Hi crime junkies, I'm Ashley Flowers and I'm Britt and really quick before we jump into the episode I actually have an announcement

Some of you a lot of you have been waiting for I've been waiting for it. My second novel, which is called

The Missing Half, is now available for pre-order. It comes out May 6, 2025, but you can either go to my website Ashley Flowers.com or you can

pre-order it wherever books are sold. You won't want to miss it.

I cannot wait. Oh girl, you're getting an advanced coffee like please

And I support a sister. I'm gonna pre-order I'm gonna pre-order the audiobook I do all of it

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, but so I'll put a link in the show notes as well, but if you guys are looking forward to a new mystery novel for me, I am so proud of this one.

If you loved all good people here, you are going to love this one just as much if not more. So with that

said I would like to tell you a real story not a fiction story and actually I have two real stories to tell you today and they have

their differences separated by decades and circumstances, but both have left me with a list of questions that I just can't answer.

And I keep thinking that maybe someone out there can.

These are the stories of Ben McDaniel and Kenneth Plaestead. the So, It's a hot Friday morning at around 9 a.m. on August 20th, 2010,

when a guy named Eduardo, who is an employee of this place called Vortex Spring.

It's like a camping RV adventure park kind of thing.

And it's in the panhandle of Florida.

But this guy Eduardo, he notices something odd.

There is this pickup truck that he is familiar

with that has been sitting in the exact same spot since Wednesday two days before.

Now the owner of the pickup truck is 30-year- old Ben McDaniel and this guy is a regular.

He comes and scuba dives in the large natural spring on the property all the time.

And there is also this underwater cave system

within the spring.

...