uh,
But you know a lot of times these more recent
sort of missing person cases, it is just internet dude.
So you know, yeah, that's what it is. And the
dude that we're talking about, uh is named Lars Matonk
(02:58):
and he's known as the most famous missing person on
YouTube because he is. It is pretty bad almost. It
should have probably just scared us off of this episode
to begin with, um, the the because you know, you remember, um,
what was the name of that con the YouTube convention?
We went to that one time. Oh it was like
(03:23):
Internet com but it wasn't that. It was close to that.
I can't remember. That almost put me off of YouTube forever.
We blocked our memory bank as we did our our
biggest show ever there in front of about twelve people. Yeah,
it was pretty bad, but I don't think of it.
But by the way, we should think Dave Meischner, who
was who's a listener who turned me onto this quite
(03:45):
a while ago. So sorry it took so long to
get to Dave Um. So we're talking again. We're talking
about Lars ma Tonk and he uh vanished from the
face of the earth. As his mom put it, it
was like the earth just swallowed him up. Back in
July eighth, two thousand and fourteen, in a town, a
resort town in Bulgaria on the Black Sea called Golden Sands,
(04:07):
which looking at pictures of it, it looks like a
pretty charming little place. Uh, big con, that's it. It
might as well have been called Internet Con. Yeah, but
did you look at pictures of Golden Sands is to
get a feel for the place? Yeah, you know, looks
like any lovely seaside hamlet. Yeah. And I couldn't get
the impression of whether it's more like Destined or more
(04:29):
like Panama City beach. I just couldn't. It seems like
a big party spot, if that's what you're wondering, Okay,
But like it also looked like it. It was fairly
like clean and well run and not just like you know,
just whatever kind of thing. I don't know. I place
it between the two from what I can tell. But
(04:49):
that's where that that's where this event took place where
the disappearance took place. There's actually Varna, Bulgaria, which is
the main town that Golden Sands Resort beach town is
right outside of Yeah. So as far as Lars Uh
the young man who would go missing, he was born
in February nineties six in northern Germany. He was an
only child. He was handsome kid, very popular, He was athletic,
(05:14):
he was smart. He did well in school. Um after
he ended up. After he graduated, he ended up getting
a job at the g d S who has power
plant about a hundred miles from where he grew up,
fixing um small electrical machines. He was an engineer and
it seemed like he had a really good life and
he enjoyed his job. He loved and this will figure
(05:36):
in so put a pin in this. His one big
love was his UH football club, his soccer team that
he followed, which is in you know this is not
how they would pronounce it, but the Verder Bremen football Club.
Oh really, how would they pronounce it? Well, it's always
just a little more German. Like the guy the Reditor.
(05:58):
He narrates his own document Henry, and he said it
in a way that I'm not even gonna attempt. Oh okay,
all right, fine, So, UM, that whole football club thing
actually plays a role in this because, um it may
be at the center of his disappearance. We're not a
hard percent sure, but UM, to kind of give you
an idea of what kind of guy Lars Metank was.
(06:19):
Matank was. His dad had a stroke a couple of
years before he disappeared, Um, and his mom had to
take care of his dad full time. Lars was an
only child, and he would come home, UM I guess
about a hundred miles from where he lived and worked
almost every weekend to help take care of his dad,
which is not every guy in their late twenties would
(06:41):
do that, you know. Um, And apparently he was dedicated
enough that his mom had to kind of encourage him
to go along with five other friends of his two
a week long vacation at Golden Sands in Bulgaria in July,
the end of June beginning of July. Um, he wasn't
going to go. In his IM said no, you should
should totally go. You you deserve a week off like this.
(07:03):
So he went. Yeah. So the um, it's a big
party scene Like I said, it is well known for
young people from all over Europe going to take advantage
of the resort deals, all inclusive places, the cheap booze,
plenty of drugs to be had. Um Lars was the
(07:24):
life of the party, according to his friends. Um as
I saw it anywhere from three to five friends. I
know for sure, two guys, and I think these were
his high school mates who were most prominent, named Tim
Schultz and Paul Roman Um. But they were hanging out,
going to the beach playing soccer. Uh. The one weird
thing that I think people may have made too much
(07:45):
about online as far as internet sleuthing goes is his
friends remarked that he didn't have much of an appetite
on the trip, was eating like soup and salad and fruit,
whereas they were, you know as an all inclusive resort,
so they were just like feasting on everything, and I
think they thought it was odd that he wasn't. But
I don't make a whole lot about that. Yeah, neither
did that one Redator slash documentary and who said that
(08:07):
he apparently had kind of gotten he had been on
a health kick, so he was kind of watching what
he ate a little more. Um. Yeah, some people have
been like, there's your there's your answer right there, that
that explains it all. Yeah, basically. Um So, I mean
the week went by pretty uneventfully. I think one of
his friends later said on TV or in an interview that, um,
(08:30):
it went by really quick. Um. On one of they
think the second to last day, they went to watch
a World Cup match. The World Cup in Brazil was
going on at the time, and UM, you may not
know this about Europe, but they're really crazy about soccer.
Uh so much so that they have their own word
for it football, which is goofy. But that's the way
(08:51):
it goes. And so they went to um this bar
rock bar or okay, b a r um which sounds
like a cool place, and they watched the match, I
think Costa Rica and the Netherlands. And while they were there, UM,
there were a bunch of soccer fans. They're watching this
from all different clubs and countries, and there were some kids,
(09:12):
I guess who were recent high school graduates and we're
fans of FC Byron, which is the rival to UH
Verder Bremen. And I guess they kind of got into
it verbally only with um with Lars and his friends. Yeah,
and I also saw places that there was actual physical confrontation.
(09:34):
We don't know for sure, but we do know that
it wasn't the biggest deal and it wasn't the big
fight that happened later on. Um, after this night out,
the guys apparently go to this McDonald's which is kind
of an open air um order than open air window
kind of thing, and Lars didn't want to eat because
I guess he was on that health kick, and he
(09:56):
sort of just stood nearby while his two buddies were ordering. Um,
they got their food, they turned around, he wasn't there.
They don't see him for the rest of the night.
But like I said, it's sort of like, you know,
spring break party central. So if one of your friends
disappears for the night, and you're a bunch of dudes,
you might just think like, all right, well, you know,
(10:17):
maybe he ended up meeting somebody, or maybe he just
went out and partied some more. But it didn't send
up these huge alarms that he didn't come back that night. Yeah. So, um,
when he did show up again, I don't know if
it was later that night or the next morning. Um,
he said that he had been beaten up, actually jumped
by three or four Bulgarian guys, um, and that he
(10:41):
had gone to duck when one of them threw a
punch and it acts actually taken a punch in his ear,
which is a terrible place to get punched. And he
said that he was quite convinced that it was those kids,
those high school kids, um, who were fans of Byron
FC Byron, that they've gotten into it with at the
are earlier that night, UM, because apparently they had said
(11:04):
this is just I only saw this in one place
that they had said that. Um, they had shouted that
it's easy to get to pay somebody to beat other
people up in Bulgaria. And so this happened close enough
and close enough proximity to that other altercation that he
just assumed that's why those guys jumped him. I mean,
there's apparently there was no other explanation for it. So
(11:26):
that was his story. He showed up with an injured
ear in the story that he had been jumped by
some local bar Bulgarians. Yeah, and his friends apparently didn't
necessarily believe that story because he wasn't you know, he
didn't have black eyes or bloody knows or anything. He
looked fine and he was acting fine, so they weren't
(11:47):
too sure about that story. Um Again, with the internet, sluice,
I've seen people saying that, like he totally made up
the story about the fight. But that is all just
people speculating online. I know if you ever want to
see people just take a piece of information and then
spin it to the ant due the most extreme possible
interpretation of it, that you could do worse than hang
(12:10):
out on the internet. Uh. So he goes to a doctor,
he gets the diagnosis of a ruptured ear drum. Apparently
went and saw a specialist at a hospital who confirmed it.
Said you should get surgery, and Large is like, great,
but I'm not getting that here. I'm gonna go back
come to Germany if I'm gonna get surgery. Uh. And
(12:30):
then this is sort of one of the keys is
he was given uh an antibiotic name uh seff rock Sime,
and he was given the strongest possible dosage, which was
about I think it was five yes, and that's a
just a general I think a cephlexin based antibiotic um
(12:51):
that doesn't really usually have many side effects, and if
it does, have side effects. It's typically something like an
upset stomach. I saw that there's a condition where it
turns huge patches of your skin very dark all over
the place, almost like your highlights have been shaded. Um,
it's really interesting to look at. But that's that's has
(13:13):
nothing to do with any other anything that that Lars exhibited,
any behavior he exhibited. Um, the it's just antibiotics. I mean,
if you've ever taken antibiotics, you know that there's not
really usually many side effects to it. Right, So uh,
Lars catches um, well again, different information. I saw that
(13:36):
his friends we're gonna stay with him, he insisted they leave.
So his friends eventually do catch that original flight out
and large stays behind. Um, you know, because of his ear.
He was a little concerned about obviously, with changes in
the atmosphere on pressurization on a plane. He didn't think
it was a good idea. And I'm not sure if
(13:57):
that original doctor told him that might have been a problem,
but he knew it was going to be a problem.
So a little bit about that original doctor. I saw
that from the rehdator who said that he spoke to
the guys to his mother that his mother said that
that Lars said that the doctor didn't really treat him.
The first one did and said you should go to
(14:17):
a specialist. But then when he went to the specialist,
a specialist said like, wouldn't speak to him in English,
and and Lars felt he had mocked him, and that
apparently Sandra thought that that was really significant because that
was not a word that Lars typically used. But he
still managed to get the antibiotic from the doctor. The
thing about the perforated or ruptured ear drum is I
(14:39):
was looking on the internet, it turns out, and the
National Health Service says that if you have a perforated
ear drum, it would probably actually make flying more comfortable,
not more dangerous. So I can understand Laws being worried
about that, not being a trained medical professional, but if
he's encountering at least three other medical professionals in Bulgaria,
(15:02):
you would think one of them would be like, actually, no,
that's you're you're actually better offline like this, or or
would at the very least be like, you don't have
to worry about that at all. It's not that's not
a thing interesting. Yeah, so too, All right, well, let's
take a break and we will come back and talk
about what happened after his friends left Lars alone in Bulgaria.
Right after this, all right, so large as buddies go
(15:55):
back home to Germany, Lars has left there by himself,
which is at the key as far as understanding that
they weren't worried about him. He wasn't behaving weird. He
seemed fine. He seemed like Lars. Otherwise one of them
probably would have raised some sort of alarm bells and
been like, hey, maybe we should stay here, but they
said he seemed relaxed, he was in a good mood,
(16:17):
and so they took off. Um, being summer, Lars had
a hard time getting a hotel room because everything was
booked up and he was staying on extra. So he
ends up having to check into the Hotel Color Varna,
which was a really seedy place that this cab driver
takes him to. Apparently a lot of drug dealers, a
(16:39):
lot of sex workers, but that was kind of the
only place available. And um, we don't know a lot
about what happened that night other than these phone calls
and texts that he exchanges with his mom. So one
thing though about the Hotel Color I looked at it.
Trip Advisor gives it a four out of five, and
booking dot Com has it at seven point eight out
of ten. And it is definitely cheap. I think rooms
(17:01):
are like twenty five American dollars a night, which is
suspiciously cheap. And that yeah, there is like probably some
criminal activity there, but that it's not like it's not
like a trap house hotel or anything like that. But
it was the fact that it was his only option
I think kind of tells you quite a bit too
about it. Sure, so um he goes to this hotel,
(17:24):
he checks in. Apparently the person behind the counter made
a copy of photo copy of his credit card, and
according to his mother, that did not sit very well
with lars Um. And at eleven PM, after he's checked
into the hotel, he calls his mom. I think it's
the first phone first of many phone calls that evening,
(17:45):
and he tells her that he wants her to block
his credit card because he's kind of sketched out by
this hotelier who has made a photo copy of his card.
He's worried that they're going to use it for fraud
and he can just unfreeze it when he gets back.
That's the first phone call all he makes. Yeah, there
ends up being another call where he has left the hotel.
(18:06):
He said that he was hiding on a hill. Uh,
and I think he even said that he was at
risk of falling, So it must have been sort of
some sort of a really steep type of situation, I guess, um.
But he said that there were four men after him,
that we're trying to kill him, or that intended to
kill him at least, And he said, don't call me
back because my phone I don't want my phone to ring.
(18:30):
I'm not sure I knew he didn't have a smartphone
with him. He left that at home and brought sort
of a cheaper phone, so I don't know if it
didn't have a way to turn the ringer off or not,
or if he was just not thinking clearly, but he
said not to call him back. He eventually texts his
mom what is Sarah? Fam five hundred, which was at antibiotic, which, um,
you might think means like he's feeling weird and like,
(18:53):
what is this? I've taken that to me says that
that if he was behaving weirdly or experiencing some different behavior,
that he guessed that that's what it was. That's the
only explanation for that, because they found that he had
taken three of them. So, Um, he knew that he
had that in his system, which I guess if he
(19:16):
was acting weird, maybe that's what he thought it was.
That's what sticks out to me. Yeah, And I think
was that it was either that night or the following morning.
When he asks, I think it was the following morning. Um,
you know, she had booked a flight home for him.
He doesn't get back in touch with her, which really
worries her. But the next morning he does get back
(19:36):
in touch. There's two days after this bar fight. She's relieved.
He says, he's going to go to the airport and uh,
can he get five euros? Uh wired, you know, moneygrammed
or whatever? Western What did they have Western Union over there? Yeah?
Supposedly there's a real detail in there, and that it
was Western Union. Well what's the what makes Western Union important?
(20:00):
So his mother had never heard of Western Union and
laws hadn't either, But apparently he talked to another German
tourist at the airport who had told him to use it,
and he was able to describe to his mom how
to use Western Union in a way that she understood
how to use Western Union after he explained it, which
said to his mom that he had his wits about him.
He wasn't out of his mind, He wasn't um wasted
(20:24):
on drugs or anything like that. He was very much
with it mentally, alright. So he um and I saw
two different things here. Either his mom urged him to
go to the airport doctor just to make sure he's
good to fly, or there was some requirement that he
do so. But either way, he goes to the airport
(20:44):
medical center. And this is where things get a little confusing, because, uh,
it's really all over the place whether or not he
goes in right away or whether he goes in later.
But he apparently calls his mom tells her, hey, they
said I shouldn't fly or drive. But he hadn't even
gone to see the doctor at that point. Uh. And
(21:06):
then once he does see the doctor, the doctor ends
up giving a few different versions of what happened while
he was in there, which is, either, you know, some
people think that looks really shady. I think it could
have just been like at the time, this doctor, you know,
you're not making some really big mental notes about the
random patient that comes in, like this guy is going
to be an international mystery in an hour. Yeah. So
(21:29):
you know, it could have been innocent that heads his
story changed, or it could be sad. It could be
so for from uh, from what I saw that the
doctor UM changed the story three times and that airline
employee came in, uh. And then later it was an
airport employee came in, which I think kind of across
the internet became a construction worker because that the airport
(21:51):
had recently undergone or was undergoing renovations. And then I
guess the third story was that the doctor said that
no one had come in uh, and that Lars had
excused himself to go to the toilet and did not
come back. The doctor was expecting to come back. He
just never came back with the doctor didn't know uh
if that was in fact what happened was that Lars
(22:13):
wasn't coming back because he was sprinting through the airport
and running out of the airport and into the surrounding countryside. Yeah.
And in the version where someone does come in, UM,
what that means is is that literally a human being
another person walks into the examination room and apparently really
(22:33):
freaked out if if that version is correct, really freaked
out Lars, who was already obviously feeling a little bit
paranoid and was like, what is this person doing in here?
In the one version of the story, the doctor tries
to explain, Hey, it's just a construction guy, or no,
this is an airline employee that's going to actually walk
you to the plane. Um, it's a little frustrating to
(22:56):
not know the exact truth, but no matter what happens,
we do know that he's rented from the airport because
that part is actually on YouTube and on CCTV, And
that's why he's the most famous disappeared person on YouTube,
because it's very compelling to watch this uh young kid
drop all and you don't see him drop his stuff,
(23:17):
but clearly he walks in with a backpack in a
duffel bag and he sprints with nothing in his hands
at like full you know, twenty one year old athletic
gallop out of there as if someone is chasing him. Yeah. So,
but there's a couple of weird things about it. If
you watch the video and and again you can go
anywhere on the internet and see this. I think it's
(23:37):
a good thirty seconds of it, um cut together that
he is running in the airport, and then when he
gets outside he kind of like walks and then jogs
a little bit and runs some more. But then I
saw somebody on I think it was read at two
on a different post um they're they're unresolved mysteries group
is just really good. Um. But somebody pointed out that
(23:59):
if you watch him, he's not really like looking behind him.
He's not he's not looking to see somebody coming after him. Um.
And it kind of puts a different spin on things
because you do think, well, surely he's running for his life,
but if you're running for your life, it does seem
like you would be a lot more concerned about who
was coming after you and would probably look behind you
(24:20):
a little more. He doesn't quite do that. Actually, he's
it's a very strange run, but it's also not like
the run of a person who's out of their mind.
That's a That was what stood out to me is
that he doesn't seem to at all be out of
his mind. Yeah, and another couple of details here, um
that was tough to verify. Supposedly, in the doctor's office,
(24:42):
he said, I don't want to die here. I have
to get out of here. Uh. I don't know if
that's true or not, but um, supposedly that's what he said.
And then the mom, Sandra evidently saw she went over
there um to you know, do her own investigat ing
obviously right after it happened, and supposedly saw footage directly
(25:04):
from the airport that had a lot of different stuff
that was not included in the footage that went to
the police. And she said in the footage that she
saw was that when he leaves the airport, he stands
there like checks his pocket as if he's checking to
make sure he has his passport and his wallet and stuff,
and kind of looks around and orients himself for a minute,
(25:26):
like should I go this way? Should I go that way? Um?
If you look at other places on the internet and
you just look at that footage, it looks like he
just bolts from the airport and then continues to either
kind of walk or jog and never stops, never checks
his pockets, never orients himself at all. Yeah, So he
actually walks within um, twenty feet of a couple of
(25:47):
cops who are standing talking to one another in the
parking lot. He walks past them. Um, he goes behind
the sand pile and then eventually goes over. I think,
is it actually on camera him going over of the
fence or is it just presumed that he went over
the fence. Now it's on camera, but it's one of
those things where it's like they had to circle and
highlight him because he's so far in the distance. But
(26:09):
he he goes over a barbed wire fence into a
full bloom sunflower field, which are very very tall and
literally disappears never to be seen again now. And on
the other side of that sunflower field, very importantly is
the a two highway, so who knows what happened. And
then beyond that there's a lot of woods. I wouldn't
(26:29):
call it like the most densely forested place on earth,
but there's a pretty decent sized woods around there. There's
also a lot of farm fields too that's exposed and
out in the open, but there's a highway on the
other side of it, and that's to me, is is
extremely important. All Right, Should we take another break? Yes, alright,
we're gonna take another break and bring it home with
what happened from there and then some of the theories
(26:51):
about what happened to large mat talk. Yeah, so Chuck,
(27:23):
just to recap Lars Matonk has fled. There's a really
good way to put it, the airport leaving behind in
the doctor's office all of his stuff, including his wallet, phone,
and passport. Now, is that verified? I saw that basically everywhere,
including speculating that she saw him checking is. Yeah, I didn't.
(27:44):
I thought that was very confusing. But I saw it
in the sun which I realized is not the most
credible source, but sadly it is one of the most
credible sources when it comes to researching this case. Um,
I saw it on a Yale um article. It's it's
basically every rewere that his wallet, passport and phone were
left behind. Um, I I be. But I mean that's
(28:07):
a really good point, Like we're totally we're lost in
the sunflower field. As far as that stuff concerns, we
we don't know. We've got to get our hands on
the police report. UM. And even that I read when
when Lars's mom hired um Bulgarian lawyer as an investigator. Um,
they got weird conflicting information about you know, what was
(28:31):
found with him or not, or what was what was
left behind by him or not. So even his mom
probably couldn't say for certain what was there. Yeah, I
get the picture that it was a frustrating experience working
with the Bulgarian police. Um. It seems like the Germany
got involved with interpoll, but they had some frustrations as well.
(28:51):
There's there's some speculation that they intentionally kind of um
kept the story on the download because they didn't want
it to affect to her is him? Yeah, I could
see that. Other people say that, well maybe not that,
but it just wasn't widely known it was some German kid. Uh,
it wasn't all over the newspapers, and so people, you know,
(29:15):
they didn't necessarily even know what was going on if
they saw this flyer, or they maybe not have. Maybe
they didn't even run it on the evening news. Yeah,
and so like if it was three weeks four weeks
after the disappearance, that like news started to really spread,
or maybe news never really spread. If you were a
driver and you gave a kid a ride on the
A two highway outside of the airport, um, you might
(29:37):
not have ever put two and two together or um,
if you saw some kid running through a field into
the woods. You might not have ever heard of Lars
Matonk either. So, um, there's it's possible there's people out
there with information who just aren't aren't don't know to
cough it up, although that's probably exceedingly unlikely these days
(29:59):
because of the exposure that this story has gotten. Yeah,
one interesting tidbit is that they did find that those
five hundred euros were untouched in his account. Um, and
I don't think we mentioned I think some people speculate
the fact that it was five hundred euros on the
nose and that it was Western Union and he had
(30:20):
never used it meant that he was being told by
somebody to get five hundred euros wired via this way.
But again that's just internet speculation. Well, I also saw
that it was his mom's decision. He just asked her
to wire him some money, some money he had decided
that that that was according to that documentarian who knows,
(30:40):
we really need to get sounder ma talk on here, dude. Um.
One of the cool things that happened through this through
his mother investigating this is various leads came in over
the years, like hey, there's this guy that speaks German.
He could be Lars. She would go check it out,
there's this other guy. Uh oh. Over the years, she
(31:01):
has ended up finding fifteen German expatriots in Bulgaria somewhere addicts,
some were mentally ill, uh, Some were actually reunited with
their families, some didn't want to be reunited. But she
found all these people, so like every time that happened,
it gave her hope that even though the chances, you know,
with a case like this is if you don't find
(31:24):
this person within the first you know, a few days
or the first week, it's like very slim to no chance.
All of these things gave her hope that she could
if she just kept at it, that she might eventually
find her son. Yeah. I was really surprised to see
that there was a statin here that said that something
like only three percent of missing persons cases aren't resolved
(31:44):
within the first year in Germany. Yeah, not even in Germany,
but among German citizens. Yeah, I thought it would be
a lot higher than that. But that's that's actually not
not bad as far as I can tell. Yeah. So, yeah,
one of those people, by the way, um who was
found that was thought to be. There's like a whole
(32:04):
thing where people are following this case and anytime uh
something ends up on the internet, uh, it ends up
being passed along to Sandra Matonk who will basically post
on her Instagram like, hey, uh, this was sent from
this town. Can somebody go see if they can find
this homeless guy and and get me more pictures of
them so we can figure out if it's Lars. Like
(32:25):
she does this kind of frequently. There was one where
a guy turned up in Brazil who looks a lot
like Lars, but disheveled with the beard and his hair
kind of crazy. Uh. And that turned out to be
a different man Um who was missing from British Columbia
named Anton Pilpa, who was reunited with his family after
five years. And they think that he hitch hike, hitchhiked
(32:47):
and walked from British Columbia down to Brazil um and
then kind of lived around uh Rio. I think Rio
um on his own for a while during a mental
break man. Uh So some of the theories over the
years that have been formed, um, the one that seems
the most obvious to me is that along with the
(33:09):
ear injury, there was some sort of a head injury,
maybe a concussion left untreated that led to erratic behavior
and paranoia maybe, and that you know, once he had
left and had no money and no phone and no passport, Uh,
he sort of was just sort of perhaps lost his
(33:30):
memory and lost in Bulgaria and still lost in Bulgaria. Yeah,
that's entirely possible, especially if it was a head injury
that was getting worse and worse by the hour. Um.
That could definitely explain the erratic behavior of leaving his
stuff and running through the airport and jumping the fence
(33:51):
into a sunflower field, Because if you think about it,
everything up to that point you can explain by him
being intimidated in a hotel he didn't feel comfortable in
um by some guys who aimed to rob him. And
even if those guys didn't aim to rob him, just
him thinking that they were going to rob him explains
(34:12):
everything else up to that point. The thing that makes
it inexplicable as far as I'm concerned is him leaving
the airport the way they did and potentially leaving everything behind.
That throws everything out the window and actually makes the
idea of a traumatic brain injury a lot more um
possible in my mind. The problem is that if that's
what happened to him, it's really possible that he's up there,
(34:36):
you know, out in the woods somewhere still and just
hasn't been found and is is dead probably by now. Yeah,
I suppose he could have just you know, wandered into
a town and assimilated. Well. His mom apparently does believe
that he's still out there, which is why she tries
to shake down every lead she can, but thinks that
he does have memory loss and that that's why he's
(34:58):
still out there just and is never her contacted her.
Another theory is that, you know, maybe everything he said
is true, maybe there were men following him. Maybe it
had something to do with that fight, and these guys
that may or may not have been hired to beat
him up. Apparently the human trafficking in Bulgaria is a problem,
(35:19):
and maybe you know, a young, handsome, fit man like
Lars could have been a target for human trafficking and
that he really like had every right to be anxious
and nervous because otherwise he seemed like he was okay. Uh,
It's all very confusing and frustrating. I can't imagine what
Sandra Matonk has been going through for these years. So dude,
(35:42):
just can't even I mean, when you're when you have
when you don't have closure like that, your imagination is
left to just fill in whatever blanks. And you know,
in a situation like that, people's imaginations tended to go
to the darkest places. I can't imagine the stuff that
she's come up with or that people have suggested to
her too, you know, being caught up in it and
forgetting like this is the mom, Like this is real
(36:03):
to her, this is her life. This isn't just something
on the internet. But what about the trucker. Oh, so
that's one of the leads. Um, uh, that there was
a trucker in uh what where was it? Brandenburg? The
trucker So there was a trucker that in two thousand
nineteen picked up a hitchhiker in Dresden and drove him
all the way to Brandenburg. I guess, um and uh.
(36:27):
He said later on he didn't know about the Lars
Matonk case at the time, but he said later on
he found out about it and said, oh man, that's
got to be the kid that I picked up. And so, um,
his His mom shook down the story, and I don't
think that she ever got in touch at the truck
driver else. The truck driver was just like, here's what
I think, but I can't. I can't say either way,
(36:49):
and I don't know where he went. So there's like
a beyond the lookout among you know, Lars matonk watchers
in Brandenburg. From that story. Yeah, there was another stuff
like that that kept her owen totally. Um. I saw
there was another one about a man in Dusseldorf UM
that the whole thing lasted for about two hours. That's
how fast things get done. She posted pictures that somebody
(37:10):
had sent her of a man, a homeless man in
Dusseldorf UM, and asked for more pictures than they Within
two hours, the coptain Dusseldorf had picked the guy up
and verified that it was not Lars. Yeah, I mean,
I think the head injury and loss of memory, like
he would want to get back to Germany. By all accounts,
he had a good life and enjoyed his job, was
(37:30):
a pretty happy guy and loved Germany. UM. So like
the idea of him choosing to stay there of his
own like sound mind just doesn't seem likely at all. No,
And unfortunately that really strongly suggests foul play as a
possibility to the fact that he has not turned up,
he has every reason to, like you said, turned turned
(37:52):
back up again, get back to his life. I saw
that um this on the State Department's website for Bulgarian
human trafficking. Like, Bulgaria does have a human trafficking problem,
but it seems to be typically targeting Bulgarians, especially Romani
people um who end up getting forced to beg on
(38:12):
the streets, are forced into hard labor if you're a man.
Um that it doesn't necessarily target tourists, and I think
the Bulgarian officials would probably not put up with that
because it would harm tourism so dramatically. So it's fairly
unlikely that like a blonde German guy named you know,
Lars would be would end up begging on the streets
(38:32):
of France at the behest of the Bulgarian mafia. And
I also saw another theory that he was a drug
mule and he flipped out, was scared he was gonna
get caught, and ran out of the airport. What really
kind of undermines that theory is that no drugs were
found in his stuff, so it's possible he took drugs.
A lot of people are like, well, clearly he was
(38:54):
on drugs, Like, why else would you do that? Um,
that's a possibility as well. But again, if you really
look at some of his behavior, um it the yes,
the fact that he ran out of the airport and
jumped over a fence, that's erratic behavior. But if you
look at the way he was behaving during that erratic behavior,
he's not acting erratic. If that makes any sense. It's
(39:17):
it's it's just it's one of the most bizarre mysteries
I've ever heard. So kudos to you and uh Dave
Meischner for coming up with this one. Yeah. I knew
nothing about it until Dave sent it, So way to go, Dave. Yeah,
we need to spend more time on YouTube. I guess
we can totally missed this one, so we can go
back to vid gun. Right, do you got anything else? Nope?
(39:37):
All right, Well, if you want to know more about
Lar's matonk go out and solve the mystery, will you,
at least for his dear mother's sake, And since we
said his dear mother's sake, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this this is another kid right and
in Uh, this is actually from dad. My son Hans
colored a picture of you podcasting today, prompted, which did
(40:01):
you see this picture? No, I gotta bring it up.
It was very cute, which I thought was awesome. I
said we should send it to Josh and Chuck in
his eyes lit up. He wrote out what he wanted
to type in an email to you, and I thought
it was better to just send you his note. I've
been listening to the show for the last ten years
or so, and introduce my son a few months ago.
We read books before bed, including yours, and then listen
(40:21):
to the podcast as he falls asleep. I'm thankful that
I'm able to share this with Hans. He's a smart
kid with incredible memory, so we'll often bring up facts
he's learned from you guys, which I had already forgotten. Uh.
And the picture, what's adorable? What's the name of the
guy who sent it? I'm looking for Sam Okay And Uh,
(40:43):
it's a picture with magic marker and you were sitting
upright at a table and he actually nailed it because
you're on the left, you know, back in the before
times when we were actually in our studio. He has
it right, you're on the left, I'm on the right.
I am. It looks like I'm passing out though I'm
kind of slumped over. But he's got two little microphones
(41:05):
and then two little pieces of paper with a handwritten
thing that says notes, pointing at the paper and says
I listen to your she almost every night. And then
there's a handwritten letter which is great, which I'll read
UH as best I can. I love your show, Chuck
and Josh. Today I listened to your s y s
K about ear wax. I told my mom and UH
(41:27):
and had some of your tips. Hey, have you guys
made a football episode like Touchdown? But if not, can
you make one? I listen to almost all the episodes
except ones that my parents don't let me watch. I
also have your book. I have read some of the
chapters in it and they are great. I like that
you guys have different types of episodes, like short stuff
(41:49):
and just regular episodes. I'm your biggest fan. I'm the
second grade. Yours, sincerely, and that is Hans last name
redacted because he's a kid Hans, I was amazing. I'm
going to find the picture. I haven't been able to
find it yet, but that was a beautiful letter. And
you have a super cool name by the way. Yes,
I love it, and thank you Dad, Sam and whoever
(42:11):
else is in the family helping to support the show.
We really appreciate it. Ye. Well, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Hans, maybe try drawn
a picture. What are you waiting for? Um? We love pictures.
You can send them off to us here at stuff
podcast did iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
(42:32):
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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