Podcasts about hurricane donna

From the Texas Killing Fields and Gilgo Beach to a corpse left decomposing in a hotel water tank and three infants found frozen in a family freezer, these are the notorious dump sites where killers hide their victims — and the strangest places human remains have ever turned up.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BodyDumpSitesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckm2tkwFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Where are bodies dumped most often? What are some of the strangest places bodies have been found, and what odd situations ended up in death? We'll look at some weird stories of dead bodies being found. (Strange Dumping Grounds) *** A man is found dead – obviously murdered. But even after a positive identification, some believed the body was not of the man authorities thought it was – and an even larger mystery was, whose monogrammed handkerchief was stuffed in the corpse's mouth? (The Ruttinger Mystery) *** In Florida, there is a short stretch of freeway that is so full of incidents of danger, death, and the paranormal, that many consider it cursed – and most definitely haunted. Locals have deemed it, the Dead Zone. (Hauntings On Highway I-4)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:02:23.979 = Show Open00:04:03.422 = Strange Dumping Grounds00:24:34.042 = Oddest Places Bodies Found ***00:35:56.964 = Hauntings On Highway I-400:49:22.317 = The Ruttinger Mystery ***00:59:26.329 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Strange Dumping Grounds” by Jessika M. Thomas (http://bit.ly/2XwwVyc), Mariel Loveland (http://bit.ly/2XzEog1), and Rachel Stewart “The Ruttinger Mystery” by Robert Wilhelm: http://bit.ly/2IAzhJh“Hauntings On Highway I-4” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2XB62JG(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December 06, 2021Weird Darkness maps the ground where the dead are hidden, traveling from America's most notorious body-dumping fields to a cursed quarter-mile of Florida interstate and a strangled German lace salesman pulled from the Staten Island mud in 1891.It opens with the dump sites scattered across the United States, where unidentified victims are still pulled from soil and water decades after they were left. In the New York Central Pine Barrens of Long Island, as many as eleven bodies have surfaced, four of them between 2000 and 2003 and two decapitated, in killings attributed to the Butcher of Manorville. Lake Tahoe keeps its secrets through physics rather than concealment, its thousand-foot depths holding a near-constant 39 degrees that stops bodies—rumored to date to Mafia disposals in the 1950s—from decomposing enough to float. Sugar planter Edgar Watson terrorized the Florida Everglades in the early 1900s, allegedly killing laborers each harvest to dodge their wages, and in 2016 two alligators were found feeding on a corpse in the same swamp. Leakin Park in Baltimore has given up roughly 70 bodies since 1946, while the Texas Killing Fields along I-45 between Houston and Galveston have yielded 30 since 13-year-old Colette Wilson vanished in 1971—among them Krystal Jean Baker, whose 1986 murder was tied to Kevin Edison Smith by DNA in 2012. Over 100 bodies have come out of the Mojave Desert, sending photographer William Bradford and William Floyd Zamastil to prison, and the still-unidentified Gilgo Beach killer dumped as many as 17 victims along Ocean Parkway, three of them strangled, bagged in burlap, and linked to the Long Island Serial Killer. Pelham Bay Park concealed at least 65 bodies between 1986 and 1995, the East River surrendered 26 in the spring of 2010 alone, and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, confessed to ending at least 49 women's lives.From there the episode turns to bodies found where no one thinks to look. Canadian student Elisa Lam decomposed for as long as 19 days inside a rooftop water cistern at Downtown Los Angeles's Cecil Hotel while guests drank and bathed from the same supply and complained the water tasted off. In Xi'an, China, a woman starved to death trapped in an elevator over the Chinese New Year, her hands mangled from a month of clawing at the doors after workers skipped a required inspection. Elmer McCurdy, killed by police in 1911 after robbing a train of $46 and two jugs of whiskey, was embalmed with arsenic and toured carnivals as a sideshow attraction until a film crew for The Six Million Dollar Man snapped his arm off at a Long Beach amusement park in 1976 and found bone beneath the wax; he was finally buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1977. A Disneyland Paris worker was electrocuted behind the scenes of the Phantom Manor ride in 2016, a German mother kept three of her infants in freezer wrapping for some 30 years until her grown children uncovered them while digging for frozen pizza, and Joshua Maddox, missing since 2008, was discovered seven years later wedged in the chimney of his parents' Colorado cabin with no sign of injury.Next comes a quarter-mile of Interstate 4 near Lake Monroe, Florida, that locals call the Dead Zone. The asphalt covers four unmarked graves of Dutch immigrants who died in the Yellow Fever epidemic that erased the 1870s settlement of St. Joseph's, graves that landowner Albert Hawkins fenced and protected after stumbling on them in 1905, and which earned a reputation for lightning strikes, house fires, and a fatal hit-and-run befalling anyone who disturbed them. The state promised to relocate the remains before construction but paved over them, and as work began in 1960 Hurricane Donna changed course to follow the road's path; the highway opened in 1963 with a deadly truck crash at that exact spot. Somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 accidents have clustered along the short stretch since, Hurricane Charley retraced Donna's route over it in 2004, and drivers report their radios filling with growls, children's laughter, and disembodied voices in a place with no nearby transmitters.The episode closes with the 1891 murder of Karl Emanuel Ruttinger, a German lace salesman from Dresden whose body watchman Samuel Mortin found half-floating in the mud below Tottenville, Staten Island, his arms bound behind his back and a linen handkerchief monogrammed "W.W." rammed down his throat with a stick. Suspicion fell on his brother-in-law, William Wright, who had sailed with him from Liverpool and shared his boarding-house room, yet Wright stood only five-foot-four at 120 pounds, far too slight to overpower a six-foot, 200-pound man alone. The trail twisted through a throat-cutting suicide at the Astor House by a man calling himself Fred Evans, a string of conflicting witness identifications, and the discovery that Ruttinger's life had been insured for more than $20,000 just a month before the voyage—raising the possibility that the corpse was not Ruttinger at all. A Tottenville inquest ruled that it was indeed Ruttinger, suffocated by persons unknown, and in 1892 the Equitable Life Assurance Society paid his mother Therese roughly $22,000, conceding privately that settling was cheaper than proving the fraud they suspected.

On August 29, 1960, the storm that would become Hurricane Donna formed near the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast. It would go on to cause 150 deaths from Puerto Rico to New England over the next two weeks. On August 31, Donna attained hurricane status and headed west toward the Caribbean. It was a Category 4 hurricane by the time it reached the Leeward Islands on September 4. Donna left a path of destruction across on Puerto Rico and a portion of the Bahamas before turning northeast toward Cuba and the Florida Keys. Donna punished Cuba, one hundred and twenty people lost their lives in there when evacuation plans were not carried out properly. On September 9, winds with speeds of up to 200 miles per hour battered the Florida Keys before Donna skipped back to the Atlantic Ocean. The storm then rode the Florida coastline, causing 13 deaths in Fort Myers and Daytona Beach. The state's grapefruit and orange crops also took devastating blows and almost half of the largest mangrove tree forest in the United States was lost. It was the strongest storm to hit Florida until Andrew in 1992. On September 12, Donna battered the Outer Banks on North Carolina and was still a Category 3 hurricane. It stared to move quickly, it hit the New England coast on the night of September 12, 1960, still with hurricane force winds. Blue Hill Observatory, MA, had a wind gust of 145 mph. It is the only hurricane on record to produce hurricane force winds in every state that has a coast line on the Atlantic Ocean. Florida received the most damage from Hurricane Donna. Portions of southern and western Florida received over 10 in of rainfall from the hurricane. In the state of Florida, the storm destroyed 2,156 homes and trailers, severely damaged 3,903, and inflicted minor impact on 30,524 others. Winds as strong as 100 mph were observed along the coast of New Jersey. Damage from the storm was most severe in Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth and Ocean counties, where numerous boats, docks, boardwalks, and cottages were damaged or destroyed. A resort area in Cliffwood beach, New Jersey saw its boardwalk and tourist attractions destroyed by the hurricane, and the area has never recovered to this day, 61 years later. Losses to agriculture were significant, with damage to apple and peach trees "considerable", the former of which lost about one-third of its crops. Wind damage to corn and sorghum resulted in a delay in their harvest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Did I Choose To Be Born? If my gestation period were 9 months, that means that somewhere around September 6, 1960 when I decided to manifest myself on the physical plane again, so I got to wondering, “why?”  What was happening in the fall of 1960 that made me want to come back and make a difference?  (My email address at this time was MakeADifference@BigCatRescue.org)   In October Jane Goodall observes tool-making by a chimpanzee, calling the attention of science to the practice. She sees a chimp that she has named David Graybeard take a blade of grass and shape it so that it can be poked into a termite mound for the purpose of removing termites. David proceeds to eat the termites so obtained.   Echo, the first passive communications satellite, is launched on August 12 as a result of efforts by John Pierce.  Other communications-satellite developments are by the U.S. military. On May 22 Midas 2, the first U.S. spy satellite designed for detecting missile launches, relays information it obtains with infrared cameras to Earth. On August 18 the military satellite Corona, publicly known by the civilian code name Discoverer 13, is launched. It successfully returns a capsule to Earth -- the first object ever returned from space. A week later Discoverer 14 uses cameras designed by Edwin Land to spy on the Soviet Union, parachuting canisters of film back to Earth, where they are captured in air by specially equipped aircraft. They are said to yield more images in a single day than the U-2 spy system had in its entire lifetime. There will be more than a hundred similar missions in the Corona program, which continues until 1972.   In November Digital Equipment Corporation led by Kenneth Olsen introduces the PDP-1, a computer with a maximum memory of 26,000 bytes, making it state of the art. It is the first commercial computer with a keyboard input and a monitor to show what the user has entered. Because of its size and configuration, it is the predecessor of the minicomputer, a computer affordable by small businesses.   The first commercial reprocessing plant for radioactive wastes is built in West Valley, New York.   Physician John Charnley [b. Bury, Lancashire, England, 1911, d. 1982] implants a two-part joint replacement made of plastic and cobalt-chrome into a human to replace a damaged joint.  Wilson Greatbatch [b. Buffalo, New York, September 6, 1919] files a patent for an implantable pacemaker that permanently regulates heartbeat.   About this time some women enlarge or reshape their breasts with a semiliquid plastic in a bag that is implanted in the skin; the plastic material is silicone, familiar to many by its trade name as the toy Silly Putty. About 2,000,000 women will use the implants in the next 30 years.   August 29, 1960 Hurricane Donna kills 50 people in FL. Oct. 14, 1960 Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy participate in the first T.V. presidential debate. Nov. 1, 1960 JFK announced his idea of a Peace Corps.  Interracial marriages are illegal in 31 states.  February 1, 1960 the first blacks contest segregated tables and after 6 months of protesting are granted the right to eat with whites.  March 6, 1960 Switzerland gives women the right to vote.  May 9, 1960 the FDA approved the birth control pill.   I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/   I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.     You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile   You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org   Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue   Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

Hurricane Charley  took out the Peace River Sanctuary owned by Lisa Stoner.  I took a crew down to put her perimeter fence back up so that no wild animals would escape the property.  There was an AZA supplier that also went by the name of Peace River, and many of their animals did escape into the country side.   I went there first, not knowing there were two facilities with the same name.  One a breeding compound and the other a good sanctuary.  I was really glad, after seeing all of the animals running wild at the first place, that I was at the wrong location.   It had always been our plan to load our cats onto semis and leave town if we were in the path of a hurricane, and I previously had the trucks, trailers and contacts to do it, but on this trip I saw semi trucks up in trees and know our cats are safer at the sanctuary than they would be on the road.  It was also the first real test of our cage structure.  Lisa Stoner had emulated our cage design and those were the only cages left standing after Hurricane Charley.   Hurricane Charley was the third named storm, the second hurricane, and the second major hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. Charley lasted from August 9 to August 15, and at its peak intensity it attained 150 mph winds, making it a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. It made landfall in southwestern Florida at maximum strength, making it the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Andrew struck Florida in 1992.   After moving slowly through the Caribbean Sea, Charley crossed Cuba on Friday, August 13 as a Category 3 hurricane, causing heavy damage and four deaths. That same day, it crossed over the Dry Tortugas, just 22 hours after Tropical Storm Bonnie had struck northwestern Florida. It was the first time in history that two tropical cyclones struck the same state in a 24-hour period.  At its peak intensity of 150 mph, Hurricane Charley struck Captiva Island, causing severe damage.   Charley, the strongest hurricane to hit southwest Florida since Hurricane Donna in 1960, then continued to produce severe damage as it made landfall on the peninsula near Port Charlotte. It continued to the north-northeast along the Peace River corridor, devastating Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte, Cleveland, Fort Ogden, Nocatee, Arcadia, Zolfo Springs, Sebring, and Wauchula. Zolfo Springs was isolated for nearly two days as masses of large trees, power poles, power lines, transformers, and debris filled the streets. Wauchula sustained gusts to 147 mph; buildings in the downtown areas caved onto Main Street. Ultimately, the storm passed through the central and eastern parts of the Orlando metropolitan area, still carrying winds gusting up to 106 mph.   The city of Winter Park, north of Orlando, also sustained considerable damage since its many old, large oak trees had not experienced high winds. Falling trees tore down power utilities and smashed cars, and their huge roots lifted underground water and sewer utilities. The storm slowed as it exited the state over New Smyrna Beach and Ponce Inlet, just south of Daytona Beach. The storm was ultimately absorbed by a front in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after sunrise on August 15, near southeastern Massachusetts.   Damage in the state totaled to over $13 billion. Charley initially was expected to hit further north in Tampa, and caught many Floridians off-guard due to a sudden change in the storm's track as it approached the state. Throughout the United States, Charley caused 10 deaths and $15.4 billion in damage, making it the second costliest hurricane in United States history at the time.   I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/   I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.     You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile   You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org   Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue   Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

On August 29, 1960, the storm that would become Hurricane Donna formed near Cape Verde off the African coast. It would go on to cause 150 deaths from Puerto Rico to New England over the next two weeks. On August 31, Donna attained hurricane status and headed west toward the Caribbean Sea. The storm then rode the Florida coastline, causing 13 deaths in Fort Myers and Daytona Beach. The state’s grapefruit and orange crops also took devastating blows and almost half of the largest mangrove tree forest in the United States was lost. It was the strongest storm to hit Florida until Andrew in 1992. On September 12, Donna battered the Outer Banks on North Carolina and was still a Category 3 hurricane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

UPS robbed of 400+ firearms. Iran reigns down missiles at targets in Syria, more to come! Putin's assassination hit squads at work abroad. Ricin mailed to the Pentagon. Taking a page from A. Lincoln's playbook: Communist China provoking US to initiate warfare. Indonesia and "the Ring of Fire"! Jamal Khashoggi missing inside Istanbul Saudi consulate! Texas St. Board of Ed. bored with Hillary; she & gal-pal "Hurricane Donna" not getting respect they demand. 56-yr-old Cuban-American beauty Maria Elvira Salazar, next US Senator from Florida? Brett Kavanaugh & Donald Trump, among "The Best & the Brightest"?!

Friends and "sand sisters" 65-year-old Deb Gleason of Sanibel and 67-year-old Diane Schwartz of Englewood share memories of growing up on Sanibel and Captiva in the 1950s. They both collected and sold sea shells to stores and exporters. They both lived through Hurricane Donna in 1960. And they both moved there in the second grade and attended a one-room schoolhouse.

Hurricane Donna has finally arrived in Buffalo!!!  Cocktails and Cream Puffs will never be the same again.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! The Show Notes Sandy Storm IntroThanks for CSICon History Chunk     - October 31stClamping the magician at MKAAsk George       - Time left? from David Spencer
     - Liking music? from Chris Rowe     - Interviews and Ms.Info? from KelseySkepticon November 9th-11rdRupert McClanahan’s Indestructible Bastards     - Margaret WegnerShow close................................... Mentioned in the show Skepticon 9-11 Springfield MissouriGeo performs Friday 9th Cibo Matto “Birthday Cake”
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 Sign up for the mailing list: Write to Geo! A reminder that the new portal to the Geologic Universe is at GeorgeHrab.com. Score more data from the Geologic Universe! Get George's Non-Coloring Book at Lulu, both as and E-BOOK and PRINT editions. Check out Geo's wiki page thanks to Tim Farley. Get your George HrApp here. Thanks to Gerry Orkin for the design and engineering. Have a comment on the show, a Religious Moron tip, or a question for Ask George? Drop George a line and write to Geo's Mom, too! Ms. Info sez, "Hurricane Donna forged a path of destruction in the same year I was born. She reached Category 5 status and became one of the top ten worst hurricanes. The name was retired after that."