Mystery On The Rocks

This week, we decide to educate ourselves on something which didn't really get taught to us at school or, we feel, get adequately explained to us as children... Irish history.Specifically, the story of one man - Michael Collins.A firebrand revolutionary, his story cannot be understated when it comes to the formation of the republic of Ireland. After ruffling so many belligerent, colonial feathers it should have come as no surprise that people would want him out of the way. But no official record exists of how he met his end in a violent shootout.So just who did assassinate him in 1922?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On September 16th 1920, an attack on Wall Street killed 30 people instantly, 10 more in the aftermath and injured hundreds more. Yet it remains unsolved, despite arrests being made, trials being held and executions being conducted in a story which went on to grip the world.Might the attack have its roots in an armed robbery on a shoe factory months earlier? We try to piece it all together as we learn about Italian anarchism in early 20th Century America and get sidetracked by late 1980s kids' cartoon The Shoe People...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Following the Great War, in the early 1920s celebrated military strategist Earl Hancock Ellis worked tirelessly on a secret project - a project which would eventually lead him on a secret mission to Japanese islands in the Central Pacific.A project which could well have predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor almost 20 years before it actually happened...Join us as we discuss Ellis's predictions and high-stakes mission as well as, among other things, nits.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Following last week's encounter with the nefarious Sir Basil Zaharoff, we rewind to the 1880s when machine gun inventor William Cantelo vanishes completely upon completing the prototype machine gun he had been working on for some time. Not long afterwards, Hiram Maxim unveils his outstanding Maxim gun, only for William Cantelo's surviving sons to be shocked by two things...1) The gun is the exact same design as their father's and 2) Hiram Maxim bears a startling physical resemblance to their missing dad...Could the villainous ZedZed have been involved somehow?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sir Basil Zaharoff. One of the most evil men who ever lived. Bigamist, fraudster, international arms dealer. Codename: ZedZed. A real nasty piece of work.Most likely the real-life template for the James Bond supervillain, Zaharoff's influence on the geopolitics of the 20th Century cannot be overestimated, yet he lived in the shadows and his name doesn't loom over history as much as the man himself did. So why does nobody really know when and where he was born, why did he burn all records of himself and could he really be responsible for World War I?And is a previous mystery on the show solved in the process?Let's find out together!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Season Five continues with one of the great 20th Century mysteries; did Princess Anastasia Romanov survive the Bolshevik revolution and execution of her family and go on to live a long life in secret?Several people have indeed claimed to be the princess throughout the years and a potentially sticky diplomatic situation on the eve of peace with Germany during World War 1 helped to stoke speculation but did she really get away?And is the Dreamworks film worth watching? We attempt to answer these in a very echoey room...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kicking off Season Five of Mystery on the Rocks (a kinda themed trawl through Geopolitics, War & Espionage of the 20th Century) is our 100th case... The Mad Monk Rasputin!A mystic who inveigled his way into Russia's royal family's inner circle to become one of Tsar Nicholas' closest advisers, Rasputin is still held aloft as a totem of pure evil today - a reputation only enhanced by the terrifying stories told of his assassination in 1916. So, did Rasputin really possess powers magical enough to cure the Tsar's son of haemophilia as well as survive being poisoned, shot and drowned?And do our three MOTR idiots end up becoming TYPICAL SNOWFLAKE RASPUTIN APOLOGISTS?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's our Season Four finale and we wanted to pick a doozy for it! So come with us to Florida in 2005 as we look at how a woman got out of a hotel she couldn't possibly have left without being seen and ended up 8 miles away and left for dead. What happened to her, who did it and just who on Earth is the Mercury Man and might he be the key to the whole affair?This case is covered extensively in (so this episode owes a huge debt to) Mark Bowden's excellent Vanity Fair article The Case of the Vanishing Blonde so be sure to take a look after you've finished listening!And we'll be back soon with Season Five!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's episode focuses on one of the earliest stories of alien abduction, that of Barney and Betty Hill who claimed to have been abducted by an alien spacecraft while they were driving back home to New Hampshire from vacation in Montreal. And even though our theory for what really happened is one of our most juvenile, we are standing by it!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's episode, as voted for by our awesome supporters on Patreon in our monthly mystery vote, is the tale of John Lang who in 2016 was found dead in his burning home, stabbed three times after predicting his own murder in a series of posts on social media. He had uncovered corruption in the Fresno police department and documented all sorts of suspicious goings on as he became increasingly convinced they would make him pay.So did they?And is Masud secretly a bestselling novelist?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Something a little different this week as we got together in the same (really echoey - sorry!) room and lay out a story suggested just one hour prior to recording by former guest of the show John Robertson. So listen as we all learn about the colourful life and mysterious death of boxing legend Sonny Liston, which takes in organised crime, Muhammad Ali and pecan nuts...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A case which has nothing whatsoever to do with 90s movies but which we still managed to make aaaaaallllllll about 90s movies.In 2003, assistant attorney Jonathan Luna is found dead almost 100 miles from where he was last seen leaving his office, face down in a creek with his blood-spattered car idling nearby and 36 stab wounds all over his body, one of which severed his carotid artery.Cause of death? Drowning. What's more, the wounds seem to have come from his own knife. The cases for suicide vs homicide continue to be argued, especially as details of the trial Luna had been working on could point to either...Also, find out how much Masud used to eat in a day as a schoolboy because it's quite something.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, intellectual, actor, journalist, novelist, playwright and political figure who created such uproar during his life that he was eventually assassinated in a pretty brutal way in November 1975.To this day nobody knows really who did it but it could be one or more from one or all of the following groups; the mafia, the government, the far-right or even the freemasons. We try to get to the bottom of it at the same time as getting distracted by former heartthrob and current POS Ryan Phillippe...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gloria Ramirez was 31 years old when she was admitted to Riverside General Hospital Emergency Room in February 1994, delirious and speaking gibberish with heart palpitations. She died that night, officially from complications relating to cervical cancer but the story is far more complicated and strange... Many of the health professionals who worked on her that night were all seemingly poisoned by her skin, by her blood and generally just by being in her proximity.This is the story of the Toxic Lady...It's also the story of Chris' idea for a new Batman comic book and the episode where we find out Sooz's fetish...   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A big one today. Not including the initial trailer, this week's episode is our big 100!So allow us a little self indulgence as we discuss, among other things, our favourite cases, episodes and cocktails from our ever-growing back catalogue. Thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast (which includes you wonderful people, obviously) along the way, in whatever capacity.Four seasons, a few different formats, loads of cases, hundreds of cocktails, a litany of amazing guests, plenty of ancilliary livestreams and a place on the Guardian's 50 Funniest Podcasts this year. All thanks to you.Because if nobody was listening, we wouldn't do it. Let's face it, we could do the podcast without you, but it'd be shit. Really, you help make this show what it is and are a huge, huge part of why we love doing it so much.Eurgh, enough sincerity now. See you for the 101st episode, Egg Wizards!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Wonderful comedian, actor and decent bloke Sunil Patel popped by the bar this week to reduce us to hysterics while talking about a Welsh sheep farmer and to assist us with the spooky 19th Century ghost story of Sarah Duckett...You can hear Sunil's podcast Why Is Harriet Crying? wherever you get your podcasts and go see him LIVE this month (June 2021) at the Soho Theatre!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After an 11th hour guest cancellation we decided to discuss the case between ourselves anyway and had a fun conversation about the oft-repeated story of Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett disguising Princess Diana as a gay man in the 1980s and taking her out to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern...So is it true or just an urban myth? No real evidence exists to back it up beyond the initial account in Cleo Rocos' late-90s autobiography and the three main players are no longer with us to confirm or deny the tale... Yet it all sounds so plausible!Find out where we place our bets...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A couple of weeks ago, we got together to do Mystery on the Rocks in the same room for the first time in over a year and did a live show from Angel Comedy's brilliant venue The Bill Murray. Restrictions still prevented us having audience in the room with us and so we livestreamed a slightly chaotic show where we got super giddy at being together for the first time in a long time. During the shenanigans, we did touch upon the story of the terrifying ghost ship SS Ourang Medan, and thought why not edit together an episode from the live show? So we did!An eerie distress call from the doomed ship caused two vessels in what was the Dutch East Indies to investigate, whereupon they found the Ourang Medan's entire crew dead and, disturbingly, all in the same pose. But is it actually a horrifying true story or just an urban myth? The jury has remained out ever since the story first surfaced in the 1940s... And find out if there is anything cool dude Masud can't style out...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy

The brilliant comedian, director and man behind all those TV intros you have seen re-imagined as stock footage Matt Highton poked his head round the door of the bar for a lot of film chat and to possibly help us reach a solution to the enduring mystery of just who was it that wrote The Circleville Letters?Love, death and bus drivers feature in this curious tale of some of Circleville, Ohio's residents in the 1970s and 1980s being plagued by a persistent and sinister letter writing campaign...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Juliette Burton is an absolutely top-drawer comedian, writer and actor as well as being one of the country's foremost speakers and advocates on the topic of mental health, an ambassador for the mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness no less!She also happens to be one of the most fun human beings, as evidenced by the laugh we had when she turned up with ample cocktails of her own and managed to flirt outrageously with each one of us in the course of helping us out with the mystery of the Sonora Aero Club - a mysterious group who would meet decades before the first plane ever flew to design driveable flying machines and whose existence only became known almost a century later when these designs were discovered in the 1960s...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.